It's a start, anyway. We now have accepted the principle that a Center or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would exist under a Committee of Safety or an Objectivistic constitution. Rand never once spoke about it. Neither has the Ayn Rand Institute or any of its subsidiaries.

We can hope such a center would stick to hard, objective (pun intended) science, and not manipulate results for the benefit of those trying to sell a solution for artificial acquired immunity that would carry a greater risk of harm to the persons (in the aggregate) embracing that solution than the disease itself might present. Rand did say this: one must not equate the potential with the actual, nor especially sacrifice the actual to the potential. That suggests the concept called "herd immunity" would be anathema to her and would find no place in any planning she would sanction.

In case anyone here hasn't heard: many today advocate for abandoning artificial acquired immunity and using diet and other means to strengthen the in-born special (meaning "of a species") immunity of human beings, and facilitating natural acquired immunity. That generally means risking exposure to the disease itself and strengthening one's natural constitution to help one go through a bout of the disease with significantly less morbidity or threat of mortality.

You mentioned AIDS up-thread. I presume you were speaking of Gaetan Dugas, whom the popular media generally accept as having been that Patient Zero who brought AIDS to North America. See Shilts R, "And the Band Played On," and other such chronicles. According to these, Dugas abused his position as an airline flight attendant to find persons to be intimate with, and almost cheerfully dared authorities to arrest him (and presumably dared his government-run airline employer to fire him). The airline culture (that is, flight attendants, flight officers, and anyone else connected with commercial aviation) have a phrase for such behavior: "the jet job." The usual context for that phrase "jet job" is adultery and blackmail. Here it means Dugas stands accused of using fornication to wage biological warfare on the customers of the airline for which he worked, and the public at large.

All of which means that some institution like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have its place under either a Committee of Safety or an Objectivistic constitution. Again, here we have a question that Rand never treated--nor, if their search engine behaved correctly, did the Ayn Rand Institute. The comments I see in this thread are the first such treatment, by students of Objectivism at any level, I have ever seen.

Abaco
As a CBRN/BIDS NCO, I think I'll choose to disagree. MRSA is not a virus, it is a contact born pathogen, a vector of itself. Hospitals that have trouble with it have bad/inadequate staffing problems, and inadequate environmental health & safety protocols in place.
Ebola, with the exception of several novels and B Movies, is not weaponized, that is a micron sized aerosol, it requires infected fluid transfer, and in our temperate climate, with normal supportive care would only replicate if fluid is transferred.
Assuming an untraced carrier patient 0, a maximum infectivity of 5 to perhaps thirty might occur. and DHS would lock the country down tight, let me assure you that they can, within two or three hours of Patient 0 going missing. That would be a worse case scenario and morbidity would probably be around 10 to 15 percent of the total infected.
RNA- viruses like Ebola mutate as they replicate and they lose their ability to replicate after the second or third mutation.

I would think that a 'Gulch' or the state run along Objectivist lines would either be peopled by Objectivists or those that have accepted the reasoning and principles of Objectivism. Any rational person would not want to cause the death of others and would therefor accept and participate with epidemiology for deadly diseases such as ebola.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. Here's the problem: choryza ("a cold") is one thing. Influenza is another. T.B. and leprosy are at yet another level. At what level does or should the law say, "Stay home or we will put you under house arrest"?

Would the conscious development of such a germ as an explicit weapon, constitute casus belli just for making it and having it?

Could you imagine any scenario in which a wild-type infectious agent, if endemic in any nation-state, constitutes casus belli against that nation-state? (That is to say, just how virulent would the agent have to be?)

Now let's get this down. You're saying any infection, with potential morbidity and mortality above a certain level (to be defined by law?), constitutes a weapon, and the "bearer" of said weapon must be "disarmed."

hear, hear!

Thank you sfdi. Major hospitals deal with diseases that are more infectious than Ebola. To take an extreme example: There are an average of 7 cases of Plague every year in the US, so about every other year one case of those would be the pneumonic form - much more contagious than Ebola. As sfdi has noted, there are known ways of handling these epidemic diseases. A disease that spreads through contact with 'body fluids or blood' (as opposed to spreading by someone 'breathing on you') is not difficult to contain by comparison. Ebola is endemic in Africa because there are animal reservoirs there - such reservoirs do not exist in the US.

The healthcare that a patient receives in the US is going to be considerably better than what he would get in most parts of Africa. In a case where supportive therapy is the only tool you have, this is going to have a major influence on the outcome. _I_ would certainly prefer to be taken care of in the US if I had Ebola!

If the possibility exists for creating a vaccine, we should do so. If the FDA is inclined to be cooperative and we can leverage public opinion for the developer of the vaccine to have a lower cost of research with respect to the approval mechanism, then this is also good. (Getting the FDA to approve a new drug can cost millions of dollars - this is part of the 'surface tension' that drug companies have to consider when deciding to develop a new drug or vaccine.)

I have never had to suit up in a biohazard suit, but I have had to draw blood from isolation patients under circumstances short of that. If I had the proper biohazard equipment, I would not hesitate to work with an Ebola patient. You have to take the right precautions (SOP's!) and know what is going on (thinking).

Jan

Definition
Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a severe infection. It can have a mortality rate of up to 90%. The infection can occur in humans and animals.
Causes
Ebola hemorrhagic fever is caused by the Ebola virus. The virus can pass from person to person through blood or other bodily secretions. When these fluids come in contact with skin or mucus membranes the virus can pass and cause the infection. The virus can also pass through contaminated needles.

There will never be another "dark age." America would be the most significant and innovative country in the last few centuries. We have shared our knowledge with everyone and anyone who wanted it. The loss of America on this planet would be a blip in time..a fond recollection of prosperity in the gradual stagnation of future events.

The Ebola virus or something like it has the potential to bring down civilization and create a new Dark Age.

At this point I'd say no one is stand against him except the American people (and they are lawful enough to be held in check- for now- by the legal process they still cherish)

Think about what Saul Alinsky would recommend to his followers, using this "opportunity?"
Now that is a frighting thought.

Let's say (hypothetically) POTUS is facilitating wholesale illegal immagration, and (again, hypothetically) one of the illegals brings Ebola to California and it wipes out 40% of the US population. Isn't disease one of the reasons we control immigration? Will the press hold him accountable?

Sensible - if it was a standalone issue. A degree of separation between the infected and 320M people would be wise. A hospital ship. a remote facility on an island.

Political correctness at it most dangerous, no?

America (and the west in general) has "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome." It worships sickness; it's bent on its own destruction, embraces each new infection and enemy with open arms. We're doomed!

The only relatively healthy European country is oddly enough, Russia; though they have their problems too...

I adore Dr. Savage's monologues... especially when he uses the words (will try to capture intonation) SENNNNNNNNNNsitive and CAAAAAARing, etc. That tickles me to no end. Self-inflicted sickness and suicide on a national level becomes humorous for a moment...

It's due to the poison "flower power" of the 1960's coming to full bloom...