Free Republic

As we race to develop effective treatments and a vaccine against COVID-19, people are looking to reduce their risk of getting sick. One thing that might help is as obvious as the sun in the sky and as close as your medicine cabinet – Vitamin D. Higher COVID-19 mortality rates among older people and those with chronic conditions suggest that a weakened immune system contributes to poor outcomes. There are many crackpot claims about miracle cures floating around, but the science supports the possibility – although not the proof – that Vitamin D may strengthen the immune system, particularly of...

Politics: More than two dozen House Democrats are pushing the Senate to revive and ratify the nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to a critical post, but helping to fight deadly disease is not what they have in mind. The question of the day is why we have or need an Ebola czar in the form of political operative/hack Ron Klain when we have an unfilled surgeon general's position that physician emeritus serving as America's doctor is supposed to fill. We have an acting Surgeon General, Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak, but he is seemingly just a placeholder instead of the force...

Bill O’Reilly spent a significant part of his first segment tonight decrying the “racism” accusations being thrown by some MSNBC commentators amidst nationwide Ebola panic. O’Reilly did not directly call out MSNBC in his Talking Points Memo, but it was very clearly aimed at them, since he had teased the segment with a clip of Alex Wagner saying some Republican comments on Ebola, including calling for a travel ban is “not even thinly-veiled racism.” And that wasn’t the first time someone on MSNBC had invoked racism in talking about a travel ban; a guest on Melissa Harris-Perry‘s show did so...

Leadership: In a telephone press briefing, the CDC director repeated that you can't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but infected or exposed people should avoid public transit because they might transmit it. Huh? During the Wednesday conference call with reporters, Centers for Disease Control director Tom Frieden was asked if he or anyone else at the CDC had vetted a videotaped message posted on U.S. embassy websites that showed President Obama saying you couldn't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, while the CDC's own guidelines advised those with symptoms or a...

Bottom line on #Ebola in US: we will stop it in its tracks. CDC has 9 person team doing thorough contact tracing & followup. Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrFriedenCDC) October 01, 2014 “[W]e will stop it in its tracks.” That tweet, from CDC director Thomas Frieden, way posted waaaay back on October 1st. Things look rather different now that Ebola has spread to two health care workers who treated “patient zero” Thomas Duncan. ... The big picture is that the U.S. #Ebola case is a reflection of the epidemic in W. Africa. We’ll stop it here. — Dr. Tom Frieden

Public Health: The man whose one job is to safeguard America's health has failed, saying that we must change our responses to Ebola after a Dallas health care worker becomes infected despite the rules he championed. After 26-year-old Dallas health care worker Nina Pham became the first person to contract Ebola on U.S. soil, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said during a press conference that (we) "have to rethink the way we address Ebola control." Yes, we do. Pham's infection, just as Thomas E. Duncan's death in Dallas after a multistop trip from Liberia,...

CDC Director Tom Frieden fondly remembered his time as a “community organizer” in a 2012 commencement speech at Oberlin College. Frieden described misreading a health report which he had to turn upside down to get right. Frieden’s role as a “community organizer” was first reported in the New York Times in a profile. The philosophy major reportedly worked on the Mississippi Delta. “We established an information system that held everyone accountable for every patient treated–a feed back loop that let us know if we were succeeding or failing.” Frieden said, recalling his efforts against tuberculosis. “And this is crucially important....

On his blog on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), director Dr. Tom Frieden wrote that sealing borders, restricting travel to and from countries with widespread cases of Ebola, and otherwise isolating communities infected with the deadly disease “increases people’s distrust of government, making them less likely to co-operate to help stop the spread of Ebola.” Frieden added: I have been asked whether we should stop travel to Liberia. The answer is no: to keep Americans and people in non-affected countries safe, we must continue to work to support efforts to stop the spread of...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday it will soon announce new travel-related recommendations aimed at stopping the spread of Ebola in the United States, and indicated the new measures would be announced later this week. CDC Director Tom Frieden didn’t say whether the new recommendations would include a ban on flights from the three West African countries that have suffered an Ebola outbreak.

An Ebola victim has flown in from Liberia and has now been placed in an isolation ward at a Dallas hospital. “This individual left Liberia on the 19th of September, arrived in the U.S. on the 20th of September [and] had no symptoms when departing Liberia or when entering this country,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials said the man left the disease-stricken country of Liberia to visit with friends in the United States. They did not say if the man left Liberia for the United States because he had contacted the disease,...

<p>ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta/AP) — The director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says that the Ebola outbreak is going to get worse.</p> <p>Speaking to “CBS This Morning” following his trip to the West African countries dealing with the outbreak, Dr. Tom Frieden explained that they have to act now to try to get Ebola under control.</p>

Ebola's spread to the United States is "inevitable" due to the nature of global airline travel, but any outbreak is not likely to be large, US health authorities said Thursday. Related Stories US issues travel warning for Ebola-hit countries AFP U.S. advises against non-essential travel to countries hit by Ebola Reuters New Nigeria Ebola cases amid fears epidemic 'out of control' AFP Death toll from Ebola in W. Africa hits 887: WHO Associated Press W. Africa Ebola outbreak tops 700 deaths Associated Press Already one man with dual US-Liberian citizenship has died from Ebola, after becoming sick on a plane...

The Obama administration has employed a variety of tactics to frighten the public about the possible consequences of sequestration. Air-traffic control towers will be shuttered. Children will be thrown off Head Start. The nation’s guard against terrorism will be lowered. Republicans, and in some cases the press, have poked some pretty big holes in some of the administration’s most extravagant claims. But no one has done a better job than a little-known GOP congressman, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, who took on officials from the Centers for Disease Control at a House hearing last week. The occasion was a meeting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKbMhr-cfh8

As part of their sequestration-scaremongering roundup, the White House went straight for the worst-case scenarios that would hit all of the federal government’s departments and agencies in the spending cuts’ wake — terrible calamities, like “hundreds of thousands of Americans” losing access “to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.” The administration circulated their state-by-state report through Congress to that effect, detailing how thousands fewer children would receive vaccinations as a direct result. But wait a moment, said Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris during a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting on Tuesday that included Dr. Tom Frieden,...