–Will we learn the economic lessons of Ebola?

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
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Mitchell’s laws:
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which ultimately leads to civil disorder.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the gap.
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Humans are notorious for not taking precautions against adverse eventualities, but reacting only to adverse actualities. Governments especially are prone to this malady.

Consider Ebola:

Wikipedia: The disease has a high death rate: possibly up to 90%. It typically occurs in outbreaks in tropical regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1976, when it was first identified, and 2012, fewer than 1,000 people a year have been infected. The disease was first identified in the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Four decades had passed, and nothing was done about a disease with a 90% death rate. So long as it was confined to Africa, there was no consideration of the possibility that eventually it could migrate here.

Now it has migrated, and suddenly, “unexpectedly,” Ebola has become a problem — and the problem is magnified by our lack of foresight.

Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts: NIH Director
Posted: 10/12/2014 9:30 pm EDT

BETHESDA, Md. — As the federal government frantically works to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and as it responds to a second diagnosis of the disease at home, one of the country’s top health officials says a vaccine likely would have already been discovered were it not for budget cuts.

Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has “slowed down” research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.

“NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It’s not like we suddenly woke up and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here. Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”

Money, or rather the lack of it, is a big part of the problem. NIH’s purchasing power is down 23 percent from what it was a decade ago, and its budget has remained almost static.

In fiscal year 2004, the agency’s budget was $28.03 billion. In FY 2013, it was $29.31 billion — barely a change, even before adjusting for inflation. The situation is even more pronounced at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a subdivision of NIH, where the budget has fallen from $4.30 billion in FY 2004 to $4.25 billion in FY 2013.

Several Democratic lawmakers have in fact introduced legislation that would increase NIH funds to $46.2 billion in 2021. But there is no indication that such a bill will move forward any time soon.

World health suffers from a combination of inherent human inertia plus politicians who have been bribed by the rich to cut federal spending (The purpose: To widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.)

Although the Tea Party and Republicans are most at fault, some greedy Democrats have joined the “cut-the-budget” brigade. There even is a blog that refers to the federal government pejoratively as “the leviathan,” in a cynical effort to portray it as a malevolent monster.

Consider the possibilities if the rich had not decided to limit federal spending:

‘Extraordinary’ race for Ebola vaccine
By Mick Krever, CNN, updated 7:54 AM EDT, Wed October 8, 2014

“This is, frankly, extraordinary,” Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University said. “We are trying to do in a few months something that might typically take 10 years. We’ve had accelerated reviews of all our applications, regulatory and ethical approvals, and so on.”

“And we’re now trying to proceed so quickly that if things go well, by the end of the year, this vaccine might actually be being used in the three affected countries in West Africa.”

He said that the vaccine has been shown to be “really quite remarkably protective” in studies on monkeys at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S.

Given sufficient funding, disease prevention and cures can be accelerated. If we have the will (and the dollars), we find a way.

Will the budget cutters continue to disseminate the Big Lie, that the federal government is running short of dollars? Will they continue falsely to claim that federal spending will cause hyperinflation?

How much evidence will be necessary before the public understands the motive of the budget cutters: To widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.

There is yet another lesson Ebola teaches us. It concerns the habitual carelessness of our healthcare system.

HAI Prevalence Survey

The CDC healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevalence surveyExternal Web Site Icon provides an updated national estimate of the overall problem of HAIs in U.S. hospitals.

Based on a large sample of U.S. acute care hospitals, the survey found that on any given day, about 1 in 25 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection.

There were an estimated 722,000 HAIs in U.S acute care hospitals in 2011. About 75,000 hospital patients with HAIs died during their hospitalizations. More than half of all HAIs occurred outside of the intensive care unit.

Estimates of Healthcare-Associated Infections Occurring in Acute Care Hospitals in the United States, 2011

Major Site of Infection Estimated No.
–Pneumonia 157,500
–Gastrointestinal Illness 123,100
–Urinary Tract Infections 93,300
–Primary Bloodstream Infections 71,900
–Surgical site infections from any inpatient surgery 157,500
–Other types of infections 118,500

Estimated total number of infections in hospitals 721,800

This massive infection rate is carelessness. This is lack of concern, lack of systems, lack of supervision, lack of responsibility by our health care providers.

The nurse, Nina Pham, took basic precautions while treating Ebola-stricken Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan at a Dallas hospital. Now she is the first person to have contracted the deadly virus in the United States.
There are few details that are known about what might have gone wrong.

On Monday, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, told reporters that it’s still unknown how the infection occurred, only that a “breach in protocol” for treating a patient happened.

What doctors wear to treat Ebola patients Nurse: CDC Ebola guidelines ‘not enough’ Nurse’s friend: She’s very devoted CDC: We have to rethink Ebola protocols.

Frieden said state and federal health officials are re-examining those protocols, including the removal of protective gear after contact with an Ebola patient and if it might be helpful to spray virus-killing solution on workers as they leave an isolation unit. He said Monday that the nurse is “clinically stable.”

Despite more than 700 thousand hospital-caused infections per year, the medical establishment was smug and satisfied. Ebola is much less communicable than many other infections, but now that health care providers are at risk, the smugness is gone. Now, they must “re-examine protocols.”

More than 700 thousand infections every year didn’t cause a re-examination of protocols. Those infections were “only” to patients. Perhaps now, one sick nurse will scare the community into taking hospital infection rates seriously.

And those are the questions:
Will the lessons of Ebola be learned by the budget cutters?
Will the lessons be learned by the health care community?

Does anyone care?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Ten Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

The Ten Steps will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
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10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY