In the constant stream of articles that wash over us from an ever-expanding number of publications, a few stand out. One of them is an article published this morning by The Wall Street Journal. The subject was the increasing tendency for schools to bring in the police for incidents that most of us over 30 or certainly 40 would think of as things schools handle with detention or suspension or one of the other tools we associate with school discipline.
As Republican Govs sign up for Obamacare’s medicaid expansion, there’s a new line: medicaid expansion isn’t Obamacare.
South Carolina Republican doubles down on his attack on “Gremlins” – his word for gay men. “What we have is, I made a comment that same-sex couples that want to destroy traditional marriage and our way of life, they’re gremlins. They’re these creatures that are so destructive.”
Yesterday two students from Rwanda were held out of school in New Jersey because of misplaced fears they could be carrying ebola. Ebola-free Rwanda is in East Africa, more than 2,000 miles from the nearest Ebola-infected country. But, you know. Africa!
Today Rwanda began Ebola screening all visitors to the country who have been to the US in the previous 22 days. There’s no evidence to suggest the move was in retaliation. Just karma.
That far-right prepper who’s been at large in the Poconos after killing a state trooper on September 12th has been sighted again.
True, Hong Kong has a separate political system from the mainland. But a special moment when the region’s leader says they can’t allow the public to vote on who should lead Hong Kong because poor people wouldn’t totally dominate the election.
At the state level, Republicans increasingly see the handwriting on the wall on the dread Obamacare: it’s not going anywhere.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich on repeal. “That’s not gonna happen. The opposition to it was really either political or ideological. I don’t think that holds water against real flesh and blood, and real improvements in people’s lives.”
Let me circle back on what I wrote about on Sunday: good news on Ebola.
As predicted, virtually all the Texas quarantines and monitorings of possible exposed people ended yesterday – including for the family members of the late Thomas Eric Duncan, who had closest contact with him just before he was hospitalized on September 28th. This is not only good news for the people involved. In particular, it shows that we may be on the receding end of the current scare. And more generally it tends to confirm what we know about Ebola: that prior to its end stage, it is not that easy to contract. And because of that, outbreaks can be contained.
Also notable is that we are at 13 days since Duncan died. The quarantine period for Ebola is 21 days. But symptoms appear for most victims after 8-10 days. That suggests it is increasingly unlikely that more health care workers will come down with Ebola from exposure to Duncan, though we won’t know that for sure until the middle of next week.
As the epidemiologists have warned from the start, we’re not really safe here as long as the epidemic is raging out of control in West Africa. But here, the news is good.
I’d be very surprised to see Allison Lundergan Grimes unseat Mitch McConnell next month. National observers have largely written her off after national Democrats decided to refocus dollars on other campaigns. And her fairly comical explanations for why she wouldn’t say whether she voted for Barack Obama certainly didn’t help. But it’s hard to write her off entirely when we keep getting polls showing her only one point behind like this one.
NBC Medical correspondent in hot water after using the little known “take out food” loophole to step out on their Ebola quarantine.