Tuesday, September 16, 2014

I helped Mike gerson last night on certain elements of his column which appeared today in the Washington Post. Mike used several of my phrases and called for an escalated effort in various areas of need including US Military command-and-control, transportation, logistics, and supplies. Last night the White House sent out an embargoed fact sheet about what the President will announce today at the CDC. He will make the announcement at 4:45 PM. I will be testifying before the Senate HELP committee and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee from 2:30 PM until about 4:30 PM. There are a large number of press including CNN with Wolf Blitzer,Hhardball with Chris Matthews, an MSNBC who want to speak to me about the President's announcement and the implications of the announcement. As usual the White House is very nervous about having anybody speaking to the press before or on the day that the president makes an announcement. Therefore I am getting a lot of grief from the communications people downtown and at the White House about all of the requests for me to appear on the media. By grief I mean that they are not clearing me nor are they refusing me. They are just keeping me hanging, which usually means that the requests will be withdrawn by the media people themselves and they will find someone else. This is typical stupidity on the part of the White House and HHS. With regard to the announcement of the President, he is proposing many of the things that I and several of my colleagues have been pushing for. This includes 3000 personnel, a command-and-control center in Monrovia, Liberia, a US Army general in charge of the process. The supply of 17 Ebola Treatment Units consisting of 100 beds per unit, much personal protective equipment, an education program, home health care kits, home test kits, among many other things that are much needed. Hopefully, this will turn around the trajectory of the epidemic. However it will depend on how quickly they get this material on the ground. I am off to the congressional committees. More later.