Posted on 10/03/2013 7:23:14 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The federal government shutdown could be hazardous to the health of all Americans, according to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. The Centers for Disease Control, which Harkin calls the world’s premiere public health agency, is closed. Less than two weeks ago, Harkin says the CDC identified frozen berries from the nation of Turkey as the cause of hundreds of people in several states being sickened by hepatitis-A.
“The CDC detective epidemiological team went out, they recalled all this food and they stopped it before it spread any further,” Harkin says. “That team is at home now. They’re not working. What if we have another bad food outbreak today, tomorrow, this weekend?” Harkin says the CDC is shut down — all the labs are closed, the scientists are furloughed and the expert hotlines that physicians and the public call for information are turned off.
He notes, infectious illnesses and outbreaks of foodborne disease don’t abide by federal furloughs. “As you know, we had another outbreak in August,” Harkin says. “Remember the lettuce? It started in Iowa. They traced it to Texas and a few other places. A lot of people got sick but CDC was able to track it down, stop it, isolate it.” That outbreak of cyclospora sickened more than 240 people in Iowa and Nebraska. Hundreds of others had similar intestinal illnesses in 20 other states.
Harkin, a Democrat, chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. “I don’t mean to unduly frighten anybody but these are things that happened and they’ve happened in the recent past and because we had CDC on the job, the American people were kept safe,” Harkin says. “Now, they’re not.”
Harkin also bemoans the fact the CDC has stopped monitoring influenza, as flu season is just beginning. He says the flu leads to more than 200,000 Americans being hospitalized every year. In a mild year, 3,000 Americans who get the flu will die, and in a severe year, the toll can rise to almost 50,000.
Harkin is a disease.
Send up a bill to fund the CDC. Let Reid kill that one, too. Maybe he can say something clever about it, like he did about pediatric cancer patients.
Another Democrat, choking on his own stupidity.
What a moron. [eyeroll]
This “government shutdown” thing is starting to look like a good opportunity to help develop a secession plan. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Asteroids are heading this way, the sun is going supernova, and aliens are landing to wipe us out. Without big government were DOOMED!
Dems trying to scare the hell out of Americans over shutdown that most don’t give a damn about anyway.
Thank you DR. Harkin! What? You’re not a doctor? Well, maybe you can be for Bowbamacare! Go away you FOOL!
It is also possible, VERY possible, that one day, some of us could get up and put on one black sock and one brown sock. EVEN IF we sorted them when they came out of the dryer, yes, it is still possible. If even one child can be prevented from suffering the indignity of sock mismatching, a conmittee with adequate support staff to oversee such things is not only welcome but dare I say it, a blessing. For only in this way can we prevent sock mismatches and the concommitent shame, revulsion, and self-image damage such an episode can engender.
Please, this holiday season, if you can find it your heart to care about the less fortunate among us, send your tax-exempt donations to:
PAMS (Parents Against Mismatched Socks)
1337 Fletcher lane
Des Moines, IA 50227
Hey, if they don’t pass a CR, will Guam tip over?
Does that mean I can slip a laxative into his soup?
I am coming down with a cold. Was wondering what caused it.
No need. From hearing him talk, it's obvious he's been eating suppositories.
So a government shutdown is just like global warming. It causes everything.
I really hope this mentally ill marxist traitor dies right now, preferably of some disease from Red China.
The CDC rarely “stops” a disease. They are the nation’s “warning system” while private industries provide the mass vaccines needed to prevent or stop the actual disease.
If he wanted the CDC to be funded, he would have told Harry Reid to shove his opposition up his ass and join the Republicans in funding it as part of a Continuing Resolution stand-alone bill.
Harkin is a coward, as most political reds are besides being a congenital liar and enemy of America.
I wish him nothing by ill will and death in his final term in Congress wrecking our country. He has earned every bit of it.
I remember his shit from Vietnam.
The good news- Harkin suffered from brain worm.
The bad news- they died from lack of food.
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