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Watching the Congressional Hearing on Ebola right now. Opening statements from agency heads are very interesting. Highly recommended if you want to be informed

Watching the Congressional Hearing on Ebola right now. Opening statements from agency heads are very interesting. Highly recommended if you want to be informed. I am sure it will derail a bit once the politicians start talking. Just read between the lines. Some notes: NIH has been looking at mass bio events, man made or natural, since 9/11. They only do basic research. They have nothing to do with field ops in the case of events. FDA working with DOD does that. BARDA is an agency created in 2006 during the Bush administration to specifically deal with terrorist threats of the bio/chem nature. Ebola and related was on their list. Impression so far: Lots of research but potentially no centralized response organization and testing pre-event. More to come.

hga 12y ago
What about the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Dr. Nicole Lurie, who per her own words has an operational as well as preparedness role (http://rwjcsp.unc.edu/scholars/spotlight/lurie.html http://rwjcsp.unc.edu/scholars/spotlight/lurie.html): “I have responsibility for getting the nation prepared for public health emergencies—whether naturally occurring disasters or man-made, as well as for helping it respond and recover,” Lurie said. “It’s a pretty significant undertaking.” Here's the official page: http://www.hhs.gov/about/foa/osleadership/aspr.html http://www.hhs.gov/about/foa/osleadership/aspr.html The mission of her office is to lead the nation in preventing, responding to and recovering from the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters, ranging from hurricanes to bioterrorism. Lots more here: http://news.pennmedicine.org/inside/2014/02/nicole-lurie-a-doctor-for-her-country.html http://news.pennmedicine.org/inside/2014/02/nicole-lurie-a-d... She's among other things still a practicing physician, and as the uniform indicates, a U.S. Public Health Service officer, a 2 star Rear Admiral, Upper Half.
- robomartin 12y ago
  Impressive, but not sure we are seeing the results. I am not a kid any more. Titles and position no longer impress me. Actions and results do. Here are the facts: We have a bunch of agencies who purport to be looking after various aspects of these kinds of problems. Some from the research perspective and others in execution. We have an impressive array of people involved with and running these organizations. All of them have budgets in the billions. Yet we did not have the systems, personnel, technology and response capabilities to keep ONE patient from infecting two nurses who cared for him. One patient. Would they have been ready for twenty? The gentleman running the NIH told Congress during the hearing that the NIH facilities have TWO, count them, TWO beds suitable for the isolation and treatment of highly infectious patients. I stopped watching the testimony once the politicians started talking. They are disgusting, on both sides. We are lucky in that we do not have a really serious problem in our hands right now. There is no reason to panic. This is currently limited to just two people and a few in observation who are not sick. I hope I am not wrong when I say that this is, at this point, contained. My problem is with what is seems to have revealed: That we are truly not ready. And that the agencies that are supposed to be ready to go on this at the drop of the dime have to figure things out during an event rather than being ready to go before it happens. That should be disturbing to all. If twenty or fifty cities had cases it sure looks like we'd be in serious trouble. Again, I hope I am wrong. I am not impressed by intelligent sounding speeches in Congress. Everyone has political angles to protect of push forward, including some of the Doctors running these organizations. In that sense the entire thing is disgusting. What's important is to watch what they are actually doing and what results they are producing. A virus is a heartless and has no political alignment. It really does not care if you believe in big government or total anarchy. It just is. It does what it does while you burn time playing games. The only time it stops is when you destroy it. In that sense, it is a really brutal performance review.
  - pcrh 12y ago
    Your opinions border on panic. It is clear that the CDC and other agencies have procedures in place to deal with the outbreak of infectious disease, and that you are 1) unaware of these, and how they work, and 2) prepared to agitate for a wholescale overhaul without understanding how disease is both spread and controlled. In the present situation, the only obvious failure of the system to contain a disease outbreak is the fact that Amber Vinson traveled while infected. Note that she did not have symptoms of Ebola when she traveled. The only rational alternative to her traveling would have been to quarantine every single person who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a possibility that does not require radical overhaul of any existing systems. Keep calm and carry on.
    - hga 12y ago
      Yeah, it's just a total coincidence that any time now the Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence will have 0 Ebola patients, because they've done such a bang up job with their first 2. And that right now (this very minute if they're not late), Dallas County is discussing declaring a state of emergency. And the public lead in this, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is lying through his teeth just about every time he's at a microphone, in one telling case contradicting himself from one sentence to the next: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-can-give-can-t-get-ebola-bus http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-ca... Believing things are serious does not equal "border[ing] on panic". Neither panic nor Panglossian bromides are called for right now.
      - pcrh 12y ago
        OK, bromides may be uncalled for. However, declaring a "State of Emergency" is hyperbolic. There have been cases of Ebola in the UK and France, which were contained without causing the national panic that appears to have gripped the US. One concern I have is that if this panic is allowed to gain enough political headway it will lead to expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions, mirroring those that created the TSA.
        12y ago

hga 12y ago

What about the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Dr. Nicole Lurie, who per her own words has an operational as well as preparedness role (http://rwjcsp.unc.edu/scholars/spotlight/lurie.html http://rwjcsp.unc.edu/scholars/spotlight/lurie.html): “I have responsibility for getting the nation prepared for public health emergencies—whether naturally occurring disasters or man-made, as well as for helping it respond and recover,” Lurie said. “It’s a pretty significant undertaking.” Here's the official page: http://www.hhs.gov/about/foa/osleadership/aspr.html http://www.hhs.gov/about/foa/osleadership/aspr.html The mission of her office is to lead the nation in preventing, responding to and recovering from the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters, ranging from hurricanes to bioterrorism. Lots more here: http://news.pennmedicine.org/inside/2014/02/nicole-lurie-a-doctor-for-her-country.html http://news.pennmedicine.org/inside/2014/02/nicole-lurie-a-d... She's among other things still a practicing physician, and as the uniform indicates, a U.S. Public Health Service officer, a 2 star Rear Admiral, Upper Half.

robomartin 12y ago
Impressive, but not sure we are seeing the results. I am not a kid any more. Titles and position no longer impress me. Actions and results do. Here are the facts: We have a bunch of agencies who purport to be looking after various aspects of these kinds of problems. Some from the research perspective and others in execution. We have an impressive array of people involved with and running these organizations. All of them have budgets in the billions. Yet we did not have the systems, personnel, technology and response capabilities to keep ONE patient from infecting two nurses who cared for him. One patient. Would they have been ready for twenty? The gentleman running the NIH told Congress during the hearing that the NIH facilities have TWO, count them, TWO beds suitable for the isolation and treatment of highly infectious patients. I stopped watching the testimony once the politicians started talking. They are disgusting, on both sides. We are lucky in that we do not have a really serious problem in our hands right now. There is no reason to panic. This is currently limited to just two people and a few in observation who are not sick. I hope I am not wrong when I say that this is, at this point, contained. My problem is with what is seems to have revealed: That we are truly not ready. And that the agencies that are supposed to be ready to go on this at the drop of the dime have to figure things out during an event rather than being ready to go before it happens. That should be disturbing to all. If twenty or fifty cities had cases it sure looks like we'd be in serious trouble. Again, I hope I am wrong. I am not impressed by intelligent sounding speeches in Congress. Everyone has political angles to protect of push forward, including some of the Doctors running these organizations. In that sense the entire thing is disgusting. What's important is to watch what they are actually doing and what results they are producing. A virus is a heartless and has no political alignment. It really does not care if you believe in big government or total anarchy. It just is. It does what it does while you burn time playing games. The only time it stops is when you destroy it. In that sense, it is a really brutal performance review.
- pcrh 12y ago
  Your opinions border on panic. It is clear that the CDC and other agencies have procedures in place to deal with the outbreak of infectious disease, and that you are 1) unaware of these, and how they work, and 2) prepared to agitate for a wholescale overhaul without understanding how disease is both spread and controlled. In the present situation, the only obvious failure of the system to contain a disease outbreak is the fact that Amber Vinson traveled while infected. Note that she did not have symptoms of Ebola when she traveled. The only rational alternative to her traveling would have been to quarantine every single person who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a possibility that does not require radical overhaul of any existing systems. Keep calm and carry on.
  - hga 12y ago
    Yeah, it's just a total coincidence that any time now the Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence will have 0 Ebola patients, because they've done such a bang up job with their first 2. And that right now (this very minute if they're not late), Dallas County is discussing declaring a state of emergency. And the public lead in this, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is lying through his teeth just about every time he's at a microphone, in one telling case contradicting himself from one sentence to the next: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-can-give-can-t-get-ebola-bus http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-ca... Believing things are serious does not equal "border[ing] on panic". Neither panic nor Panglossian bromides are called for right now.
    - pcrh 12y ago
      OK, bromides may be uncalled for. However, declaring a "State of Emergency" is hyperbolic. There have been cases of Ebola in the UK and France, which were contained without causing the national panic that appears to have gripped the US. One concern I have is that if this panic is allowed to gain enough political headway it will lead to expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions, mirroring those that created the TSA.
      - 12y ago