WHY WE HAD TO HAVE AN EBOLA CZAR: The CDC’s Dr. Talk Good.

His tenure was marked by a series of health crusades aimed at so-called “lifestyle diseases” based on dubious evidence.

Frieden is now perhaps the most visible example of the transformation of the field of public health—for better or for worse. Until recently, that arena owed a great debt to the English epidemiologist John Snow, who correctly deduced that the London cholera epidemic of 1854 was caused by contaminated water from the Broad Street pump. Shutting down the pump not only stemmed the tide of the epidemic, but also convinced public officials to undertake construction of sewage and clean-water systems that would effectively end the spread of water-borne epidemics. Encouraged by a series of discoveries of the germ basis of many devastating diseases, researchers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made other rapid advancements in public health, including the development of vaccines against some of humanity’s deadliest diseases and techniques such as the pasteurization of milk to stem bacterial contaminations. Through these advances, industrialized nations like the United States have completely eliminated such once-deadly diseases as smallpox, diphtheria, and polio, vastly cutting childhood mortality rates and increasing lifespans.

But as the impact of communicable diseases has lessened, public-health medicine—which concerns itself with community-wide solutions to health problems—began to look more intensely at treating and preventing conditions that don’t originate with germs. The focus of researchers and doctors turned especially to conditions thought to underlie cardiovascular disease. But unlike battles against germs, isolating the key cause of such problems has proved elusive, because multiple factors—from genetics to diet to personal habits, like smoking—are all potentially contribute.

Advocates like Frieden have plunged ahead anyway, sometimes proposing simplistic solutions to complex problems, often without much data to back up their claims.

It’s mostly about power.

UPDATE: From the comments:

We need to tell the CDC – “If it ain’t about germs, it ain’t your concern”.

They need to get their nose out of everyone else’s business.

Heh.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: National-Social Security.

If you weren’t already ready to emigrate or join a militia, consider this: The same U.S. government that was willing to take to time to lean on conservative activist groups as to the content of their prayers has paid millions of dollars in Social Security benefits to Nazis. Not, “Oh, I hate George W. Bush, he’s such a Nazi”–type Nazis, but real-life war criminals from the National Socialist German Workers Party. As Joe Biden wouldn’t say — Nazis, literally.

Do read the full AP report for how this came to pass. It is shocking, and it is shameful.

But it is utterly predictable. When it comes to government, income is sacred: Short them five bucks on your 1040EZ and they will seize your assets and, if they can find an excuse, put you in prison. Inflows matter, outflows not so much, because writing checks with other people’s money is easy and cheap, which is why we taxpayers have been funding comfortable European retirements for Auschwitz guards and SS troopers. . . . The worst part of the AP’s report is this: The Justice Department used Social Security benefits as an inducement to get Nazis to leave the country, because the same government that specifies the required font size for OSHA posters in the break rooms at insurance offices in Omaha cannot be bothered to prosecute Nazis residing in the United States.

The state is not your friend.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

PERSONALLY, I FAVOR CULTURAL IMPERIALISM. AND FOR IMMIGRANTS, DISPLAYS OF CULTURAL SUBMISSION. “When we import Islamic immigrants, we are importing a wide range of mores. The veil is acceptable, but to many, troubling. You might think that clitoridectomy is obviously beyond the pale, but no.”

“AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT,” LIKE SO MUCH ELSE, IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE. I thought only “yes” means yes: Did Obama get true, verbalized consent from that woman before he kissed her? No. He did not. Plus, a case study in the privilege of the powerful male lording it over the lower-class male:

Obama orders her to kiss him: “You’re gonna kiss me. Give him something to talk about. Now, he’s really jealous.” As you see in the video, he makes that declarative statement and immediately grabs her and kisses and hugs her.

Why is that acceptable? He’s using her in an effort to regain dignity and to humiliate the man who humiliated him. It might all be dismissed as play humiliation and play counter-humiliation. But the woman’s body was used as an object of that play, a means of communication between men.

Must be part of that war on women I’ve been hearing about.

IF YOU SUPPORT BROAD ABORTION RIGHTS, you probably don’t want to suggest that America should become “more European.”

LET’S HOPE THESE ARE FALSE ALARMS: Officials: 2 patients being monitored at Chicago hospitals for Ebola-like symptoms.

Related: Liberian Passenger With Ebola Symptoms Arrives In Newark Liberty – Moved To University Hospital Newark. Since “Ebola symptoms” and “flu symptoms” are basically the same, maybe it’s nothing. But good to be careful.

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TRIFECTA: Voter Suppression via Obama: Democrats Flee Former Political Prodigy.

SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL ABOUT BODILY FLUIDS, I GUESS: Monica Lewinsky: I was “patient zero” in Internet bullying.

SCIENCE: A Pill Could Help Alcoholics, and Let Them Drink in Moderation.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Why I Visit Prostitutes. “I was an engineer in Silicon Valley entering the first dot-com boom, and the odds of finding love were long. Santa Clara County was known for having the highest ratio of single men to single women in the country. And let’s face it, tech workers are not the most socially adept.”

WHY WOULD ANY MAN VOTE DEMOCRAT? “First, ask what have the last two Democratic administrations done for boys, men and fathers?”

IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, YOU’LL CHEER THIS DEVELOPMENT: In Tennessee, Time Comes for a Nuclear Plant Four Decades in the Making. Naturally, environmentalists oppose it. But since I’m in a position to benefit from its reliable electricity, I’m happy.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Cheerleader coach accused of having improper relations with student.

YEAH, YEAH, FEWER YOUNG PEOPLE ARE DRIVING. But isn’t that in part because, in the Obama Economy, they don’t have jobs?

SPYING: Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records.

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NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 Simple Exercises That Undo the Damage of Sitting. These are good, especially the Table Pigeons. But . . . and you knew this was coming . . . squats and deadlifts are the single best thing to undo sitting-related damage to your back.

THE ONE THEY GAVE ME TO TEST-DRIVE DIDN’T HAVE THIS CAPABILITY, BUT IT WAS STILL COOL: Watch an Audi RS7 Drive Itself Around a Track at 150 MPH—with Nobody Inside.

EBOLA: Duncan “Atrios” Black is exactly right: “The virus itself is a minor problem, but the inability of institutions to respond is not.” It’s possible that Ebola will become a major problem, but the broad and deep institutional incompetence it has revealed is already a major problem.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Woman Gets Trapped in Man’s Chimney After Six Online Dates. “It’s a classic tale of boy-meets-girl, girl-tries-to-break-into-boy’s-house-through-the-chimney. Firefighters came to the aid of Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, 28, after she became lodged in the flue at the Thousand Oaks, Calif., home of a man she said she met online. . . . ‘She seemed totally cool until the first flag was her actually being on my roof two weeks ago,’ Lawrence told KTLA.”

AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION UPDATE: ASA policy reversal delegitimizes BDS, but does not reverse past discrimination. “If the ASA’s original action was important for popularizing such boycotts (at least in the narrow quarters of area studies), its reversal is equally important for showing them to be beyond the pale. It will be extremely hard for other academic groups to now put a good face on adopting a boycott that the ASA has done so much to distance itself from. This is underscored by the ASA’s dodgy and frantic triangulation about its boycott policy. . . . While having the revolutionary vanguard of the boycott movement disclaiming such efforts is welcome, their rewriting history to claim the boycott never happened is less so.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Cornell Deer Sterilization Fiasco: “you can’t make this stuff up.”

THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY responds to Cathy Young. “We appreciate Ms. Young’s contributions to the public debate on these questions. But based on feedback from Federalist Society student chapter members who had invited her because they were eager to hear her point of view, at the present time we are opting to recommend other individuals (who share Young’s basic perspective) to debate and speak about these issues.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: “God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Of course we were a much more devout nation when (Otto von) Bismarck made that observation.”