As America screens travellers form Africa for Ebola
By John Nwokocha
with Agency report
The Chinese economy has been declared as the world’s number one economy in terms of purchasing power. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) while making this disclosure Wednesday in its latest Outlook added that the Chinese economy has overtaken the United States of America’s. The IMF measures economic strength by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in both market exchange rates and average purchasing power, the latter being where China has overtaken the U.S. with a GDP of $17.6 trillion by the end of 2014 — 16.4 percent of the world’s purchasing power.
Purchasing power parity calculates Gross Domestic Product using exchange rates that adjust for price differences of the same goods between nations.
China Gross Domestic Product is worth $17.6 trillion, while U.S. GDP is $17.4 trillion, with adjustments made for China’s low cost of living, according to the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook.
The U.S. will close out the year with a purchasing-power adjusted GDP of $17.4 trillion, or 16.2 percent of the world’s total. The U.S. still maintains its dominance in raw terms not adjusted for purchasing power by $6.5 trillion.
Meanwhile, the US Federal health officials yesterday, said it will require temperature checks for the first time at five major American airports for people arriving from the three West African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus. However, health experts said the measures were more likely to calm a worried public than to prevent many people with Ebola from entering the country.
The temperature check requirements were announced hours after the first Ebola patient to have the illness diagnosed in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian, died in a Dallas hospital, intensifying questions about whether he might have survived had he been admitted to a hospital when he first sought care there in late September.
This measure is reportedly the first large-scale attempt to improve security at American ports of entry since the virus arrived on American soil last month. Public health officials had initially resisted the move, saying such checks would be an unnecessary use of thinly stretched resources. But pressure for tougher action mounted. Republicans sharply criticized President Obama for what they called a lax response. Many, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, have suggested looking at air travel restrictions from West Africa, something the administration has rejected.
The president’s Republican critics were largely silent Wednesday after Mr. Duncan died and the administration announced the airport screenings. It was unclear if the Republicans saw the temperature checks as a sufficient response to the epidemic or if they did not want to be perceived as seeking political gain from Mr. Duncan’s death.
“We are a global village,” said Howard Markel, a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan. “Germs have always traveled. The problem now is they can travel with the speed of a jet plane.”
The new requirement of temperature checks has broad implications for health departments across the country.
In a conference call with state and local officials Wednesday afternoon, Obama expressed confidence in the procedures already in place to prevent the spread of Ebola, but urged them to be vigilant in the days and weeks ahead.
“As we saw in Dallas, we don’t have a lot of margin for error,” Obama told the group, according to a transcript released by the White House. “If we don’t follow protocols and procedures that are put in place, then we’re putting folks in our communities at risk.”
