No More Foreign Rabid Dogs

The dog lovers are upset because:

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a temporary suspension effective July 14 on dog imports from 113 countries considered at high risk for dog rabies.

Many are war-torn countries from which U.S. rescue organizations transport the dogs to homes in the United States.

Despite already strict requirements on dog imports including proof of rabies vaccination, four rabid dogs have been imported to the United States from high risk countries since 2015.

I had no idea that the USA imports dogs from other countries.

If there is one thing we do not need, it is more dogs. As it is, we have 80 million dogs, and up to a million get euthanized in shelters every year.

You cannot get away from the dogs. It used to be that dogs were not allowed in restaurants and other such places. Except that blind people were allowed seeing-eye dogs.

Now, "service dogs" are everywhere. They are not even well-trained, like seeing-eye dogs. Now that the restaurants have opened up again, they are filled with service dogs running around with no leash. I presume that the excuse is that the owner has an anxiety disorder and is comforted by the dog, or some such nonsense. If a dog nipping at your ankles causes you anxiety while you try to sit down for a relaxing meal, tough luck, because we have to make allowances for the handicapped.

The dog lovers are probably going to say that this is a large country, and can accommodate a lot more dogs. There are probably also refugee dogs, where someone advocates that a dog might suffer in its home country. They will also say that only a very small percentage of the dogs are rapid, just as they say that only a small percentage of the Moslems are terrorists. Libertarians will say that dogs should have freedom of travel.

No matter. We have no need for more dogs. We have ten times too many already.

The NY Times reports on the Blue Origin launch, and adds:

“The solar system can easily support a trillion humans,” Mr. Bezos said. “If we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources and solar power.”

This is lunacy. It is like saying that if we could import more dogs, we would have more Lassies.