Like any of the other nasty microorganisms that call the jungles home, there's no financial or humanitarian justification to dump resources into a virus prior to it having developed a plausible threat..
There's no justification for a national ad campaign for a drug the likes of "Eloquis" either. The drug companies are creating replacements for perfectly serviceable, effective, mainstream, low cost drugs, such as the blood thinner/ anti coagulant, "Warfarin", which is damned old common rat poison. I've taken it for 22 years, and I haven't had any of the issues the commercials for Warfarin substitutes ascribe to it. It's now a $9.00 a month script at Walmart, and I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess what the uninsured cost of "Eloquis" or its ilk would be.
Not to mention the fact that I couldn't use "Eloquis" anyway, since I have a toy heart valve. To summarize, the new drug is likely 20 times more expensive, and has less applications.
As far as vaccines go, the new, heavily advertised shingles vaccine, is about $200.00 a dose.
And before I forget, look at all the R&D money that must have gone into developing a drug for, "restless leg syndrome". Money well spent, I'd say!
"Flesh eating bacteria", have been a peripheral news item for more than decade. There's no "humanitarian interest", or even reasonably prudent foresight where the major drug companies are concerned. Big pharma has no vested interest, other than lining its pockets at both the people's and the government's expense.
With that being said, I live in a neighborhood chock full of illegal aliens from Sub-Saharan Africa. They're mostly an unpleasant lot. To the upside, they really haven't mastered fire yet, and wind up burning themselves out of their current squat, with an ill placed kerosene heater or two.
They should all breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not running the INS, ICE, the navy or the air force. The first thing I'd do, is carpet bomb all their airport runways, and put up a naval blockade around the African sub continent.
As far as open border types, they should show us how its done, by heading away from the US border, Again, if I had my way, I'd strike the inscription from the Statue of Liberty, and replace it with a "no trespassing" sign.
Take a typical Latin American country run by mostly drug cartels. First, they undermine the American economy by siphoning billions of dollars out of it for illegal drugs. Then, the children who are, "in fear of their lives because of the drug gangs", illegally emigrate here, to siphon more money out of the US economy by virtue of social entitlements. I'm not completely convinced these children are not bred to this end. First we get hooked on the drugs, then we feel sorry for the children and keep them. That's really an edgy brand of, shoot yourself in the foot kind of stupidity, on the part of the American public. But remember, "we're number one"....
Not to mention via Ebola and other diseases like it,the illegals now have the individual, personal potential, for being, "a weapon of mass destruction".
To keep this on topic, "and that, boys and girls", is why the US government can no longer afford a space program.
