How well are we dealing with Ebola in the U.S.? The answer depends on who you ask.
Some public officials are making a deliberate effort to reduce panic over the Ebola epidemic. Some media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, have argued a sense of concern is more than reasonable, given the U.S. government's track record as of late. Others are discussing mistakes made, and still others are proposing solutions as we move forward.
The following thoughts and opinions are about Ebola, but also tie into a broader discussion about the ways we have and should deal with crises at national and global levels.
Here are 10 quotes from media outlets, public health officials, politicians, physicians, CEOs and others about Ebola in the United States and worldwide.
"The concern right now is that the stress of this and the fear of this could be more damaging to this community than the virus itself."
— David Lakey, MD, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services"Ebola is stoppable and there's little reason to think that the world's leading disease experts at the CDC aren't ready to combat its spread — except these days government competence is all too often exposed as a fragile veneer. When an elite corps like the Secret Service can't remember to lock the White House's front door and alleged health technocrats can't build a working ObamaCare website for less than $2 billion, a sense of low-level worry about Ebola seems more than reasonable."
— Editorial in the Wall Street Journal"Over the past several days we have learned a lot about the unique challenges of situations like this. There were mistakes made. There will probably be mistakes made in the future as we go forward. … I stand by the fact that the process is working. We don't have an outbreak."
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry"I know that the American people are concerned about the possibility of an Ebola outbreak, and Ebola is a very serious disease. And the ability of people who are infected who could carry that across borders is something that we have to take extremely seriously. At the same time, it is important for Americans to know the facts, and that is that because of the measures that we’ve put in place, as well as our world-class health system and the nature of the Ebola virus itself — which is difficult to transmit — the chances of an Ebola outbreak in the United States is [sic] extremely low."
— President Barack Obama during a press conference Monday"I'm a married man with a little girl. I'm wearing the same shirt I was when I was in the car with that family. I was in their house next to those materials, meeting with them, listening to them, and assuring them last night and again of course today. If there were any risk, I would not expose myself or my family to that risk."
— Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins wore suit pants and a dress shirt — no gloves, mask or body suit — last Friday when visiting the apartment of individuals deemed "high-risk" after coming into contact with Thomas Eric Duncan. The judge's attire was one instance of a Dallas official taking a "notable visual approach" to reinforce the point that Dallas is safe, according to the Washington Post"In retrospect, we could have responded faster. Some of the criticism is appropriate. … While some of the criticism we accept, I think we also have to get things in perspective that this outbreak has a dynamic that's unlike everything we've ever seen before and, I think, has caught everyone unawares."
— Richard Brennan, director of the World Health Organization's Department of Emergency Risk Management and Humanitarian Response
"[W]ith the announcement of the Dallas case, hospitals across the country are now scrambling to get their procedures in place. Doctors' offices should do so, too. They need to download the CDC's checklists. And they need to do what other high-risk professions have done for years and train people immediately in 'closed-loop communication' —confirming verbally that critical information has been received and understood."
— Atul Gawande, MD, surgeon and staff writer for The New Yorker"The worst supply chain in our society is the health information supply chain. It's just a wonderfully poignant example, [a] reminder of how disconnected our healthcare system is. … The hyperbole should not be directed at Epic or those guys at Health Texas. The hyperbole has to be directed at the fact that healthcare is islands of information trying to separately manage a massively complex network."
— Jonathan Bush, head of Athenahealth, regarding initial reports that a flaw in the EHR system at Texas Health Presbyterian contributed to the hospital's release of Thomas Eric Duncan when he first visited the hospital Sept. 25"There are people out there who think that you can build a wall around an epidemic in the age of globalization and you can use the sorts of tactics to stop Ebola that we would be applied to plagues in the 18th century. Screen them at the port, don't let them on the ship, then screen them before they get off the ship. … It doesn't take two weeks to get from point A to point B anymore. It takes hours."
— Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council of Foreign Relations
"The U.S. dropped the ball on advancing a number of promising Ebola drugs and vaccines over the last decade. Medical countermeasures floundered for years in preclinical testing, largely because funding was sparse, and regulators applied conservative terms to how they wanted these medical products to be tested. In short, there was no sense of urgency."
— Scott Gottlieb, MD, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Tevi Troy, former deputy secretary of HHS and president of the American Health Policy Institute, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal