Today the Centers for Disease Control admitted that the second Dallas health-care worker who was found to have the Ebola virus should not have boarded a commercial jet, particularly because she had a fever of 99.5 degrees when she boarded the flight. The CDC said it wanted to speak to the passengers who were on her flights.
At this moment, you may recall that August 29, President Obama assured us, “our experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low.”
Or you may remember CDC director Tom Frieden pledging, “We will stop it in its tracks.”
This is a familiar pattern of statements and behavior from this administration, but with much higher consequences. We’re always being assured that the situation isn’t as bad as it looked.
August 9: “Because Israel is so capable militarily, I don’t worry about Israel’s survival.”
In May, “Our ability to mobilize international opinion rapidly has changed the balance and the equation in Ukraine.”
In January, he scoffed, that ISIS is the “JV squad.”
Back in September 24, 2012, he assured us that Benghazi terror attack was a “bump in the road.”
June 8, 2012, the private sector is “doing fine.”
People who already have health insurance “don’t have to worry.”
High gas prices and increases in the unemployment rate are, similarly, just “bumps in the road.”
Sometimes the assurances use the same trite terms . . .
“The system worked,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after the attempted bombing of a flight over Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.
“The system worked,” said Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health after the first nurse tested positive for Ebola.