President Obama visited the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta last month to help officials reassure the public about Ebola.
Obama repeated what the supposed experts at the agency had been saying for months. First, he said, the odds of the virus making it to the U.S. were “extremely low.” Second, “in the unlikely event” that Ebola came to America, “we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home. We’re working to help flight crews identify people who are sick, and more labs across our country now have the capacity to quickly test for the virus. We’re working with hospitals to make sure that they are prepared, and to ensure that our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely.”
All this happy-talk has proven misguided, undermining public faith in one of the government’s least political functions.
First, Ebola’s spread to America was not remotely unlikely, as it took just a few days to get here.
Second, flight crews failed to identify an infected traveler from Liberia, so either the training they received is inadequate or it is far less effective than Obama’s cheery reassurances suggested.
Third, U.S. medical professionals were unprepared to diagnose the disease when the traveler presented himself at a hospital with Ebola symptoms, even though he informed them that he had just come from Liberia. They released him to spread the virus around Dallas.
Obama’s unreliable optimism has cast doubt even on CDC officials’ more fact-based utterances. For example, they have insisted that the disease’s spread requires something as unusual as “contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.” But such contact appears to be far more casual than the phrase sounds. Sweat can be transferred through a handshake or a doorknob. The patient in Dallas reportedly vomited in a public place outside an apartment building filled with people. An American journalist in Liberia may have contracted the disease despite wearing “most” of his protective gear.
Is the government prepared for this? In fact, it isn’t even prepared to protect its own employees performing its most vital functions. In August, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning that DHS has failed to equip itself sufficiently to keep operating amid an infectious viral outbreak. This, too, is a far cry from the CDC’s optimism.
With any luck, Ebola will not spread in America. But it may, and the public should draw a lesson from it. The lesson, as with many grand projects initiated over the past six years, is that even a bureaucracy filled with well-meaning experts cannot be relied upon or taken at its word.
