[Ebola Alarm Ignored (in 2013), Ma Raineys Swan Song (1928),
Endangered Species Act Too Young to Die (1973), Sinking Ship No Place
for Rats (1958), Is THIS Emergency Response? (2013), Think Before You
Drive (1938), Ho Chi Minhs Popularity (1963)]
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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, DEC 26-JAN 1  
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_ Ebola Alarm Ignored (in 2013), Ma Rainey's Swan Song (1928),
Endangered Species Act Too Young to Die (1973), Sinking Ship No Place
for Rats (1958), Is THIS Emergency Response? (2013), Think Before You
Drive (1938), Ho Chi Minh's Popularity (1963) _

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_EBOLA ALARM IGNORED _

10 YEARS AGO, on December 26, 2013, Ebola broke out in rural Guinea on
the west coast of Africa. The highly contagious and deadly disease
soon spread to Guinea's densely populated capital Conakry. From
Conakry it spread to large cities in nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Unlike all previous Ebola outbreaks, this one took root in several
large, densely populated cities where its spread could not be
contained. The epidemic quickly became the worst Ebola outbreak ever
by far, killing at least 2600 people in Guinea, 4800 in Liberia, and
4000 in Sierra Leone. It also caused a small number of fatalities in
Nigeria, Mali and the U.S.

Early in the outbreak it was apparent that the local medical
infrastructure was utterly lacking in the resources needed to bring it
under control. There was not a single isolation ward in any of the
area's hospitals. In April 2014, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF), which was deeply involved in the fight to stop
the epidemic, asked the World Health Organization to declare an
international medical emergency, an action that would  alert
governments and medical institutions of the urgent need for action.
But for five  months the World Health Organization refused, until
finally doing so in early August, by which time thousands were dead
(10 percent of them healthcare workers) and the economies of Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone were in shambles.
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_MA RAINEY'S SWAN SONG_

95 YEARS AGO, on December 27, 1928, Gertrude Pridgett Rainey, whose
stage name was Ma Rainey, the "Mother of the Blues," made her last
recording. Rainey had been a successful touring musician for more than
two decades before she made her first recording in 1923. Over the next
five years, while she continued to tour, she recorded more than 100
songs, many of which she wrote. A number of Rainey's numbers are now
standards, including See See Rider, which she recorded in 1924 and Ma
Rainey's Black Bottom, which she wrote and recorded in 1927.
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_RIGHT-WING PUTS BULL'S EYE ON THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT_

50 YEARS AGO, on December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the
Endangered Species Act (ESA), the most important U.S. law intended to
identify and protect species that are at risk of extinction. 

The year 1973 was a good one from the point of view of endangered
species, for not only did both houses of Congress vote overwhelmingly
(92-0 in the Senate and 390-12 in the House) in favor of the ESA, but
the Congressional votes came quick on the heels of an international
treaty on the same subject, the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which was signed in Geneva
in March 1973.

By any reasonable measure, both ESA and the endangered species treaty
have both been tremendous successes. Both the law and the treaty only
protect the most seriously threatened species, and the number of the
protected species that have actually gone extinct is minuscule. 

Sadly, the ESA has acquired many Congressional enemies in the last six
years. During the Trump administration, 52 bills were introduced to
weaken the law. More recently, in 2022 and 2023, 28 anti-ESA bills
went into the Congressional hopper. To date, no bill to weaken ESA has
passed and such proposals have little prospect today of ever becoming
law, but a second Trump presidency would almost certainly change their
outlook.
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_A SINKING SHIP IS NO PLACE FOR RATS_

65 YEARS AGO, on December 29, 1958, two days before the corrupt,
brutal, Cuban president Fulgencio Batista was forced to flee the
country (taking with him at least $300 million in loot), Batista
revealed his increasing military desperation by announcing the forced
retirement of two army generals and the commander of the Cuban Navy
Air Force. The Cuban revolutionaries of the 26th of July Movement, led
by Fidel Castro, were two days away from their final victory.
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_IS THIS HOW TO RESPOND TO AN EMERGENCY? _

10 YEARS AGO, on December 30 (in 2013), the New York Committee for
Occupational Safety and Health published a 40-page report titled
"Protecting Worker and Community Health: Are We Prepared for the Next
9/11?" As the report made clear, the answer to the question was "No,
but we are trying to fix that."

Today, 10 years after the NYCOSH report and more than 22 years after
the event that released tons of toxic dust that  caused many
thousands of cases of preventable disease, including numerous
fatalities, among workers and area residents, the government is still
working on it.

"It" is a regulation, called the Emergency Response Standard (ERS),
 that would mandate protection of rescue and clean-up workers in the
event of a significant unplanned release of toxic material. OSHA had
been working on the ERS since 2007.  OSHA now says the draft ERS will
be made public in January 2024. But when, if ever, it will it become a
final, enforceable regulation is anyone's guess.
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_THINK BEFORE YOU DRIVE_

85 YEARS AGO, on December 31, 1938 (New Year's Eve), police in
Indianapolis, Indiana, became the first U.S. law-enforcement agency to
use a machine to identify drunk drivers. The machine was called the
Drunkometer by its inventor, a biochemistry professor at the
University of Indiana.  The Drunkometer, which was eventually
replaced by the Breathalyzer, gave the police a numerical measure of a
driver's level of inebriation.  Previously, police could only
estimate a driver's lack of sobriety with tests like the requirement
to walk in a straight line. In the U.S. today, 37 people die every day
as a result of drunk driving, one every 39 minutes.
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_20 PERCENT APPROVAL RATING: NOT A GOOD SIGN_

60 YEARS AGO, on January 1, 1963, former president Dwight Eisenhower's
memoir, Mandate for Change, was published, including this eye-opening
passage: "I have never talked or corresponded with a person
knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had
elections been held as of the time of the fighting [in 1954], possibly
80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho
Chi Minh as their leader rather than [South Vietnamese] Chief of State
Bao Dai." Was the U.S. government listening? Did it care? At the time
Eisenhower wrote, the U.S. had about 14 thousand military personnel in
Vietnam. Casualties among them had been almost nil. Less than three
years later, the U.S. forces in Vietnam had increased to more than
125,000. It did not end well.
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* U.S. history
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* Ebola
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* Ma Rainey
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* Endangered Species Act
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* Cuban Revolution
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* OSHA
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* Vietnam War
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