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 The United States is woefully unprepared for an Ebola outbreak. If a pandemic were to erupt, the very limited number of hospital labs and isolation units that we currently have would be rapidly overwhelmed. Yes, we may be able to provide “state of the art care” for a handful of people, but if thousands (or millions) of Americans get the virus you can forget about it. Our health industry is already stretched incredibly thin, and we simply do not have the resources to handle a tsunami of high risk Ebola patients. And of course conventional medicine does not have a cure for Ebola anyway. The “experimental drug” that is being used on the two American health professionals with the disease seems to be helping them, but even if it does turn out to be safe and even if it is approved for the general public it will still be a long time before there is ever enough of the drug for everyone. So let us hope that we do not see a full-blown Ebola pandemic in this country. Because if we do, we could potentially see millions of people die.
On Wednesday we learned that the global Ebola death toll has increased to 932. As you can see from this article, cases of Ebola are now spreading at an exponential rate. If you project how many cases we could be looking at in just a few months if Ebola keeps spreading at the same pace, it becomes quite frightening.
And it does appear that Ebola has now spread to more countries. A man in Saudi Arabia that was being tested for Ebola has now died. And a Liberian man has died of the Ebola virus in Morocco.
In the United States, the CDC is refusing to tell the media the locations of the people that have been tested for Ebola in this country. But we do know that the CDC has told Time Magazine that it has received “several dozen calls” regarding “people who are ill after traveling in Africa”.
If you get Ebola, there is a very good chance that you are going to die. The mortality rate during this current outbreak is over 50 percent. It is a killer that is both silent and brutally efficient.
But what makes Ebola so dangerous is that you can be carrying it around for up to three weeks before you ever know that you have it. In fact, one doctor that has been working on the front lines fighting this disease says that Ebola victims can “look quite fit and healthy and can be walking around until shortly before their deaths“.
So the person sitting next to you at work or that you walk past in the supermarket could have the virus.
You just never know.
And there is a lot of misinformation about Ebola out there right now. There are a lot of people claiming that it “does not spread easily” and that you basically have to exchange bodily fluids with someone in order to get it.
Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the truth. As Mike Adams of Natural News has pointed out, the Public Health Agency of Canada says that Ebola “can survive in liquid or dried material for several days“…
Even worse, Ebola is a strong survivor outside a host. Here’s what the Public Health Agency of Canada says:
SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days. Infectivity is found to be stable at room temperature or at 4 C for several days, and indefinitely stable at -70 C. Infectivity can be preserved by lyophilisation.
This clearly states that Ebola viruses can survive for several days on common objects such as door knobs or household surfaces. If an infected Ebola victim runs around touching such common objects after cleaning blood or mucous from his nose, another innocent victim can easily infect himself by touching the same objects and then eating some food that places the virus in his mouth.
And an Ebola study conducted back in 2012 showed that Ebola could be transmitted between pigs and monkeys that did not have physical contact with one another…
When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air.
The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent. The piglets were then placed in a room with four cynomolgus macaques, a species of monkey commonly used in laboratories. The animals were separated by wire cages to prevent direct contact between the species.
Within a few days, the inoculated piglets showed clinical signs of infection indicative of Ebola infection. In pigs, Ebola generally causes respiratory illness and increased temperature. Nine days after infection, all piglets appeared to have recovered from the disease.
Within eight days of exposure, two of the four monkeys showed signs of Ebola infection. Four days later, the remaining two monkeys were sick too. It is possible that the first two monkeys infected the other two, but transmission between non-human primates has never before been observed in a lab setting.
If Ebola truly is “not something that is easily transmitted”, then how in the world have more than 100 health workers been infected so far?
Were they not being careful?
And if you think that our “advanced technology” is going to keep health workers from getting Ebola in this country, you might want to think again.
As Mike Adams pointed out in a different article, we can’t even stop the spread of “superbugs” such as MRSA in our own hospitals…
How can U.S. health authorities claim there is zero risk from Ebola patients being treated in U.S. hospitals when those same hospitals can’t control superbug infections? “Many hospitals are poorly prepared to contain any pathogen. That’s why at least 75,000 people a year die from hospital infections. If hospitals can’t stop common infections like MRSA, C. diff and VRE, they can’t handle Ebola.”
Yes, the United States has a far superior health system when compared to nations such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.
But it does have limitations.
Earlier today, I was reading something supposedly written by someone who works in a hospital laboratory. I wanted to share three quotes that I found particularly sobering…
#1 “Even in the United States, out of all the various hospitals I have worked at, there is no hope of containing anything like this. One of the largest hospitals I worked at only had two reverse flow isolation rooms. TWO, let that sink in for a minute.”
#2 “Patients only show up to the hospital when they go symptomatic. So by the time they get there, they’ve already infected their entire family, their work group, and anyone they got within a few feet of on the way to the hospital. When they get there the ER nurses would treat it either like Flu, or Sepsis. But the whole time the patient is infecting all of them. And all of them, in turn, begin to infect everyone else in the exact same way. If this is as virulent as the WHO thinks it might be, by the time people realize what is going on, there will be more sick people than there would be beds available at every hospital in the US combined.”
#3 “So don’t expect miracles from front line hospital staff, we don’t have the tools, and we certainly do not have the manpower. Ask anyone in the medical field how much overtime they could work if they felt like it, don’t even get me started on how thinly stretched people in the industry are. Though I suppose if this does turn into something, that will become apparent very, very fast.”
There is no way in the world that our medical professionals are going to be able to handle a full-blown Ebola pandemic.
Therefore, if one does break out, you are going to need to be prepared to stay at home as much as possible.
That means that you will need enough food and supplies to last for at least a couple of months, and it could potentially be a lot longer than that.
Just think about it. If Ebola is spreading, you certainly would not want to go to places such as grocery stores that large numbers of people circulate through every day. But if you do not have any food, eventually you would be forced to leave your home. And that decision could end up costing you dearly.
Hopefully this crisis will blow over and we won’t have to worry about any of this. But if Ebola does start sweeping across America, the key will be to isolate yourself and your family as much as you can.
For now, our top officials are making it sound like we have nothing to worry about.
For example, the head of the CDC told CBS News that “we can stop it” and that the spread of the Ebola virus will probably not reach this country…
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he is confident that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa can be stopped and likely won’t reach the U.S.
“The plain fact is, we can stop it. We can stop it from spreading in hospitals and we can stop it in Africa [which] is really the source of the epidemic and where we’re surging our response so that we can control it there,” Tom Frieden said in an interview Sunday.
And Barack Obama says that Ebola is “not something that is easily transmitted” and that everything is under control…
Personally, I am going to file away those quotes for future reference.
Let us hope that they are right.
Let us hope that we don’t have anything to be concerned about.
But with each passing day this Ebola outbreak is getting even worse, and if it continues to grow at an exponential rate it won’t be too long before the entire world is facing an absolutely horrific health crisis.
 Sometimes I think that I sound like a broken record. I am constantly using phrases such as “get prepared while you still can” and “time is running out”. In fact, I use them so often that people are starting to criticize me for it. But the truth is that only a small percentage of people out there are actively taking steps to get ready for what is coming. Most of the country is not prepared at all. In many ways, it is just like 2007 all over again. There were many people that could see what was about to happen and were doing all they could to warn people, but most did not listen. And then the great financial crisis of 2008 struck and millions of people lost their jobs and their homes. Unfortunately, the next great wave of the economic collapse is going to be even more painful than the last one. It is imperative that people get prepared for what is on the horizon, but for the most part it is just not happening.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that we have such short memories and such short attention spans in America today. Thanks to years of television and endless hours on the Internet, I find myself having a really hard time focusing on anything for more than just a few moments. And we are accustomed to living in an “instant society” where we don’t have to wait for anything. In such a society, we are used to “news cycles” that only last for 24 hours and very few people take a “long-term view” of anything.
And another one of the big problems that we are facing is something called “normalcy bias”. The following is how Wikipedia defines it…
The normalcy bias, or normality bias, refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Over the past several years, the U.S. economy has been relatively stable. And that is a good thing. But it has also lulled millions upon millions of people into a false sense of security and complacency. At this point, most Americans consider 2008 to be a temporary bump in the road, and most assume that the U.S. economy will always be strong.
Unfortunately, that is not the truth. As I have written about previously, the long-term trends that are destroying our economy have continued to get worse since 2008, and none of the problems that caused the last financial crisis have been fixed.
We are steamrolling toward the edge of an economic cliff, and most people in our entertainment-addicted society are totally oblivious to what is going on. So they are not doing anything to get ready for the immense economic pain that is coming. The following are 16 signs that most Americans are completely unprepared for the coming economic collapse…
#1 Could you come up with $2000 right now? According to a shocking study that was just released, 40 percent of Americans could not…
Forty percent of individuals in the U.S. said they could not or probably could not come up with $2,000 if an unexpected need arose, according to research by Atif Mian of Princeton University and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
#2 In that same study, Americans were asked the following question…
“Do you have 3 months emergency funds to cover expenses in case of sickness, job loss, economic downturn?”
An astounding 60 percent of people that responded said that they do not.
#3 Another study found that less than one out of every four Americans has enough money stored away to cover six months of expenses.
#4 Some people are actually trying really hard to get ahead, but admittedly that is really tough to do when we are all being taxed into oblivion. In fact, it was reported this week that Americans now spend more on taxes than they spend on food, clothing and housing combined.
#5 Right now, more Americans are dependent on the government than ever before. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that currently gets direct monetary benefits from the federal government.
#6 It is estimated that less than 10 percent of the entire U.S. population owns any gold or silver for investment purposes. That is a stunning number.
#7 It has been estimated that there are approximately 3 million “preppers” in the United States. But that means that almost everyone else is not prepping.
#8-16 The following are nine more statistics that come from a survey conducted by the Adelphi Center for Health Innovation. As you can see, a significant portion of the population is not even prepared for a basic emergency that would last for just a few days…
- 44 percent don’t have first-aid kits
- 48 percent lack emergency supplies
- 53 percent do not have a minimum three-day supply of nonperishable food and water at home
- 55 percent believe local authorities will come to their rescue if disaster strikes
- 52 percent have not designated a family meeting place if they are separated during an emergency
- 42 percent do not know the phone numbers of all of their immediate family members
- 21 percent don’t know if their workplace has an emergency preparedness plan
- 37 percent do not have a list of the drugs they are taking
- 52 percent do not have copies of health insurance documents
What do you think is going to happen to these people once the economy collapses and there is chaos in the streets?
How are they going to survive?
After all of these years of writing about the coming economic collapse, nothing has changed as far as the long-term outlook is concerned.
We are still heading toward a complete and total economic meltdown.
But most Americans continue to have faith in the system, and the mainstream media keeps assuring them that everything is going to be just fine.
And in this “dumbed-down” society of ours, most people are perfectly content to let others do their thinking for them. In America today, only one out of every six Americans can even find Ukraine on a map of the world. That is how far we have fallen.
In this day and age, it is imperative that we all learn how to think for ourselves. The foundations of our society are crumbling, our economic system is failing and the blind are leading the blind. If we do not learn to make our own decisions, we are just going to follow the rest of the herd into oblivion.
In addition, we all need to start taking a long-term view of things. Just because the economic collapse is not going to happen this month does not mean that it is not going to happen. When you step back and take a broader view of what is happening, it becomes exceedingly clear where we are heading.
Sadly, most Americans will never do that.
 The vast majority of Americans are going to be absolutely blindsided by what is coming. They don’t understand how our financial system works, they don’t understand how vulnerable it is, and most of them blindly trust that our leaders know exactly what they are doing and that they will be able to fix our problems. As a result, most Americans are simply not prepared for the massive storm that is heading our way. Most American families are living paycheck to paycheck, most of them are not storing up emergency food and supplies, and only a very small percentage of them are buying gold and silver for investment purposes. They seem to have forgotten what happened back in 2008. When the financial markets crashed, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Because most of them were living on the financial edge, millions of them also lost their homes. Unfortunately, most Americans seem convinced that it will not happen again. Right now we seem to be living in a “hope bubble” and people have become very complacent. For a while there, being a “prepper” was very trendy, but now concern about a coming economic crisis seems to have subsided. What a tragic mistake. As I pointed out yesterday, our entire financial system is a giant Ponzi scheme, and there are already signs that our financial markets are about to implode once again. Those that have not made any preparations for what is coming are going to regret it bitterly. The following are 17 signs that most Americans will be wiped out by the coming economic collapse…
#1 According to a survey that was just released, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. But most Americans are acting as if their jobs will always be there. But the truth is that mass layoffs can occur at any time. In fact, it just happened at one of the largest law firms in New York City.
#2 27 percent of all Americans do not have even a single penny saved up.
#3 46 percent of all Americans have $800 or less saved up.
#4 Less than one out of every four Americans has enough money stored away to cover six months of expenses.
#5 Wages continue to fall even as the cost of living continues to go up. Today, the average income for the bottom 90 percent of all income earners in America is just $31,244. An increasing percentage of American families are just trying to find a way to survive from month to month.
#6 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
#7 Small business is becoming an endangered species in America. In fact, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed at this point. That means that the vast majority of Americans are depending on someone else to provide them with an income. But what is going to happen as those jobs disappear?
#8 In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent.
#9 Today, a higher percentage of Americans are dependent on the government than ever before. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that gets direct monetary benefits from the federal government. So what is going to happen when the government handout gravy train comes to an end?
#10 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#11 It is estimated that less than 10 percent of the U.S. population owns any gold or silver for investment purposes.
#12 It has been estimated that there are approximately 3 million “preppers” in the United States. But that means that almost everyone else is not prepping.
#13 44 percent of all Americans do not have first-aid kits in their homes.
#14 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies stored up.
#15 53 percent of all Americans do not have a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water in their homes.
#16 One survey asked Americans how long they thought they would survive if the electrical grid went down for an extended period of time. Incredibly, 21 percent said that they would survive for less than a week, an additional 28 percent said that they would survive for less than two weeks, and nearly 75 percent said that they would be dead before the two month mark.
#17 According to a survey conducted by the Adelphi University Center for Health Innovation, 55 percent of Americans believe that the government will come to their rescue when disaster strikes.
Just because you are living a comfortable middle class lifestyle today does not mean that it will always be that way.
If you doubt this, take a look at what is going on in Greece. Many formerly middle class parents in Greece have become so impoverished that they are actually dumping their children at orphanages so that they won’t starve…
Scores of children have been put in orphanages and care homes for economic reasons; one charity said 80 of the 100 children in its residential centres were there because their families can no longer provide for them.
Ten percent of Greek children are said to be at risk of hunger. Teachers talk of cancelling PE lessons because children are underfed and of seeing pupils pick through bins for food.
If the U.S. economy crashes and you lose your job, how will you and your family survive?
Will you and your family end up homeless and totally dependent on the government for your survival?
Get prepared while there is still time. If you do not know how to get prepared, my article entitled “25 Things That You Should Do To Get Prepared For The Coming Economic Collapse” has some basic tips, and there are dozens of excellent websites out there that teach people advanced prepping techniques for free.
So there is no excuse. You can trust that Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama have everything under control, but as for me and my family we are going to prepare for the giant economic storm that is coming.
I hope that you will be getting prepared too.
 Just when it seemed like things may be settling down, two very unusual earthquakes have hit the west coast within the past couple of days. A 4.4 magnitude quake struck Berkeley, California just prior to 3 AM on Thursday morning, and a 3.9 magnitude earthquake hit Mount St. Helens in Washington state on Wednesday. Overall, there have been 68 earthquakes in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens since New Year’s Day, and there have been a total of 629 earthquakes in the state of California within the last 30 days. Could it be possible that all of this activity is leading up to a historic seismic disaster on the west coast?
The 4.4 magnitude earthquake along the Hayward fault very early on Thursday jolted people out of bed all over the San Francisco area…
A strong 4.4 magnitude earthquake has rattled the Bay Area shortly before 3 a.m.
USGS is reporting the quake was centered in Berkeley. On KRON4’s real time earthquake map it shows the epicenter.
The quake struck at 2:39 a.m. and was centered near the Claremont hotel. The earthquake had a preliminary depth of 8 miles, according to USGS.
This wasn’t a soft and gentle earthquake that everyone kind of laughs about after it is over.
Rather, this was the kind of extremely intense earthquake that puts the fear of God into people. In fact, one Bay area resident said that it “felt like a truck hit my house”…
“I was actually awake putting my shoes on for work. It felt like a truck hit my house from the back which pushed my against the staircase railing, the walls were cracking and threw my cell phone and keys down the stairs. Pretty scary”
If this was the worst quake in this particular swarm, it won’t ultimately be that big of a deal.
However, USGS Geologist David Schwartz is warning that this 4.4 magnitude earthquake could potentially be “a foreshock of something larger”…
“It is centered on about a five-mile-long section of the Hayward Fault that in the past 10 years has produced 30 earthquakes of magnitude between 3-4,” he told KPIX 5. “So it is a hot spot along the fault and this morning’s earthquake was the largest of that group.”
Schwartz said the real question in the hours after the quake was “is this a foreshock of something larger? That’s the concern.”
I have been writing about the shaking that has been happening on the west coast quite a bit lately, but I don’t think that people understand the seriousness of what we are facing.
Scientists assure us that the “Big One” is coming, and when it does arrive the devastation will be absolutely off the charts. Just consider the words of seismologist Peggy Hellweg…
Speaking to Daily Star Online, seismologist Peggy Hellweg, from the University of California, said the region is not prepared to deal with the fallout from such an earthquake.
She said that a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake could kill “tens of thousands of people”.
In financial terms, such a quake would likely cause “tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage”, she said.
And remember, she is talking about a magnitude 7 earthquake in her scenario.
A magnitude 9 earthquake would be many, many times more powerful, and it would easily be the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of the United States.
Meanwhile, Mount St. Helens was hit with a very unusual 3.9 magnitude earthquake on Thursday, and some believe that this could be a sign that the volcano is “recharging”…
A series of 68 tremors, peaking with a magnitude 3.9 quake, have been detected in Washington state by scientists since New Years day.
The 3.9 quake is the second largest since 1981, the year after the natural disaster which killed 57 people and came minutes after a magnitude-5.1 earthquake.
Last month, seismologists at the University of Washington logged more than 80 quakes, four times as many as the average.
Earthquake swarms at Mount St. Helens are not unusual, but what we have seen over the first four days of 2018 has definitely gotten the attention of seismologists.
They are hoping that things will calm down at the volcano, but one seismologist did warn that “a larger quake could follow within 48 hours”.
We haven’t had a major volcanic eruption in the United States in a very long time, and so there is a lot of complacency out there right now.
But we should remember that the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 was “the deadliest and most economically damaging volcanic event in the history of the United States.” The following comes from Forbes…
Mount St. Helens is most commonly known for its major eruption in 1980, the deadliest and most economically damaging volcanic event in the history of the United States. The stratovolcano is situated just 96 miles from Seattle and 50 miles from Portland, making an eruption especially dangerous.
And Mount St. Helens is certainly not the only threat. Personally, I am so concerned about a potential eruption of Mount Rainier that I even included one in my novel.
With each passing year it appears that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. Many believe that we have entered a time when seismic activity will be much higher than it has been previously, and that is going to have dramatic implications for our society.
Our tech industry is very heavily concentrated along the west coast. When the “Big One” does finally strike, it could literally crash our economy overnight.
What the day arrives, are you ready for what will happen next?
Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
 Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many liberals all over America have suddenly become extremely interested in prepping. Fearing that a Trump presidency could rapidly evolve into a “Trumpocalypse”, a significant number of leftists are now stockpiling food, guns and emergency supplies. In fact, even though many had expected a sharp drop in gun sales following Trump’s victory, what actually happened is that fear of what is coming under Trump pushed background checks for gun sales to an all-time record high on Black Friday. The election of Donald Trump has awakened the left to a degree that we haven’t seen in decades, and some on the left are embracing hardcore survivalism without any apologies.
What is ironic about all of this is that on the other end of the political spectrum interest in prepping is probably the lowest that it has ever been in the history of the modern prepper movement. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about how it was like “a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community“, and nothing has changed since that time.
In fact, since I originally wrote that article we have gotten some hard numbers that show how dramatically optimism about the future has surged among those on the right.
Just before the election, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey found that only 15 percent of all Republicans believed that the economy would improve over the next year, but after the election that number skyrocketed all the way up to 74 percent.
But among Democrats it is a different story altogether. That same CNBC survey found that optimism about the economy on the left fell by more than half after the election. At this point, it is sitting at just 16 percent.
It would be hard to overstate how negatively many on the left feel about Trump. We have seen many of them take to the streets to angrily protest his election, and according to the BBC others have decided to stockpile food and guns “in preparation for social and economic collapse”…
In America, stockpiling weapons and food, in preparation for social and economic collapse, has tended to be the preserve of right-wing libertarians and foes of “big government”. But the Liberal Prepper Facebook group – up to now a small band – reports a big increase in enquiries.
“A lot of people are worried that not only will [a Trump presidency] fail but that it will fail spectacularly to the point that we are going to end up on in one or more critical situations that we are just not prepared for,” says Jeff, 36, one of the group’s members.
So could we see “social and economic collapse” under Trump?
Despite the wild optimism that we are seeing on the right at the moment, without a doubt this is a possibility.
It is funny how a single election can change our perspective on things so dramatically. During the Obama years, it seemed like the left was constantly talking about disarming everyone, but now Trump has sparked a renewed interest in gun ownership among many liberals. Prominent progressive author Ana Marie Cox is just one example…
Witness Ana Marie Cox, a popular progressive writer with gigs at MTV and the New York Times. “So who else has been researching basic disaster prep stuff?” she polled her Twitter audience on Wednesday. “Bc—congrats, right wingers—I do not trust the government to help anymore!” Her next tweet extended the holiday merriment to our nation’s Second Amendment enthusiasts: “Getting my rifle out of storage this week.”
And did you know that leftists even have their own gun organization?
It is known as “the Liberal Gun Club”, and since Trump’s victory it has experienced a huge surge in membership…
Lara Smith, national spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, says her organization has seen a “huge” rise in enquiries since November’s election and a 10% increase in paid members.
US gun sales hit record levels in October amid fears a Hillary Clinton election victory would lead to draconian gun control measures.
The election of Donald Trump, who was backed by the National Rifle Association early on, was thought to bring an end to panic buying. Shares in gun manufacturers even dropped by as much as 18% following his victory.
Instead, FBI background checks for gun transactions soared to a new record for a single day – 185,713 – during the Black Friday sales on 25 November, according to gun control news site The Trace.
Many on the right have responded to Donald Trump’s election victory by deciding that the battle is over and that it is time to go to sleep. But many on the left have been suddenly awakened and are now preparing for extremely challenging times ahead.
I hate to say this, but in this case those on the left that are busily preparing are showing much more wisdom than many on the right that have chosen to abandon prepping altogether at this point.
Of course most of those on the left don’t really understand the storm that is approaching. All they know is that Trump is “really bad” and therefore they need to try to get through the next four years the best that they can. Here is more from the BBC…
“We are not looking for end of the world Mad Max-type scenarios, we are not looking at a zombie apocalypse,” says the author of a left wing survivalist blog, who also reports a surge in interest since Trump’s victory.
He says it is “fairly easy to predict” an economic collapse under Trump but adds: “No matter what, the country is still going to be here in four years, there’s going to be another election.”
I would have to agree that a major economic downturn is quite likely in the very near future. We have been on the greatest debt binge in history during the Obama years, and it is inevitable that this bubble will burst.
Donald Trump basically has two choices. He could try to prolong this debt bubble for as long as possible, but that would make the ultimate outcome even worse. Or he could try to deal with the crisis right away, but that would mean an extraordinary amount of pain for all of us.
No matter who won the election, we were going to have to deal with the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions sooner or later.
Let us certainly hope for the best, but without a doubt those that are preparing for challenging times ahead are showing incredible wisdom, and this includes both liberals and conservatives.
 As bad as the month of January was for the global economy, the truth is that the rest of 2016 promises to be much worse. Layoffs are increasing at a pace that we haven’t seen since the last recession, major retailers are shutting down hundreds of locations, corporate profit margins are plunging, global trade is slowing down dramatically, and several major European banks are in the process of completely imploding. I am about to share some numbers with you that are truly eye-popping. Each one by itself would be reason for concern, but when you put all of the pieces together it creates a picture that is hard to deny. The global economy is in crisis, and this is going to have very serious implications for the financial markets moving forward. U.S. stocks just had their worst January in seven years, and if I am right much worse is still yet to come this year. The following are 22 signs that the global economic turmoil that we have seen so far in 2016 is just the beginning…
1. The number of job cuts in the United States skyrocketed 218 percent during the month of January according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
2. The Baltic Dry Index just hit yet another brand new all-time record low. As I write this article, it is sitting at 303.
3. U.S. factory orders have now dropped for 14 months in a row.
4. In the U.S., the Restaurant Performance Index just fell to the lowest level that we have seen since 2008.
5. In January, orders for class 8 trucks (the big trucks that you see shipping stuff around the country on our highways) declined a whopping 48 percent from a year ago.
6. Rail traffic is also slowing down substantially. In Colorado, there are hundreds of train engines that are just sitting on the tracks with nothing to do.
7. Corporate profit margins peaked during the third quarter of 2014 and have been declining steadily since then. This usually happens when we are heading into a recession.
8. A series of extremely disappointing corporate quarterly reports is sending stock after stock plummeting. Here is a summary from Zero Hedge of a few examples that we have just witnessed…
- SHARES OF LIONS GATE ENTERTAINMENT FALL 5 PCT IN EXTENDED TRADE AFTER QUARTERLY RESULTS – RTRS
- TABLEAU SOFTWARE SHARES TUMBLE 40 PCT IN AFTER HOURS TRADING – RTRS
- YRC WORLDWIDE SHARES DOWN 16.4 PCT AFTER THE BALL FOLLOWING RESULTS – RTRS
- SPLUNK INC SHARES DOWN 7.6 PCT IN AFTER HOURS TRADING – RTRS
- LINKEDIN SHARES EXTEND DECLINE, DOWN 24 PCT AFTER RESULTS, GUIDANCE – RTRS
- HANESBRANDS SHARES FURTHER ADD TO LOSSES IN EXTENDED TRADE, LAST DOWN 14.9 PCT – RTRS
- OUTERWALL SHARES FALL 11 PCT IN EXTENDED TRADING AFTER QUARTERLY RESULTS – RTRS
- GENWORTH SHARES DOWN 16.5 PCT AFTER THE BELL FOLLOWING RESULTS, RESTRUCTURING PLAN
9. Junk bonds continue to crash on Wall Street. On Monday, JNK was down to 32.60 and HYG was down to 77.99.
10. On Thursday, a major British news source publicly named five large European banks that are considered to be in very serious danger…
Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Santander, Barclays and RBS are among the stocks that are falling sharply sending shockwaves through the financial world, according to former hedge fund manager and ex Goldman Sachs employee Raoul Pal.
11. Deutsche Bank is the biggest bank in Germany and it has more exposure to derivatives than any other bank in the world. Unfortunately, Deutsche Bank credit default swaps are now telling us that there is deep turmoil at the bank and that a complete implosion may be imminent.
12. Last week, we learned that Deutsche Bank had lost a staggering 6.8 billion euros in 2015. If you will recall, I warned about massive problems at Deutsche Bank all the way back in September. The most important bank in Germany is exceedingly troubled, and it could end up being for the EU what Lehman Brothers was for the United States.
13. Credit Suisse just announced that it will be eliminating 4,000 jobs.
14. Royal Dutch Shell has announced that it is going to be eliminating 10,000 jobs.
15. Caterpillar has announced that it will be closing 5 plants and getting rid of 670 workers.
16. Yahoo has announced that it is going to be getting rid of 15 percent of its total workforce.
17. Johnson & Johnson has announced that it is slashing its workforce by 3,000 jobs.
18. Sprint just laid off 8 percent of its workforce and GoPro is letting go 7 percent of its workers.
19. All over America, retail stores are shutting down at a staggering pace. The following list comes from one of my previous articles…
-Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, including 154 inside the United States.
-K-Mart is closing down more than two dozen stores over the next several months.
-J.C. Penney will be permanently shutting down 47 more stores after closing a total of 40 stores in 2015.
-Macy’s has decided that it needs to shutter 36 stores and lay off approximately 2,500 employees.
-The Gap is in the process of closing 175 stores in North America.
-Aeropostale is in the process of closing 84 stores all across America.
-Finish Line has announced that 150 stores will be shutting down over the next few years.
-Sears has shut down about 600 stores over the past year or so, but sales at the stores that remain open continue to fall precipitously.
20. According to the New York Times, the Chinese economy is facing a mountain of bad loans that “could exceed $5 trillion“.
21. Japan has implemented a negative interest rate program in a desperate attempt to try to get banks to make more loans.
22. The global economy desperately needs the price of oil to go back up, but Morgan Stanley says that we will not see $80 oil again until 2018.
It is not difficult to see where the numbers are trending.
Last week, I told my wife that I thought that Marco Rubio was going to do better than expected in Iowa.
How did I come to that conclusion?
It was simply based on how his poll numbers were trending.
And when you look at where global economic numbers are trending, they tell us that 2016 is going to be a year that is going to get progressively worse as it goes along.
So many of the exact same things that we saw happen in 2008 are happening again right now, and you would have to be blind not to see it.
Hopefully I am wrong about what is coming in our immediate future, because millions upon millions of Americans are not prepared for what is ahead, and most of them are going to get absolutely blindsided by the coming crisis.
 Have you noticed that things have gotten eerily quiet in the month of October? After the chaos of late August and early September, many had anticipated that we would be dealing with a full-blown financial collapse by now, but instead we have entered a period of “dead calm” in which things have become exceedingly quiet in almost every way that you can possibly imagine. Other “watchmen” that I highly respect have made the exact same observation. Even though the economic numbers are screaming that we have entered a global recession, they aren’t really make any headline news. A whole host of major financial institutions around the planet are currently in danger of collapsing and creating the next “Lehman Brothers moment”, but none of them has imploded just yet. And of course Barack Obama seems bound and determined to start World War III. On Monday, it was announced that he is sending a guided missile destroyer into Chinese waters in the South China Sea. The Chinese have already stated that they might just start shooting if this happens, but Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care. But until the shooting actually begins, that is not likely to upset the current tranquility that we are enjoying either.
To me, what we are experiencing at the moment would best be described as “the calm before the storm”. If you are not familiar with this concept, this is how it is defined by How Stuff Works…
Have you ever spent an afternoon in the backyard, maybe grilling or enjoying a game of croquet, when suddenly you notice that everything goes quiet? The air seems still and calm — even the birds stop singing and quickly return to their nests.
After a few minutes, you feel a change in the air, and suddenly a line of clouds ominously appears on the horizon — clouds with a look that tells you they aren’t fooling around. You quickly dash in the house and narrowly miss the first fat raindrops that fall right before the downpour. At this moment, you might stop and ask yourself, “Why was it so calm and peaceful right before the storm hit?”
Like so many others, I believe that a great storm is coming, and yet right at this moment things seem so peaceful.
Unfortunately, this period of peace and quiet is not going to last for long, and most Americans know deep down that something is seriously wrong with our nation. In fact, a new WND/Clout poll has found that 85.3 percent of all likely voters in the United States believe that our country is going in the wrong direction…
The poll found 92.6 percent of those who identified themselves as conservative believe the nation is on the wrong track. Among those who call themselves liberal, 90.9 percent said it is going the wrong direction.
When asked what they think of the American economy after seven years of Obama’s leadership and economic policies, nearly 80 percent described it as “very fragile” or “somewhat fragile.”
Self-identified Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives were in general agreement, with about 75 percent to 80 percent describing the economy as “somewhat fragile” or “very fragile.”
But even though we are steamrolling in the wrong direction, we haven’t suffered any incredibly serious consequences for it yet.
For the moment, this is allowing the mockers to have a field day. They are fully confident that Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve knew what they were doing after all, and they are gleefully taunting those of us that have been warning of the great disaster that is heading our way.
However, those that are wise are getting prepared.
I think that we could all learn some lessons from what Overstock.com Chairman Jonathan Johnson is doing. The following is an extended excerpt from a recent Zero Hedge article…
*****
One week ago Johnson, who is also candidate for Utah governor, spoke at the United Precious Metals Association, or UPMA, which we first profiled a month ago, and which takes advantage of Utah’s special status allowing the it to use gold as legal tender, offering gold and silver-backed accounts. As a reminder, the UPMA takes Federal Reserve Notes (or paper dollars) which it then translates into golden dollars (or silver). The golden dollars are based off the $50 one ounce gold coins produced by the Treasury of The United States. They are legal tender under the law and are protected as such.
What did Johnson tell the UPMA? Here are some choice quotes:
We are not big fans of Wall Street and we don’t trust them. We foresaw the financial crisis, we fought against the financial crisis that happened in 2008; we don’t trust the banks still and we foresee that with QE3, and QE4 and QE n that at some point there is going to be another significant financial crisis.
So what do we do as a business so that we would be prepared when that happens. One thing that we do that is fairly unique: we have about $10 million in gold, mostly the small button-sized coins, that we keep outside of the banking system. We expect that when there is a financial crisis there will be a banking holiday. I don’t know if it will be 2 days, or 2 weeks, or 2 months. We have $10 million in gold and silver in denominations small enough that we can use for payroll. We want to be able to keep our employees paid, safe and our site up and running during a financial crisis.
We also happen to have three months of food supply for every employee that we can live on.
*****
Why would such a seemingly intelligent and successful CEO of a large Internet company do such things?
It is because he can see the writing on the wall.
This period of calm will not last. A great storm is coming, and when it does arrive those that have not prepared for it are going to suffer tremendously.
Most people have no idea just how fragile our system really is. Today, some of these “too big to fail” banks supposedly have trillions of dollars in assets, but if you want to withdraw $10,000 or more in cash you have got to give them 24 hours notice to get enough money…
This is just the beginning. As anyone can tell you, it’s all but impossible to move large amounts of money into cash in the US. Even the large banks will routinely ask you for 24 hours notice if you need $10,000 or more in cash. These are banks will TRILLIONS of dollars worth of assets on their books.
And with each passing day we see even more signs of the global economic slowdown that is emerging all around us. For example, we just learned that the China Containerized Freight Index has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded. China accounts for more global trade than anyone else, and so this is a very clear sign that global economic activity is slowing down dramatically…
By early July, the index dropped below 800 for the first time in its history, which started in 1998 when the index was set at 1,000. It soon recovered to about 850. And just when bouts of hope were rising that the worst was over, it plunged again and hit even lower levels.
The latest weekly reading dropped another 1.7% from the prior week to 752.21, the worst level ever. The CCFI is now 30% below where it had been in February this year and 25% below where it had been 17 years ago at its inception.
But for those that don’t want to believe that hard times are on the way, they can take comfort in the eerie period of calm that we are experiencing right now.
What they don’t realize is that this truly is “the calm before the storm”, and the global economic crisis that is ahead of us is going to be far beyond what most people ever dared to imagine was possible.
 I am not afraid of an economic collapse. Coming from someone that runs “The Economic Collapse Blog”, I am sure that sounds like a very odd statement. But it is true. I have no fear of economic collapse, even though I am fully convinced that the hardest times that any of us have ever experienced are ahead. I spend countless numbers of hours in front of my computer immersed in deeply disturbing information, and yet I sleep more soundly at night than I ever have before. In fact, my wife and I seek to live in a constant state of “shalom”, which is the Hebrew word for peace. So how is this possible? How can “the economic collapse guy” not be absolutely overwhelmed by fear, depression and paranoia?
Unlike so many that write about these things, I believe that preparation for what is ahead goes far beyond the physical. So I am constantly stressing the need for mental, emotional and especially spiritual preparation. Personally, I have absolutely no idea how atheists are going to make it through what is coming. They don’t understand why they are here, they don’t understand why history is unfolding the way that it is, and they have absolutely no hope for the future beyond this life. If you greatly fear death and you can’t stand to lose the possessions that you have accumulated, the years ahead are going to be exceedingly difficult for you.
My relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ gives my life meaning and purpose. He took the broken pieces of my life and turned them into a beautiful thing, and He can do the same for you.
I also strongly advocate physical preparation for the hard years that are coming. My wife and I work very hard to store up food and supplies. The funny thing is that there are Christians out there that actually accuse me of being “anti-faith” for doing these things. Apparently they believe that we should all just sit around watching television while we wait for God to do everything for us.
But that isn’t how it works. In the Bible, we see that exercising faith almost always involves action. Noah, Joseph and others acted in faith based on the warnings that they had received, and they were commended for it.
Are we acting on the warnings that we have received? For much more on this subject, please see my previous article entitled “Is It “Anti-Faith” To Prepare For The Coming Economic Collapse?”
Knowledge and preparation help to eliminate fear. If you understand what is happening, and you know why it is happening, and you have prepared for what is happening, it makes the challenges that are ahead of you easier to tackle.
When you were in school, who got the most freaked out by quizzes and tests?
It was those that were not prepared for them of course.
In the years ahead, a lot of people are going to be jumping off of buildings, jumping in front of trains, etc. Others will plunge into a dark hole of depression and despair that they will never come back from.
The vast majority of those people will have never listened to the warnings and will have done nothing to get prepared.
Those that accuse me and others like me of “spreading fear” have got it completely backwards.
We are not “spreading fear” at all. We are spreading hope. There is hope in understanding what is happening and there is hope in getting prepared.
The preparations that are being made right now all over the nation are going to save countless numbers of lives. Those that are mocking preppers and that are telling everyone that everything is going to be just fine are going to deeply regret doing so someday.
Although I will admit that sometimes preppers are prone to a “bunker mentality”, and that is not the right approach.
Now is not the time to dig a hole and try to hide from the world.
You were born for such a time as this. It is when times are the darkest that the greatest heroes are needed. Personally, my wife and I believe that the greatest move of God the world has ever seen is coming, and we very much want to be part of it.
Yes, the years ahead are going to be extremely challenging. In fact, I don’t think that any of us can truly grasp the horror that is coming because we don’t really have any frame of reference for it.
It is kind of like trying to explain to someone that was blind from birth what a tree looks like. You can spend hours describing the tree, but unless you have some sort of frame of reference, the understanding simply is not going to be there.
Sometimes I try to sit down and write about what is ahead of us, but I find that words fail me. For example, I recently did a piece entitled “The Last Days Of Normal Life In America” that was very popular, but the truth is that it was woefully inadequate because I don’t really have a good frame of reference for what we are about to face. I don’t know that too many people out there actually do.
As “watchmen on the wall”, those of us that are trying to warn this nation are just trying to do the best that we can with what we have.
And we aren’t just sitting behind our computers “cursing the darkness” either.
A few of my fellow “watchmen” have joined with me to try to do something special. Nathan Leal, Benjamin Baruch, Lyn Leahz and I have organized a nationwide call to prayer and repentance on the weekend of September 18th to September 20th. It is going to be held at the Sandpoint Events Center in Sandpoint, Idaho, and we already know of people coming in from nine different states and Canada for this event.
In addition, similar gatherings are being organized all around the nation, and thousands that cannot attend an event in person are going to be able to participate by watching the livestream on Lyn Leahz’s 69,000 subscriber YouTube channel.
In the end, there is a limit to what each one of us can do individually, but if we work together we can collectively make a great difference.
Now is not a time for fear. Perfect love casts out fear. This is a time for the Remnant to rise up and to spread a message of hope even in the midst of all the chaos and darkness that is coming.
Yes, the times ahead are going to be more chaotic that any of us could probably imagine right now. But let us reject all fear, depression and despair, and let us endeavor to become people of great faith, great hope and great love.
 If you were about to take a final exam, would you have more hope or more fear if you didn’t understand any of the questions and you had not prepared for the test at all? I think that virtually all of us have had dreams where we show up for an exam that we have not studied for. Those dreams can be pretty terrifying. And of course if you were ever in such a situation in real life, you probably did very, very poorly on that test. The reason I have brought up this hypothetical is to make a point. My point is that there is hope in understanding what is ahead of us, and there is hope in getting prepared. Since I started The Economic Collapse Blog back in 2009, there have always been a few people that have accused me of spreading fear. That frustrates me, because what I am actually doing is the exact opposite of that. When a hurricane is approaching, is it “spreading fear” to tell people to board up their windows? Of course not. In fact, you just might save someone’s life. Or if you were walking down the street one day and you saw someone that wasn’t looking and was about to step out into the road in front of a bus, what would the rational thing to do be? Anyone that has any sense of compassion would yell out and warn that other person to stay back. Yes, that other individual may be startled for a moment, but in the end you will be thanked warmly for saving that person from major injury or worse. Well, as a nation we are about to be slammed by the hardest times that any of us have ever experienced. If we care about those around us, we should be sounding the alarm.
Since 2009, I have published 1,211 articles on the coming economic collapse on my website. Some people assume that I must be filled with worry, bitterness and fear because I am constantly dealing with such deeply disturbing issues.
But that is not the case at all.
There is nothing that I lose sleep over, and I don’t spend my time worrying about anything. Yes, my analysis of the global financial system has completely convinced me that an absolutely horrific economic collapse is in our future. But understanding what is happening helps me to calmly make plans for the years ahead, and working hard to prepare for what is coming gives me hope that my family and I will be able to weather the storm.
I do not believe in living my life in a state of fear, and I do not want anything that I write to ever cause fear in my readers. The ancient Hebrew greeting “Shalom” is roughly translated as “peace” or “completeness”, and that is what we are constantly pursuing in my household. My wife and I know that incredibly challenging times are coming, but we also know who we are, what our purpose is, and where we are headed. We also believe that the greatest chapters of our lives are ahead even in the midst of all the chaos that is coming.
When times are the darkest, that is when light is needed the most. Just think about it. When you look back over history, what heroes do you admire the most? If you truly think about it, almost all of those heroes arose during times of great adversity and conflict.
The years ahead can be a time of great adventure for you, or they can seem like hell on Earth. It all depends on how you respond to your circumstances.
Do you want to know who is going to respond to the years ahead with fear, panic and depression?
The millions of people that have absolutely no idea what is coming and have made absolutely no preparations are going to be absolutely blindsided by the coming economic collapse. Just like the 1930s, we are going to see people jumping out of windows and jumping in front of trains. Others will sink into a state of despair so deep that nobody will ever be able to shake them out of it.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Over the past five years I have spent thousands of hours studying the coming economic collapse. In my articles you can find tens of thousands of facts and statistics that prove that the U.S. economy is hurtling toward oblivion.
It is not always the most pleasant thing to write about, but it is the truth. And that is what matters. If you believe that I am wrong, prove it to me. I work very hard to put out the most accurate information that I possibly can. So if you can prove that I am wrong, I will change my mind.
But of course that is not going to happen. As I have stated previously, anyone with half a brain should be able to see that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in human history. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that the “too big to fail” banks are being extraordinarily reckless (derivatives, etc.). Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that our formerly great manufacturing cities are being transformed into crime-infested hellholes. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that the middle class is dying. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that the exact same patterns that led up to the great financial crisis of 2008 are happening again. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that we simply cannot consume far more wealth than we produce as a nation indefinitely. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that the incredibly foolish decisions that our politicians have been making for decades have placed us on a road to utter disaster.
So it doesn’t take anyone special to do what I am doing. I am just a “watchman on the wall” sounding the alarm the best that I can. And there are lots of others that are doing the same thing. We are deeply concerned about where this nation is heading, and we have been pleading with our leaders to do something about it for a long time but they have not listened to us.
Since our leaders just continue doing “business as usual”, there is not going to be a solution to our problems on the national level.
So that is why I am encouraging people to get prepared for the hard times that are coming on a family level and a community level.
Unfortunately, it seems like some people always have an excuse for not getting prepared. In fact, a few have even gone so far as to accuse me of being “anti-faith” for suggesting that people actually get off their couches and do something to help their families deal with the nightmare on the horizon. They seem to have the attitude that we should all just sit back and wait for God to do everything for us.
So I am not quite sure why those people get up in the morning and go to work, since they should just “trust God” to deposit paychecks into their banks. And I am not quite sure why they ever fill up the tanks of their vehicles with gasoline, because they should be able to “trust God” to put more gas there when they need it.
I covered all of this in much more detail in my previous article entitled “Is It ‘Anti-Faith’ To Prepare For The Coming Economic Collapse?”
For now, let me just state that what those people are suggesting is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. Trusting God is not about sitting back and doing nothing. In the Scriptures, we are told that faith is about stepping out and taking action on what God has revealed to us. That includes working hard, being wise and providing for our families. For example, just check out Proverbs 6:6-11…
Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise. Which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.
How long will you sleep, O sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep— so will your poverty come upon you like a stalker, and your need as an armed man.
In the end, each one of us needs to make the decisions that we feel are best for our own families.
So that is why it is so incredibly important not to let someone else do your thinking for you.
In America today, the average person watches 153 hours of television a month. In addition to that, we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet.
What most Americans don’t realize is that there are just six giant corporations that control almost all of that content, and that makes them immensely powerful.
These giant media corporations are constantly manipulating our attitudes, opinions and beliefs. And at this point most Americans seem quite content to remain “plugged into the matrix” and to allow corrupt corporate executives somewhere to do their thinking for them.
I urge you to break free from that system.
Do your own research and do your own thinking.
Don’t take what I say or what anyone else says as truth without critically examining it yourself. This can be difficult at first, because in this nation our young people are no longer trained to think critically. Instead, we are trained to just blindly accept whatever information the system feeds us.
George Orwell once said that “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act“.
That perfectly describes the era that we are currently living in.
The truth does not bring fear and despair.
Rather, the truth brings hope and it sets people free.
Share the truth with as many people as you can, because we live in a world that desperately needs it.
 Why does Barack Obama refuse to take even the most basic steps to protect Americans from Ebola? Even though it has already been demonstrated that Ebola can be brought over to the United States by a passenger on an airplane, Obama refuses to do anything that would even restrict air travel from nations where Ebola is spiraling out of control. Back in September, Obama said that it was “unlikely” that any individual with Ebola could get through the “extensive screening” at our airports and pose a threat to the general population. But he was wrong. That has already happened. And yet the official White House position is that there is “no consideration of a travel ban” at this point. What possible explanation is there for such gross negligence?
All of this talk about “extensive screening” at our airports is just a smokescreen because it does not exist. As Mike Adams of Natural News has pointed out, Thomas Eric Duncan walked freely through our airports and entered the general population without ever being asked by U.S. security personnel about where he was from or if he had any health conditions…
Ebola “patient zero” Thomas Eric Duncan flew right into the United States and walked through the international airports of both Washington D.C. and Dallas-Fort Worth. He was never asked about his country of origin and was never screened for any health conditions.
Why are people whose flights originate in Liberia and Sierra Leone still allowed to openly travel to large U.S. cities?
And nothing changed even after news broke of a confirmed case of Ebola in Dallas. Just consider the following excerpt from a CNN news story that I included in a previous article…
CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen said when she and two colleagues recently returned from reporting in Liberia, they got a mixed bag of responses from Customs and Border Protection officers.
“We all said we were journalists who had just been in Liberia covering Ebola,” Cohen said. “One of my colleagues was told, ‘Oh, OK, welcome back home, sir’ — and (was) just let in — that was it.”
Cohen herself got a different response.
“I was told, ‘Wait a minute, I think I got an email about this,’ and the border patrol officer went and consulted with his colleagues,” Cohen said.
That officer later told her she should check her system for 21 days.
“I said, ‘What should I be checking?’ And he wasn’t sure,” Cohen said.
Barack Obama is either lying or he is being grossly negligent when he says that we don’t need to be concerned about air travel from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone because of how good the screening at our airports is.
When it comes to his primary fundamental duty, he is completely dropping the ball. The following is from a recent Fox News opinion piece…
The fundamental duty of the nation’s chief executive is to protect its citizens. Under Article II of the Constitution, he is duty-bound to respond to threats and to conduct the country’s foreign affairs. When a crisis presents itself, the president has nearly unfettered power and discretion to act. This includes protecting the health and safety of Americans. Does stopping the deadly spread of Ebola constitute such a crisis?
At this point, a whole host of lawmakers are calling for Obama to restrict air travel from West Africa.
And a petition on Whitehouse.gov to ban all incoming and outgoing flights has more than 10,000 signatures so far.
But the White House is not moving.
In fact, Press Secretary Josh Earnest says that there is “no consideration of a travel ban”…
There’s no consideration of a travel ban at this point. But I can tell you that there is — well, let me explain. There are a couple of good reasons for that. The first is there is in place a very sophisticated, multilayered screening system in place to ensure that the traveling public is safe.
Those screening protocols begins at the point of departure; that in West Africa and these counties, under the supervision of international personnel, there are screening protocols in place to ensure that those individuals who are already exhibiting symptoms of Ebola don’t board aircraft. This includes everything from a visual examination of passengers as they’re preparing to board aircraft, to giving them questionnaires that they have to fill out. In other cases, it even involves taking the temperature of passengers before they board aircraft. So there is screening protocol in place even before individuals enter the transportation system.
As with so many other things, it is hard to tell whether the Obama administration is lying, is being completely incompetent or is pursuing some sort of insidious agenda that we are now aware of yet.
Sadly, the CDC is actually backing Obama up on this. Just check out what the head of the CDC said about a potential travel ban last week…
Barring all incoming flights from Ebola-hit countries in West Africa might seem like the best way to prevent an outbreak of the virus in the United States, but doing so would actually hurt efforts to curb the outbreak in the long run, Tom Frieden, M.D., MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said today (Oct. 2).
“If we take actions that seem like they may work, they may be the kind of solution to a complex problem that is quick, simple and wrong,” said Frieden in a press conference. “The approach of isolating a country is that it’s going to make it harder to get help into that country.”
Of course medical personnel that are fighting this disease should be allowed to fly in and out of those countries.
But why can’t we ban all non-essential personnel from flying back and forth?
Meanwhile, the Obama administration also continues to be negligent in guarding our southern border.
We know that people from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone cross our border with Mexico illegally. In fact, hundreds of such individuals from those countries were caught by border patrol agents during fiscal year 2013…
Government figures indicate that 112 individuals were interdicted illegally crossing into the United States from Guinea, 231 from Liberia, and another 145 from Sierra Leone, the three Ebola hot spots. The period of these apprehensions was one in which we had a larger Border Patrol presence on the actual border than we do now.
And those are just the ones that we were able to apprehend.
The truth is that most of the people that cross our borders illegally we do not catch.
If Obama and his minions continue to refuse to take even the most basic steps to protect us, it is inevitable that more people with extremely deadly diseases such as Ebola will enter this country and circulate among the general population.
If our health system was ready to handle such diseases, that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. In fact, one recent survey found that most nurses in the United States do not believe that their hospitals are ready to handle patients with Ebola…
A survey by National Nurses United of some 400 nurses in more than 200 hospitals in 25 states found that more than half (60 percent) said their hospital is not prepared to handle patients with Ebola, and more than 80 percent said their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.
Another 30 percent said their hospital has insufficient supplies of eye protection and fluid-resistant gowns.
This Ebola outbreak has the potential to become the greatest health crisis that any of us have ever seen.
But Obama absolutely refuses to take even the most basic steps to keep us safe from this disease.
Why won’t Obama do something?
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It Is Becoming Clear – We Are NOT Prepared For An Ebola Pandemic
On Wednesday we learned that the global Ebola death toll has increased to 932. As you can see from this article, cases of Ebola are now spreading at an exponential rate. If you project how many cases we could be looking at in just a few months if Ebola keeps spreading at the same pace, it becomes quite frightening.
And it does appear that Ebola has now spread to more countries. A man in Saudi Arabia that was being tested for Ebola has now died. And a Liberian man has died of the Ebola virus in Morocco.
In the United States, the CDC is refusing to tell the media the locations of the people that have been tested for Ebola in this country. But we do know that the CDC has told Time Magazine that it has received “several dozen calls” regarding “people who are ill after traveling in Africa”.
If you get Ebola, there is a very good chance that you are going to die. The mortality rate during this current outbreak is over 50 percent. It is a killer that is both silent and brutally efficient.
But what makes Ebola so dangerous is that you can be carrying it around for up to three weeks before you ever know that you have it. In fact, one doctor that has been working on the front lines fighting this disease says that Ebola victims can “look quite fit and healthy and can be walking around until shortly before their deaths“.
So the person sitting next to you at work or that you walk past in the supermarket could have the virus.
You just never know.
And there is a lot of misinformation about Ebola out there right now. There are a lot of people claiming that it “does not spread easily” and that you basically have to exchange bodily fluids with someone in order to get it.
Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the truth. As Mike Adams of Natural News has pointed out, the Public Health Agency of Canada says that Ebola “can survive in liquid or dried material for several days“…
And an Ebola study conducted back in 2012 showed that Ebola could be transmitted between pigs and monkeys that did not have physical contact with one another…
If Ebola truly is “not something that is easily transmitted”, then how in the world have more than 100 health workers been infected so far?
Were they not being careful?
And if you think that our “advanced technology” is going to keep health workers from getting Ebola in this country, you might want to think again.
As Mike Adams pointed out in a different article, we can’t even stop the spread of “superbugs” such as MRSA in our own hospitals…
Yes, the United States has a far superior health system when compared to nations such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.
But it does have limitations.
Earlier today, I was reading something supposedly written by someone who works in a hospital laboratory. I wanted to share three quotes that I found particularly sobering…
#1 “Even in the United States, out of all the various hospitals I have worked at, there is no hope of containing anything like this. One of the largest hospitals I worked at only had two reverse flow isolation rooms. TWO, let that sink in for a minute.”
#2 “Patients only show up to the hospital when they go symptomatic. So by the time they get there, they’ve already infected their entire family, their work group, and anyone they got within a few feet of on the way to the hospital. When they get there the ER nurses would treat it either like Flu, or Sepsis. But the whole time the patient is infecting all of them. And all of them, in turn, begin to infect everyone else in the exact same way. If this is as virulent as the WHO thinks it might be, by the time people realize what is going on, there will be more sick people than there would be beds available at every hospital in the US combined.”
#3 “So don’t expect miracles from front line hospital staff, we don’t have the tools, and we certainly do not have the manpower. Ask anyone in the medical field how much overtime they could work if they felt like it, don’t even get me started on how thinly stretched people in the industry are. Though I suppose if this does turn into something, that will become apparent very, very fast.”
There is no way in the world that our medical professionals are going to be able to handle a full-blown Ebola pandemic.
Therefore, if one does break out, you are going to need to be prepared to stay at home as much as possible.
That means that you will need enough food and supplies to last for at least a couple of months, and it could potentially be a lot longer than that.
Just think about it. If Ebola is spreading, you certainly would not want to go to places such as grocery stores that large numbers of people circulate through every day. But if you do not have any food, eventually you would be forced to leave your home. And that decision could end up costing you dearly.
Hopefully this crisis will blow over and we won’t have to worry about any of this. But if Ebola does start sweeping across America, the key will be to isolate yourself and your family as much as you can.
For now, our top officials are making it sound like we have nothing to worry about.
For example, the head of the CDC told CBS News that “we can stop it” and that the spread of the Ebola virus will probably not reach this country…
And Barack Obama says that Ebola is “not something that is easily transmitted” and that everything is under control…
Personally, I am going to file away those quotes for future reference.
Let us hope that they are right.
Let us hope that we don’t have anything to be concerned about.
But with each passing day this Ebola outbreak is getting even worse, and if it continues to grow at an exponential rate it won’t be too long before the entire world is facing an absolutely horrific health crisis.