Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Big day yesterday. POTUS announced military involvement in Ebola at CDC at the same time that I was testifying before a joint Senate Hearing of the HELP Committee and the Appropriations Committee. I testified with Beth Bell from CDC (Tom Frieden was at CDC with the POTUS visit), and Robin Robinson. I was questioned on the POTUS plan, the scope of the epidemic and the possibility of respiratory/aerosol spread of the virus. The latter was triggered by Mike Osterholm’s (as usual provocative and attention-getting) statement that the virus could mutate and spread by respiratory and that would be the end of the world. Typical Mike Osterholm. I have been countering this with a reality check about likelihood versus hypothetical. Senators at the Hearing were Dems: Tom Harkin, Patty Murray, Dick Durbin, Jack Reed, Mark Pryor, Barbara Mikulski, Bob Casey, Al Franken, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tammy Baldwin, Chris Murphy and Elizabeth Warren and GOPs: Jerry Moran, Thad Cochran, Lamar Alexander, Richard Burr, Johnny Isaacson, John Boozman. Kent Brantley was witness on second panel. Another example of the WH and HHS press people messing up. They would not let me go on the many press requests (CNN, NBC, etc.) since they wanted Lisa Monaco (NSC) to go on. As it turned out, she was with the POTUS in his motorcade in Atlanta and so no one from USG went on and the media was saturated with the usual suspects (Laurie Garrett, Mike Osterholm, etc.) The WH and HHS press people are truly a bunch of idiot amateurs.