In the 5th installment of quotable quotes on the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa, with the discovery of the 1st Ebola confirmed case in the United States, CDC director Thomas Frieden has has a lot to say about the topic.
Concerning the Ebola drug pipeline, Dr. Frieden told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, “The drug pipeline is going to be slow, I’m afraid. The most promising drug, ZMapp, there’s no more of it, and it’s hard to make, it takes months to make just a bit.”
On whether the outbreak would spread in the US, Frieden said on ABC’s This Week, “I remain quite confident we will not have a widespread outbreak,” he said. “We will stop it in its tracks.”
“We’ve had no other case,” he said. “In fact, of the well over 100 cases we’ve been consulted about, the only one the staff told me, ‘you know, we’re really worried about this one,’ was the patient in Dallas, even before his test results came back.”
What about a topic that is riddled with controversy–should we temporarily ban flights from the countries battling Ebola–Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia? Dr. Frieden emphasizes the need for regular travel saying, “If we don’t control the outbreak, there’s a real risk that it could spread to other countries in Africa” and beyond, Frieden said. “To do that, we need regular travel.”
US politicians are also chiming in, most notably, Senator and physician, Rand Paul (R-KY) who said concerning sending 3,000 US troops to the Ebola zone, “You also have to be concerned about 3,000 soldiers getting back on a ship. Where is disease most transmittable? When you’re in a very close confines on a ship, we all know about cruises and how they get these diarrhea viruses that are transmitted very easily,” he said. “Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?”
Interestingly, Sen. Paul’s father, former Texas Congressman and physician, Dr. Ron Paul warns us not to “overreact” to the Ebola outbreak and urged common sense. “I know there’s a lot of reason to be concerned. It is a serious problem, but in my lifetime, when we have been frightened by this so-called coming epidemic — most of it has never materialized,” Paul said in an interview. “Common sense should be able to handle this because they know what the virus is, they know how it is spread,” he added. “I think sometimes overreaction can become very dangerous as well.”
In Britain, experts are saying there is a 50/50 chance of Ebola arriving in the country within the next 3 weeks. “It’s really a lottery,” said Derek Gatherer of Britain’s Lancaster University, an expert in viruses.
“If this thing continues to rage on in West Africa and indeed gets worse, as some people have predicted, then it’s only a matter of time before one of these cases ends up on a plane to Europe.”
Bill Gates said the following comparing the care in the US to Africa–“Health is very unjust. The chance of a poor child dying is 20 times the chance of a child in the United States or the UK dying. The likelihood of people getting Ebola in the US is extremely low, because we know how to quarantine people. Even if you get the disease, the kinds of things we can do in terms of maintaining your body, you’re better off to be here than in the three affected countries.”
Professor Peter Piot, the Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the discoverer of the Ebola virus said these dire words–” And it should be clear to all of us: This isn’t just an epidemic any more. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. We don’t just need care personnel, but also logistics experts, trucks, jeeps and foodstuffs. Such an epidemic can destabilise entire regions. I can only hope that we will be able to get it under control. I really never thought that it could get this bad.
Finally, in a extremely controversial statement by the Vaccine Resistance Movement who claims it is investigating the link between the vaccine, MenAfriVac® and the sudden surge in cases of Ebola. “Why has the Ebola virus suddenly erupted in a region of Africa known as the “Meningitis Belt”? Because the WHO & CDC are deliberately trying to cover up their bloody tracks once again.
“This supposed outbreak of Ebola bares all the hallmarks of a rarefied, virulent strain of bacterial Meningitis, ‘Acute fulminating Meningococcal Septicemia’, also known as ‘Waterhouse-Friderichsen Syndrome’. Another case of a dangerous, untested vaccine triggering a tsunami of viral mutations – in impoverished regions.”
Wow.
Click the following link to judge for yourself.
For more infectious disease news and information, visit and “like” the Infectious Disease News Facebook page
Ebola is present in saliva so are postal workers at risk. Saliva present on envelopes so is mail from Africa contagious? CDC says disease can live up to 6days.