Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
A musical tribute to Pete Seeger, the legendary folk singer and liberal who died last year, will be presented next Thursday, 23 October, in Kalispell. by the Flathead Democratic Women. Bill Rossiter, Dave Streeter, and others will perform. Time: 1900–2100 MDT. Place: Glacier Art Academy, 29 3rd ST E, Kalispell. “Kids are free” (no age limit specified), but adults will be asked for a five-dollar donation. Republicans, etc., are welcome. Pete’s music transcends politics.
Ryan Zinke raised a ton of cash the last quarter, but Democrats say most of it went to his fundraisers. Greg Strandberg has a good summmary at Big Sky Words. I just downloaded the data for Zinke and Lewis, and will analyze the numbers this weekend, but the most important information is how much cash the candidates had on hand on 30 September, the end of the reporting period. Zinke had $491k, Lewis $261k. They’re spending it fast on those 30-second television spots that I consider a bane of politics and disservice to the nation.
St. Patricks Hospital in Missoula has just one bed for Ebola patients, Rachel Maddow reported last night. With more staff, it could have three. There are ten beds in the infectious disease unit in Omaha, NB, but only three are available for Ebola patients, who generate a tremendous amount of dangerous waste. At Omaha, that waste is sterilized in a big autoclave, then incinerated. The autoclave is the bottleneck. Maddow reported there are three Ebola beds at Emory in Atlanta, and just two at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
The NIH studies infectious diseases at its Hamilton lab in the Bitterroot Valley. The Center for Disease Control is in Atlanta, close to Emory. I’m not sure what’s in Omaha, but I suspect it’s another facility where a bad bug could get loose. These four infectious disease units appear placed to treat victims of laboratory accidents, and probably never were expected to be needed for an outbreak of Ebola and other deadly microbes in the general population. In some ways, their existence is eerily reminiscent of Michael Crichton’s science fiction classic, The Andromeda Strain.
If a question on Ebola is asked at the 19 October Lewis-Zinke-Wheeler debate in Kalispell, I hope none treats it as a political issue and all treat it as a public health issue. What happened in Dallas was a reminder that controlling this pathogen requires humility, the willingness to learn from mistakes and from others. Believing that our health care system is the best in the world — hubris — leads to believing we can learn nothing from others, not even from the best in the world at dealing with Ebola, Médecins Sans Frontières. Well, that flight of fancy ended with the wax on our wings melting and our being brought back to earth in a southern exposure first hard landing. But we’re learning. On 19 October, we’ll see how much our politicians have learned.