the cholera epidemic

Cholera is one of those diseases that is very easily treated. Accordingly, when the first signs of a cholera epidemic was seen in Haiti in 2010 just after the devastating earthquake, it would have been a very simple matter to isolate and stamp out the epidemic before it had an opportunity to spread to hundreds of thousands of people.

In fact, more than one million people in Haiti have been infected with cholera, and more than 10,000 have died from the disease. The mortality rate of 1%  is true of cholera in general, but modern Western cities all have protected water systems that prevent epidemics such as cholera. Thus, one wonders why one million people were infected with a disease as easily treatable and as easily preventable as cholera.

Health authorities contend that a few United Nations peace keepers from Nepal were responsible for bringing the disease to Haiti during the response to the earthquake. But it is difficult to believe that the faulty sanitation practices of a few aid workers could cause the infection of more than one million people and the death of ten thousand people with a disease such as cholera.

The New York Times reported that in 2012 the death rate from cholera in Haiti was forty people (40) weekly. In 2015, that rate was still astronomically high at approximately three dozen (36) deaths a month. The forty-nine (49) people killed in a one-time mass shooting in Orlando last June pales in comparison with the daily cholera deaths in Haiti.

There is no doubt in the minds of reasonable people that Haiti, a country with a population of approximately ten million people, is a victim of biological warfare, otherwise referred to as germ warfare. The tepid response to this deadly military assault in our backyard is in sharp contrast to the administration's response to presumed threats to Israel, a small country with a population of approximately eight million people, and no evidence of any planned direct military threat to the country.

​The administration is considering a substantial increase in military aid to Israel, above and beyond the thirty billion ($30,000,000,000) dollars in military aid that Israel already receives, as well as substantial economic and other aid. Reportedly, Israel receives the largest percentage of U.S. aid of any country.

​Perhaps it is time for the administration to begin to distribute military aid as well as economic and other aid in proportion to actual and established need. In regard to military aid, the consideration should be military threat, accompanied by proof of need, such as the number of deaths directly related to warfare of any kind.