John Kerry believes it is essential for airlines to keep flying to West Africa and for borders to remain open to allow for the movement of assistance and medical staff. His statements to the world came as patient zero in the US has died and it suspected that another may have the deadly virus.
“While we are making progress, we are not where we can say that we need to be, and there are additional needs that have to be met in order for the global community to be able to properly respond to this challenge — and to make sure that we protect people in all of our countries,” Kerry said.
“We need people to step up now,” he said. “Now is the time for action, not words. And frankly, there is not a moment to waste in this effort.”
Yet the rhetoric and words are not being turned into action by John Kerry or President Obama. Obama and Kerry are both advocating that the borders remain open, that flights not be impaired except for a questionnaire and a laser thermometer.
Meanwhile, an afternoon news conference has been called in Frisco, a suburb of Dallas, to discuss a possible second case of Ebola.
According to a statement from the City of Frisco, the patient claims to have had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, referred to as Dallas ‘patient zero.’
It is not clear how the patient had contact with Duncan. The CDC says the patient did not have direct contact with Duncan and he was not one of the 48 people being monitored by federal, state and local health officials.
Texas officials continue to monitor 10 people who had direct contact with him while he was symptomatic, as well as 38 others who may have had contact. None have shown symptoms of the disease up to this point.
The incubation period of Ebola is a maximum of 21 days, with symptoms commonly beginning to present eight to 10 days after exposure. If Duncan passed the virus onto anyone else, that would likely become evident this week.
Duncan was in serious condition until this past weekend, when his condition was changed to critical, and he was given the experimental drug brincidofovir, an oral medicine developed by Chimerix. The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the treatment; it had previously been tested against Ebola only in test-tube studies.
Secretary of State John Kerry and other progressives can only suggest spending more money instead of time tested means of controlling a pandemic. Mr. Kerry called on world nations to spend more money fighting ebola.
Kerry showed a chart noting that the U.S. and UK have contributed $120 million of the $691 million it has collected so far, and that $113 million of that came from the United States. The European Union has contributed $55 million, while Canada has thrown in $32 million.
But other countries have offered less than $5 million, including Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, China and Italy, and many countries have contributed nothing.
Humanitarian efforts are important to fight this disease at its source, however, practical steps to isolate the infection not the people are needed to control this pandemic.
