Topics in the News: Ebola
Donald Trump on Ebola:
(Health Care Sep 14, 2020)
Set aside pandemic response plans prepared by Bush and Obama
[In 2005,] Pres. George W. Bush's administration created a 381-page plan that would outline the proper responses to possible virus outbreaks. Sections of this plan were implemented by Pres. Obama in 2014 when an Ebola patient was discovered in the U.S.
The plan was passed on to Donald Trump's incoming administration. The office was shut down in 2018 by Pres. Donald Trump, who disbanded the pandemic response team.
On Jan. 28, 2020, Carter Mecher, Senior Medical Advisor for the Department of
Veterans Affairs, warned others [about coronavirus] that, "Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad." Mecher was one of the medical advisers who, in 2006, had conceived for George W. Bush a pandemic response strategy of "social distancing."
He started to push for immediate social distancing. Ignoring that and other scientists' requests or emphasis on testing, Trump and his administration decided the best strategy would be to keep infected people in China.
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Source: Business Insider, YouTube video "Totally Under Control"
Donald Trump on Ebola:
(Health Care Jun 9, 2020)
Dismantled global health security system before coronavirus
In 2018, Trump effectively dismantled the Obama-era global health insurance system. The objective--to understand how viruses move beyond borders and to prepare a communications and response strategy for transitional health crises--
had its genesis in the nation's multilateral engagement in the Ebola virus. Swift, worldwide action had not only accelerated treatments to countries facing infection, it slowed transmission to other nations, including the United States.
Trump's shortsighted decision, while devastating in this current crisis, should galvanize restoration of the global health security system and prompt a deeper thinking of what constitutes genuine national security threats.
COVID-19 demands immediate response to defeat an intercontinental enemy to our health, our economies and our future
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Source: Our Time Is Now, by Stacey Abrams, p.259-60
Barack Obama on Ebola:
(Health Care May 30, 2020)
2014: Africa travel ban to battle Ebola outbreak
When the global medical community was responding to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Trump was one of the most prominent US figures wrongly disputing scientific consensus about the virus and sowing disinformation.
On October 2, 2014, Trump tweeted that "Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting. Spreading all over Africa-and fast. Stop flights."
In an October 6, 2014 appearance on Fox & Friends, a clip of Fauci was played, expressing his opposition to closing travel with West Africa. "Well, I think it's ridiculous,"
Trump said. "But as far as you know, giving supplies and providing medical supplies, I'm all for that. And even if doctors want to go there and help, I think I'm all for that too. But you know, they do have to suffer consequences."
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Source: CNN K-File FactCheck on 2020 Trump Administration
Donald Trump on Ebola:
(Health Care Mar 26, 2020)
Declined pandemic playbook prepared under Obama
The Trump administration declined to use a nearly 70-page pandemic preparedness playbook created by the National Security Council's health unit during the Obama administration in favor of other preparation materials. The playbook, finalized in 2017
both by top political appointees and career national security officials in the wake of the 2014-15 Ebola crisis, sought to lay the groundwork for a coordinated response to avoid confusion and conflicting messages from federal officials.
A factor limiting the Trump administration's ability to implement the pandemic playbook was that the document never underwent interagency vetting, despite former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert expressing interest in making it a
permanent fixture when it came to pandemics. Bossert, who left the administration in 2018, told Politico that he "engaged actively with my outgoing counterpart and took seriously their transition materials and recommendations on pandemic preparedness."
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Source: Business Insider/Politico analysis of coronavirus policy
Joe Biden on Ebola:
(Homeland Security Mar 15, 2020)
We used National Guard for Ebola; use for new pandemic too
I would call out the military. Now. They have the capacity to provide this surge help that hospitals need and that is needed across the nation. I would make sure that they did exactly what they're prepared to do. They did it in the Ebola crisis.
They have the capacity to build 500-bed hospitals, and tents that are completely safe and secure, and provide the help to get it done to anybody, this overflow. So it is a national emergency. I would call out the military.
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Source: 11th Democratic primary debate (Biden-Sanders one-on-one)
Susan Rice on Ebola:
(Homeland Security Mar 13, 2020)
Under Obama we foresaw pandemics & prepared for them
Trump failed to prepare for a major global health challenge. Rather than heed the warnings, embrace the planning and preserve the structures that had been bequeathed to him, the president ignored the risk of a pandemic. Trump said, "you can never really
think" that a pandemic "is going to happen." Having combated the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, Ebola, Zika, MERS and other such threats, many health experts and the Obama administration not only foresaw such risks but prepared for them.
As national security adviser, I established the office of Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council to monitor, prepare for and prevent global health crises. My successor dismantled the office, pushed its leader out and
downgraded the position of Homeland Security adviser. The Obama team provided briefing papers and conducted a side-by-side exercise with leaders of the incoming administration focused on pandemic threats. It was discarded by the incoming team.
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Source: N. Y. Times 2020 analysis of coronavirus policy
Tom Steyer on Ebola:
(Health Care Feb 26, 2020)
Mandatory Coronavirus vaccines; and other immediate actions
Q: Coronavirus is spreading now quickly outside of China. If and when they were to develop a vaccine, if you were president, would you mandate that Americans take the vaccine?STEYER: If it were necessary to take the vaccine to prevent the spread of
the Coronavirus through the United States, yes, I would. But let me talk for a second about Coronavirus. Because what we're seeing is that this is a pandemic that hasn't been handled well. Back in 2014, there was an Ebola outbreak in Africa; President
Obama did a fantastic job of controlling it. We're seeing the exact opposite from this president. We're seeing a president who just asked Congress for money to deal with it today. The World Health Organization declared an emergency in January.
So what we're seeing here, the Coronavirus may or may not turn into a worldwide epidemic. But what we know for sure is that it's going to have a huge impact on the world economy as we try to deal with it.
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Source: CNN S. C. Town Hall for 2020 Presidential primary
Joe Biden on Ebola:
(Health Care Feb 26, 2020)
We invested in health agencies and kept Ebola out of the US
Q: We just heard from President Trump tonight, addressing the administration's response to the coronavirus. If you were president, what would you be doing?BIDEN: We've been through this once. We've been through this with the virus that occurred with
Ebola in Africa. I was deeply involved on that. We were able to keep the disease overseas. The few that came to the United States, we were able to put together the following:
We set up an office within the president's office to deal with infectious diseases, number one. Number two, we significantly increased the funding for NIH, National Institute of Health, as well as the CDC, to immediately begin to work on vaccines,
which worked. We moved. Thirdly, what we did was we made sure that we were able to be honest with the American people, so that we had complete unity between the scientists and the president.
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Source: CNN S. C. Town Hall for 2020 Presidential primary
Joe Biden on Ebola:
(Health Care Feb 25, 2020)
Work with China, in China, on coronavirus
Q: What would you do about coronavirus?BIDEN: What we did with Ebola--I was part of making sure that pandemic did not get to the United States, saved millions of lives. And what we did, we set up, I helped set up that office on pandemic diseases. We
increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. And our president today--and he's wiped all that out. [With Ebola], we did it; we stopped it.
Q: So, more funding?
BIDEN: I would immediately restore the funding. [Trump] cut the funding
for CDC. He tried to cut the funding for NIH. He cut the funding for the entire effort. And here's the deal. I would be on the phone with China and making it clear, we are going to need to be in your country; you have to be open; you have to be clear;
we have to know what's going on; we have to be there with you, and insist on it and insist, insist, insist. I could get that done. No one up here has ever dealt internationally with any of these world leaders. I'm the only one that has.
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Source: 10th Democratic Primary debate on eve of S.C. primary
Barack Obama on Ebola:
(Health Care Jan 31, 2020)
Set up permanent epidemic monitoring/command group
Building on the Ebola experience, the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council (NSC) and another in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)--both of which
followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.In the spring of 2018, the Trump White House pushed
to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs. White House efforts included cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS.
The Trump administration fired the government's entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut that much of its staff was laid off.
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Source: Foreign Policy magazine on Trump Administration
Donald Trump on Ebola:
(Health Care Dec 26, 2019)
2014: Criticized Ebola czar; 2019: put Pence in charge
President Trump announced that he'll be putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of leading the administration's response to the coronavirus. The previous point person on the administration's coronavirus response was Health and Human Services
Secretary Alex Azar. Back in the Ebola crisis of 2014, Trump did the opposite. He criticized former President Obama for appointing an Ebola czar "with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control."
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Source: Axios e-zine on 2020 presidential hopefuls
Susan Rice on Ebola:
(Foreign Policy Nov 14, 2019)
Worked to bring allies together to address challenges
Q: What is the Obama foreign policy legacy?RICE: I think we effectively leveraged our alliances and partnerships to address key concerns. Whether it was working to negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement, or the Iran nuclear agreement, or the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the coalition to fight ISIS, or to fight the Ebola epidemic. We effectively brought allies and partners together to address those complex challenges and did so even as we had to confront many of them simultaneously.
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Source: Council on Foreign Relations on 2020 Veepstakes
Susan Rice on Ebola:
(Health Care Nov 14, 2019)
Ebola crisis: would have resigned if Obama closed the border
This was in 2014, when we were wrestling with the Ebola epidemic. Lawmakers here were freaking out and demanding the closure of the border. One of the proposals on the table wasy to restrict the ability of anybody who had traveled to the three affected
countries to come to the United States. It would have meant that all legitimate travel from that region would have been cut off, which would have been the economic death knell for the countries of
West Africa, plus it would have grossly stigmatized West Africans here in the United States. I said to myself at that moment, if he were to make the wrong decision, this would be a point where I would have to part company.
He did not make the wrong decision. As usual, he applied reason and science and resisted the political pressure. But it was for me a brief white-knuckle moment.
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Source: Council on Foreign Relations on 2020 Veepstakes
Barack Obama on Ebola:
(Health Care Jan 12, 2016)
Lead eradication of malaria and HIV, like we did with Ebola
There is a smarter approach [than just being a military superpower], that uses every element of our national power. It says on issues of global concern, we will mobilize the world to work with us.That's how we stopped the spread of Ebola in West
Africa. Our military, our doctors, our development workers--they were heroic. They set up the platform that then allowed other countries to join in behind us and stamp out that epidemic. Hundreds of thousands--maybe a couple million lives were saved.
When we help African countries care for the sick, It's the right thing to do, and it prevents the next pandemic from reaching our shores. Now right now, we are on track to end the scourge of HIV/AIDS, that's within our grasp, and we have the chance to
accomplish the same thing with malaria, something I'll be pushing this Congress to fund this year. That's American strength. That's American leadership. And that kind of leadership depends on the power of our example.
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Source: 2016 State of the Union address
Donald Trump on Ebola:
(Health Care Sep 22, 2015)
Ebola virus in America is Obama's fault
Trump could bypass the gatekeepers in the press to reach people directly with his messages. Trump said he did own writing online, and given the wide range of tones in his comments, this seemed true. A devoted tweeter, his online statements address
everything from a doctor in New York with the Ebola virus--"Obama's fault"--to the notion that the Big Apple could actually benefit from global warming, if the phenomenon is real, because it suffers from uncomfortable cold snaps in the winter.
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Source: Never Enough, by Michael D`Antonio, p.331
Barack Obama on Ebola:
(Health Care Jan 20, 2015)
Ebola teaches us how to prevent future pandemics
In West Africa, our troops, our scientists, our doctors, our nurses and healthcare workers are rolling back Ebola--saving countless lives and stopping the spread of disease. I couldn't be prouder of them, and I thank this Congress for your bipartisan
support of their efforts. But the job is not yet done--and the world needs to use this lesson to build a more effective global effort to prevent the spread of future pandemics, invest in smart development, and eradicate extreme poverty.
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Source: 2015 State of the Union address
Rand Paul on Ebola:
(Foreign Policy Nov 2, 2014)
Temporary stop on elective travel to fight Ebola
Q: Is the government following the right policies on Ebola?PAUL: I think the president's biggest mistake was saying," oh, it's no big deal, you can't catch it if you're sitting on a bus. And we're not going to stop any travel." It's very contagious
when someone is sick. I don't think anybody should be riding on a bus or coming from Liberia to visit when they could be contagious. So, I think a temporary stop of travel for elective travel, if you're coming to visit your relatives, couldn't that wait
for a few months?
Do you think we ought to tighten the restrictions on who can come to this country?
PAUL: From the beginning of our country, we always had restrictions on infectious disease. That was one of the primary things we did at our border.
Commercial travel for people who just want to visit the US, that really isn't a necessity, and we can wait few months on it. And it would make our problem a lot less if we were only thinking about health care workers coming back.
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Source: Face the Nation 2014 interview: 2016 presidential hopefuls
Rand Paul on Ebola:
(Foreign Policy Nov 2, 2014)
No quarantine on returning Ebola doctors unless symptomatic
Q: What about mandatory quarantines for health care workers who return to the U.S. after treating Ebola patients in Africa?PAUL: It depends on your stage of the disease. Quarantine is a tough question, because the libertarian in me is horrified at the
idea of indefinitely detaining anyone without a trial. One of our basic rights is habeas corpus: if anybody was detaining you, you have recourse to a lawyer and to a judgment.
Q: She had a lawyer. They filed suit to get her out of New Jersey.
Now she's in Maine and again saying, "I am not contagious."
PAUL: Well, I think common sense would say that it makes a different whether or not you're febrile, afebrile or asymptomatic.
Q: She doesn't have a fever.
PAUL: Right. When you're febrile,
you're beginning to be contagious. And so there is a reasonable public concern. I think that we have to be very careful of people's civil liberties, but I'm also not saying that the government doesn't have a role in trying to prevent contagion.
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Source: CNN SOTU 2014 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls
Ted Cruz on Ebola:
(Foreign Policy Oct 19, 2014)
Cuba is oppressive but never misses chance to propagandize
Q: I have one more Ebola question. And, believe it or not, it's about Cuba. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro says that he is only too happy to join the US after our plea for other countries to step up and help fight Ebola.
He said that Cuba will be sending 460 doctors and nurses. What do you make of that?CRUZ: Well, look, Fidel Castro and Raul Castro, they never miss a chance to push propaganda.
You know, what I can tell is, the Castro brothers have put in place a brutal regime that oppresses their citizens, that murders their citizens, that tortures and imprisons their citizens.
And the Castros are never shy to jump up and engage in some propaganda to criticize the United States.
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Source: CNN SOTU 2014 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls
Ted Cruz on Ebola:
(Health Care Oct 19, 2014)
Suspend commercial air travel to Ebola-infected areas
Q: We have learned over the course of the [Ebola epidemic] that public health is largely in the state and local purview.CRUZ: There were, no doubt, mistakes that were made up and down the line. But the biggest mistake that continues to be made is now,
we continue to allow open commercial air flights from countries that have been stricken by Ebola. We have got upwards of 150 people a day coming from countries with live, active Ebola outbreaks. For over two weeks, I have been calling on the
administration to take the commonsense stand of suspending commercial air travel out of these countries until we get the air travel under control. And for whatever reason, the Obama White House doesn't want to do so.
Q: What mistakes were made?
CRUZ: Throughout this process, there have been mistakes. And listen, dealing with a virus epidemic is a learning process with very high stakes. And so we can't afford mistakes. But the best thing to do is to minimize the initial contact with Ebola.
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Source: CNN SOTU 2014 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls
Hillary Clinton on Ebola:
(Health Care Oct 14, 2014)
Ebola won't stay confined; put resources into Africa
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed Ebola is "not going to stay confined" in a speech she gave to the UNLV Foundation in Las Vegas. "Ebola, as we're seeing very painfully,
is not going to stay confined unless we put in a lot more resources to try to begin to tailor down the epidemic and contain it and end it the way we have previously by putting in a lot of resources. So, it's not either/or.
We can't say we're not going to be involved because these things are somebody else's problems because in the world of inter-dependence that we currently live in,
a lot of those problems end up eventually on our doorstep," Clinton said.
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Source: Ian Schwartz on RealClearPolitics.com, "Not Stay Confined"
Ted Cruz on Ebola:
(Health Care Mar 7, 2014)
2014: Travel ban from West Africa to prevent Ebola
In October 2014, Cruz hit President Obama for not combating the ongoing Ebola scare currently facing the US on CNN's "State of the Union." His point of contention was the lack of a travel ban from West Africa, which he says would aid the
US in warding off a possible outbreak. "We should stop issuing travel visa's from Liberia," Cruz said. "It shouldn't be a partisan issue.
We should be protecting citizens of this country."
This conservative media driven travel ban totally died down towards the end of 2014 when no other Ebola cases were reported in the US.
Ironically, with some exceptions, only neighboring countries in Africa did issue this ban.
Click for Ted Cruz on other issues.
Source: Cruzing to the White House, by Mario Broes, p.114
Ted Cruz on Ebola:
(Health Care Mar 7, 2014)
2014: Travel ban from West Africa to prevent Ebola
In October 2014, Cruz hit President Obama for not combating the ongoing Ebola scare currently facing the U.S. on CNN's "State of the Union".
His point of contention was the lack of a travel ban from West Africa, which he says would aid the U.S. in warding off a possible outbreak.
"We should stop issuing travel visa's from Liberia," Cruz said. "It shouldn't be a partisan issue. We should be protecting citizens of this country."
This conservative media driven travel ban totally died down towards the end of 2014 when no other Ebola cases were reported in U.S. ironically, with some exceptions, only neighboring countries in Africa did issue this ban.
Click for Ted Cruz on other issues.
Source: Cruzing to the White House, by Mario Broes, p. p.114
Page last updated: Mar 01, 2022
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