How to fight Ebola
The good, the bad and the awful
IN THE worldwide fight against Ebola, responses to the epidemic range from the brave and effective to the panicky and selfish.
Some figures in the news stand out. No, not the self-centered types who defy court orders and local health authorities by getting out and about even if they should know better, having had close contact with Ebola’s victims. Even if they don’t actually spread the disease, these me-firsters show a fine contempt for authority, and for just plain better-safe-than-sorry sense. And act as if their convenience is more important than anything else. And that putting their lives on hold for a little while isn’t worth the worry they cause others. Or as the church lady on the old Saturday Night Live show would say, “Well, isn’t that SPE- cial!”
Then there are the heroes, even whole heroic countries. Nigeria, for example. Unlike neighboring Liberia, it has kept Ebola at bay by using a combination of effective programs developed in its earlier and successful efforts to eradicate polio in that country—isolation for patients, quick response and close coordination on the part of its public health system, and detective work by hard-working teams that contact any and all who might have had some connection with the sick.
Nigeria has had its individual heroes, too. Like the doctor in Lagos who diagnosed Ebola in a patient and insisted on isolating him despite threats of legal action. The doctor, Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, would die of the disease later, having insisted on treating patients herself. Such are the martyrs among us—and the heroes of medicine.
But then there are the usual bevy of bureaucrats whose response to the threat of Ebola has been . . . to ask for more federal funds. While making unconvincing excuses for their own failure to combat it. Case in outrageous point: Dr. Francis Collins, head of our own National Institutes of Health. “Frankly,” he said the other day, “if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”
There’s nothing wrong with that snap excuse except everything. For over those last 10 years, federal funding for the NIH actually rose from $28.3 billion to $29.3 billion. Some slide.
From 2000 to 2004, the budget for Dr. Collins’ agency rose by 58 percent. So it could use all that money for programs like a study of the sex lives of quail, text messages in what’s called Gay Lingo to warn meth addicts about its dangers, and “only” $1.5 million to study obesity among lesbians. Which does not strike some of as the clear and present danger Ebola has been.
Ah, your tax money at work. Across the board. Because then there’s the assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services—the estimable Dr. Nicole Lurie—who’s supposed to be in charge of the country’s “preparedness and response” when it comes to epidemics. Her signature achievement, according to Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist, was to help steer federal funds to Siga, a now bankrupt pharmaceutical company owned by Ron Perelman, who turns out to be a big donor to this president’s political campaigns. My, what a coincidence.
Heroes abound in the saga of Ebola. And so do bums. For even when they’re well-paid bureaucrats heading powerful federal agencies or immensely rich political patrons, bums are still bums.