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The Centers for Disease Control Loses Its Grip
I have lived long enough, now, to have seen it again and again. Something goes badly wrong involving a corporation, a university, a religious denomination, or a branch of government, and the executive in charge or a designated minion goes before the press to engage in what is euphemistically called “damage control.” The spokesman does not level with the public. He or she tries to be reassuring and — more often than not — by lying, succeeds in undermining confidence in the institution he or she represents.
This is what is now going on with the Centers for Disease Control. In recent years, this well-respected outfit has branched out, opining in a politically correct manner on one issue after another outside its proper remit. Now it is faced with a matter absolutely central to its responsibilities — actual disease control — and it flips and flops and flounders because the ultimate boss, the President of the United States, cannot bring himself to put limits on contacts between Americans and the citizens of the countries in Africa where there is an Ebola epidemic.
There is only one way to prevent the spread of an epidemic, and that is quarantine. No medical professional with any sense would suggest that we should admit individuals from Liberia to the United States at this time, and no medical professional worth his or her salt would say that we can test for the disease when the prospective visitor arrives at Immigration and Passport Control. Like most diseases, Ebola has an incubation period. Early on, there are no symptoms: none at all. There is no reliable way to tell whether those arriving at our ports of entry have contracted the disease or not. If we do not want it coming here, for a time, we have to keep everyone out who has been in that neck of the woods.
And what are we told by the authorities? That cutting off contact would contribute to the spread of the epidemic. “Just how?” we are entitled to ask. But no explanation is given because, of course, there is none. We were also told that the disease would not come here. And, when it did come here, we were told that it could easily be contained. And, when it was not contained and a medical professional wearing all the proper gear came down with the disease, we were told that he did not follow the protocol.
Perhaps, the medical professional in question really did fail to follow the protocol, though, he apparently has no notion how he fell short. Perhaps, that is it; then again, perhaps not. Honesty would require that the director of the CDC tell the truth — which is, that he does not know how this particular individual contracted Ebola.
But this he cannot say. For that would cause us to worry, and his responsibility, as he and those above him conceive it, is to cover for the President of the United States. In fact, he works for thee and me. Our taxes make it possible for him to draw a paycheck. But this, in company with nearly everyone in the Obama administration, he has somehow forgotten; and so, in a servile fashion, he goes out in public to defend with forked tongue a policy he and every medical professional in the country knows is madness.
The truth is simple. There is an epidemic in Africa. The disease that is spreading like wildfire is horrible beyond imagination. We have suspicions as to how it spreads, but we do not know for sure. The only certain way to avoid its propagation is to avoid contact, and the President of the United States, who operates in an intellectual bubble, is unwilling to do what it is necessary to do to prevent people in the country he is sworn to serve and defend from coming into contact with contagious individuals who have the disease.
It is the duty of public servants, such as the Director of the CDC, to speak the truth in public. We are, after all, a self-governing people, and we ought not to be treated as little children who need to be reassured even when the news is anything but reassuring. But speaking the truth in all frankness and admitting ignorance seems beyond this man. Were he to do so, were he in public to say what every competent medical professional understands — that to prevent this plague from coming to North America we need to refuse for a time to accept visitors from much of Africa — he would no doubt be cashiered by the man whom, at the ballot box, we put in charge. And being cashiered he fears far more than deserving to be cashiered.
There was a time — I remember that time — when public officials and even political appointees resigned when called upon to carry out a policy they sincerely thought to be contrary to the interests of the American people. There was a time when public servants had a powerful sense of their own dignity and conducted themselves in a manner suited to free human beings. But that time appears to have passed — and those who hold high office act today as if they were the President’s slaves.
What a country we have become! We have journalists who prostitute themselves for a political party. We have civil servants who will gaily break the law for partisan purposes. We have cabinet members who do not believe in the policies they are called upon to implement, but who do not resign. We have an Attorney General who thinks that the obstruction of justice is his job. And we have a Congress unwilling to call anyone to account.
I fear for my country.
Image Credit: “CDC Headquarters PHIL 10693” by James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – http://www.cdc.gov/media/subtopic/library/building.htm. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in General
I note that you did not respond to what I said in Comment #28 above. If you were to stop ranting about things not said by anyone on this post (“we’re all going to die”) and responded to the arguments actually made, you might have something useful to say.
Once again, you attribute to me things I never said and no one else on this thread said. I never called for the resignation of the head of CDC or the impeachment of Obama. Nor did I blame “Democrats.” I did criticize this administration, and I stand by that criticism.
Let me add that there is a considerable difference between “a health emergency . . . in Africa” and “the most severe health emergency in modern times.” WHO is claiming that this is a greater health emergency than the flu epidemic after World War One. Either these folks are grotesquely exaggerating or I am right.
This overstates part of the argument but understates another part.
I spent 5 years in a lab with a BSL-3 facility (we had HIV, SARS, hep C and H5N1, among others), and comparing the dangers of laboratory work to hospital work can be apples to oranges. Although a laboratory environment is much more controlled than a hospital, a laboratory will often use virus suspensions which are much more highly concentrated than in hospitals, and with much longer exposure times.
Having said that, one of the criteria for designating a pathogen as a BSL-4 threat is high mortality with no known cure, which certainly includes Ebola. And here John understates the case: there are indeed four hospitals in America with facilities which provide a similar degree of safety as a BSL-4 laboratory, and several of other the suspected Ebola cases have been treated in these facilities. Why the Liberian patient was not brought to one of these wards is a mystery to me.
Why talk about halting flights from the affected countries? There aren’t any–not directly to the US, anyhow. Liberians et. al. must enter on flights from some third country, like the UK or France, for instance.
Re-read my piece. I never spoke of halting flights from the affected countries. I spoke of barring from the US those who had been in those countries.
They were all said in this thread, maybe not by you, but certainly by others. I was merely putting into words what is obviously implied here. Now you may not have said “we’re all going to die!”, but I was taking some poeting license from the “CDC loses it’s grip” headline, and the “I fear for my country” ending sentence.
Now you didn’t go so far as to call for heads to roll, but you did accuse the CDC of deliberate misinformation, or lying.
This based on what, exactly?
To date, the answer has primarily been that Ebola doesn’t spread – this is the first major example (that I know of at least) in which an Ebola outbreak has spread to multiple countries.
At the moment it is still confined to very few countries, so it is hard to know what criteria would promote its spread. From what we do know, important factors seem to be the level of healthcare (since Ebola can often be cured through supportive care), basic hygiene (especially how corpses are handled) and societal organization (especially regarding quarantine). Countries with higher levels of development are less likely to see the virus spread, even if they couldn’t keep it out.
Even with all of our attention on the hospital in Dallas, it is unlikely that we will see the virus spread from hospital cases in the US. The greater danger is that an infected patient arrives from Africa and does not go to the hospital, but rather stays at home and infects others who also don’t go to the hospital (or not until they are very sick). Even then a widespread outbreak is highly unlikely, but the possibility of even a few “at large” Ebola patients in a major urban area would likely cause quite a bit of chaos.
Which again, I’m going to re-iterate my question: do you think it’s a good idea to leave these matters to people who actually specialize in the appropriate fields, and who perhaps might have some interest in the matter since they are going to be the people who are going to come into contact with such a disease first?
Or do you think that you, or I, are the appropriate people to be making suggestions on appropriate ways of dealing with diseases?
But of course, none of that matters. What matters is…blaming Obama.
Why do people continually refer to this myth. This government bureaucrat like all government bureaucrats is first and foremost serving himself. He is doing what he thinks is best for his career and is well paid to do so. Why would anyone want to bestow on him or any of his fellow parasites such a honored title.
Just to put this quote in some perspective:
– The quote was actually “the most severe acute health emergency.” There were about 2,000 reported Ebola deaths in Africa in September, and likely just as many unreported, for a total of about 4,000. In that same time frame, there were about 50,000 deaths in Africa due to malaria.
This quote really says less about the threat of Ebola, and more about how well modern medicine keeps most other infectious disease outbreaks under control.
– One of the justifications cited by the WHO official was that people get so scared of Ebola that unnecessary precautions end up accounting for about 90% of the financial impact of the outbreak.
– With all respect to Dr. Rahe, I doubt he typically holds the statements of United Nations officials in very high regard on any other subject. It seems strange to be so critical of the CDC yet so uncritical of a statement made by a political appointee at a supergovernmental organization.
Should we be concerned about Ebola? Absolutely. Should we be keeping a close eye on our public health infrastructure and officials? Absolutely.
But Ebola is still a small threat to public health in the US.
I did not make that statement, please do not attribute that quote to me.
The global SARS epidemic has… 8,000 cases and a 90% survival rate.
SARS is actually interesting because of the similar existential freak out that it caused. You’d think it was Spanish Flu for the attention that it got.
Unlike SARS, however, you’re not going to catch Ebola if someone sneezes on you.
Question: If you’re not persuaded that we understand this well understood virus enough to know how its transmitted, how do you think it spreads?
IF I thought those people currently dealing with the public policy concerning this were truthful, forthcoming, and honest and open with us, I would agree with you. If, OTOH, I thought the above were NOT the case, then I would have serious questions about their “recommendations”.
I find Mendel’s comments above, plus Walker’s, far more illuminating than the “official sources” that have so far mostly given us gobble-gook. It appears to me that Mendel, who has had real exposure to such organisms, advocates quarantine. ?Your opposition is based on “blame it on Obama” – hardly a rational stand it seems.
No. The cans are listening devices.
I’ll bet a bottle of beer that it involves borders and guns, or the closest acceptable corporate analogues.
Hit ‘im again, Hoss! :-)
John, you know better. Ebola ain’t SARS.
Well, just spit.
Seawriter
Ebola is not SARS, but it is also not HIV. It is somewhere in between, and this line of debate is not particularly helpful.
Infectivity is a complex phenomenon. Just because a virus like Ebola can be spread by saliva does not mean that you are likely to get it from someone sneezing on you. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to be near an Ebola patient without wearing protective clothing.
We don’t need a mountain of literature to know that Ebola is much less contagious than the flu virus, yet the case in Dallas shows that with enough exposure, it can be transmitted even if many safety precautions are taken. That calls for a reaction somewhere between panic and carefreeness – but our public discourse has difficulty finding the Goldilocks “not too hot, not too cold” setting.
I said nothing of “quarantine”, nor am I sure what “quarantine” has anything to do with this. Pretty sure all the people who have been identified with ebola, in the US, are quarantined.
So what’s the “controversy” here?
You’re free to think whatever you want. Irrational and baseless claims of “lying”, “manipulating”, “hiding the truth” etc…are just that…baseless and irrational.
So of course, the only conclusion one can reach here is that, lacking any bases whatsoever that anyone is “lying”, other than the guesses of people who have no knowledge on on such issues to begin with…the only conclusion that can be reached is that this “hysteria” is just what it implicitly states it is: …about Obama.
PS: Of course, this goes to the deeper issue of what certain segments of the “conservative” movement have been doing for the past 6 years: fear mongering and predictions if imminent demise. And then we’re surprised that the public isn’t so welcoming of our “message”. Sometimes, we’re worst than the caricatures the Left paints of us.
And that’s what it’s really all about. There’s no safety precautions that are going to be a 100% guarantee.
So what we end up having is 1 case of ebola, and people responding by claiming that, obviously, this must be due to some sort of government agency lying, manipulating or hiding the facts from us. What else could it be?
I’m sorry, but after this last presidential election, I don’t trust anything you say. ;-)
Besides, as anyone who watches The Walking Dead knows, the CDC gets blown up. Because they couldn’t stop it.
One last point:
One of the main reasons that many experts do not seem deathly afraid of Ebola is because all experience suggests that the virus should be easy to contain in a developed country using proven measures. But most of these “proven measures” can only be carried out (or at least led) by the CDC and similar organizations. That is why competence at the CDC is indeed very important.
Although I have done quite a bit of virology research, I’m not a public health expert. But even from my perspective, the measures taken thus far by the CDC – the incoming traveler screening, not treating the Liberian patient at a specialty facility, or the risk assessment for his nurse – seem puzzling. Perhaps there is a rational explanation, but it is not obvious in my opinion.
(con’t)
(con’t from 56)
Which brings me to the CDC’s other important role: preparing the public and managing expectations. Almost any infectious disease expert would have predicted that the virus would eventually show up in the US, that it might spread here in a limited fashion but that it should be easy to contain. The CDC failed miserably in communicating that message in a rational fashion. It has also done a horrible job explaining its reactions to the Liberian patient and the transmission to his nurse.
Thankfully, all evidence suggests that even if the CDC completely drops the ball, Ebola would likely not pose a greater threat to actual public health than many other infectious diseases already common in the US. But the psychological effect of having such a feared virus on the loose, coupled with a lack of confidence in the system to get it under control, would nonetheless send the country into total chaos.
I don’t know if the CDC leadership is incompetent, was caught off guard by Ebola, or is being manipulated by its political bosses. But whatever the case, it needs to start working much harder to regain the public’s trust.
The controversy is that the government handling of this crisis ignores the one proven technique for handling disease: consistent quarantine. And the way to do this is to simply require anyone who has been in known infected zones to spend 2-3 weeks (whatever the period is) in a non-infected area before gaining admittance to the US.
This is basic, basic stuff.
Wildfire? How many people are being infected and dying again?
Michael Fumento, an anti-hysteric with a track record, says that scientists are stoking fears by broadening the list of likely transmission methods. In reality, blood or vomit in your mouth is the way it is transmitted. I imagine other mucus membranes may also work, such as eyes and nose.
http://nypost.com/2014/08/05/why-ebolas-nothing-to-worry-about/
Compare the way that AIDS is talked about in the media (i.e. you can get it by walking down the street innocently minding your own business even if you are a heterosexual female) as a guideline for how people with agendas spin these outbreaks.
I don’t know if — by this present time — my undergrad classmate Lisa Monaco is still riding herd on the department/agency heads who talk to the press about US Ebola preparedness, but she certainly was doing so the other week.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-travel-ban-would-impede-ebola-response/article/2554374
As you all can probably discern from both the article and the “optics” of the video it embeds, Ms. Monaco’s role was (and may still be) that of enforcer of White House-determined message discipline.
This is her Wikipedia profile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Monaco
I was in the same freshman-year dorm at Harvard with Ms. Monaco (Weld South — I am pretty sure that John Yoo, who was a year ahead of me, was also in Weld South). During the subsequent three years, I would occasionally run into her on campus.
My recollection is that she was basically amiable and pleasant, without any tendency to put on airs, and of course possessed of substantial if not astonishing intelligence.
That said, I wouldn’t declare that I can look back at her with the feeling that she had (or nowadays could be expected to have) the cast of mind or character attributes that would have prompted me to nod my head and pronounce her a Future Savior of the Republic (whether during our campus days, or based on the updates about herself that she provided every five years for our Class of 1990 reunion-report “redbooks,” or even now).
On the contrary, what’s summed up in her Wikipedia entry is pretty much about what I might expect about her professional trajectory.
Which is to say that if Ms. Monaco still is the one “driving the bus” on the Ebola response, I am most definitely not jumping for reassured joy. She may have inherited the White House chief counterterrorism adviser role from John Brennan (and to borrow a choice Hugo Chavez locution, imagine the sulfuric smell he must have left in that office) — but the bottom line is that (as always throughout her career) she is a political operative who serves her Oval Office master and not us the American public.
I don’t counsel panic, but we are not in the best of hands.
Congrats, Mr. Rahe. If the Ricochet servers start crawling, it may be due to an Instalanche.
One addendum:
As the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti, so aptly put it the other day (in his op-ed “The Case for Panic”), an Obama Administration that so unhesitatingly instigated an FAA flight ban to Israel — on the flimsiest of pretexts (other than the POTUS’s anti-Israel animus) and with no genuinely supporting evidence — has absolutely no leg to stand on as regards its ongoing refusal to declare a flight ban pertaining to Liberia/Guinea/Sierra Leone.
(I was in Tel Aviv throughout the 06-29 July period, and was put in return-flight limbo for several days by the POTUS/Kerry/FAA flight ban — I can attest to how “evidence-free” that ban was!…)