Good News But Growing Mystery 

 

Forty-three people who were being closely monitored for Ebola because of exposure to Thomas Duncan passed the critical 21-day period yesterday without showing any signs of infection. Dallas has now gone five days without a new case of Ebola. That's good news. Having said that, there are studies from the World Health Organization indicating that a small percentage of Ebola infections can occur well past the 21-day period. 

 

Among those cleared were Duncan's fiancée and two extended family members, who were in the Dallas apartment with him for several days. Why did they not become sick, but two nurses who tried to follow protocols ended up contracting the disease? That is the growing mystery.

 

One possible answer is that we know Ebola victims become more contagious with each passing day. So Duncan would have been more contagious in the hospital than he was at the apartment. Another possibility is that the invasive medical procedures used to try to save his life, including kidney dialysis and intubation, would have exposed healthcare workers to greater amounts of the virus shedding from Mr. Duncan's body. 

 

Dr. Kent Brantly, who contracted virus in Liberia while working with Samaritan's Purse, was brought back to the U.S., treated at Emory University and survived. Dr. Brantly tells interviewers that to this day he does not know how he contracted the disease. He had been in Liberia caring for Ebola victims. He followed every protocol. Yet even this trained doctor is mystified. All of which points to how much we still don't know. 

 

Meanwhile, the CDC is once again changing the protocols for healthcare workers involved in treating Ebola patients, suggesting that past protocols were insufficient. The administration is also scrambling to guarantee that all foreign travelers from the "ground zero" countries are routed to one of five airports designated for additional screenings. That's better, but it is still not enough. 

 

Nobody as of yet has been able to give one valid reason why, in the middle of this crisis, even one person with a visa from those three countries should be permitted to fly on a commercial airliner into the United States. 

 

To repeat, once again, when you don't fully understand a disease as deadly as Ebola, every rule of epidemiology and common sense says you err on the side of safety. The CDC and the Obama Administration have not followed that simple rule. The American people have the good sense to know that our leaders are playing Russian Roulette, but they are aiming a gun at our heads. Let's pray we can keep dodging the bullets. 

 

 

Rubio Steps Up 

 

Florida Senator Marco Rubio announced yesterday that he is introducing legislation in the Senate to ban travel between the United States and the West African nations most ravaged by the Ebola outbreak. Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) is introducing a travel ban in the House. 

 

In a statement, Rubio said, "We must take any and all necessary precautions to contain this virus -- and common sense restrictions on travel from countries now confronting this epidemic is an important step." Polls show that the vast majority of Americans agree.

 

At last count, 73 members of the House and 15 senators have publicly called for a travel ban. 

 

 

Pastors: Send Your Sermons! 

 

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist pastor, is calling on pastors around the country to protest the outrageous subpoenas of sermons by Houston Mayor Annise Parker. But there's a cleaver twist. Here's what Governor Huckabee said on his Fox News show: 

 

"It ought to make you mad that the mayor thinks she can turn in her pastors. And so I got an idea. If she wants a sermon, here is my suggestion. I would like to ask every pastor in America, not only the ones in Houston, to send her your sermons. Obviously she could use a few."

 

 

Kudos to Governor Huckabee for that brilliant idea! 

 

If you are among the many pastors reading our daily report and would like to share your sermons on biblical marriage and human sexuality with Mayor Parker, here's how you can reach her:

 

Mayor Annise D. Parker

City of Houston

901 Bagby Street

Houston, TX 77002

Email: mayor@houstontx.gov

 

 

A new Rasmussen poll finds that 77% of likely voters oppose the prosecution of religious leaders for comments that criticize government policies. That's how totalitarian countries like the former Soviet Union and many Islamic nations behave. It's un-American. But that's how the intolerant left behaves, and it is happening in Houston and Coeur d'Alene and to men and women of faith across the country. 

 

 

Barack's Bad Deal 

 

Yesterday we told you that Barack Obama was prepared to circumvent the Constitution in order to get a deal with Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regarding the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program. Today it seems we know a little more about that deal and why Obama is so eager to make sure the Senate can't weigh in.

 

Reports suggest that the Obama White House has made additional concessions to Tehran and is now willing to let the country keep thousands of centrifuges in operation. Faced with this prospect, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned:

 

"We are standing before the danger of an agreement that will leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, with thousands of centrifuges through which Iran can manufacture the material for a nuclear bomb within a short period of time. This is a threat to the entire world, first and foremost to Israel, and it is much worse than the threat of Islamic State."