Posted on 09/16/2014 2:42:15 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The United States government is sending thousands of military troops to the west African nation of Liberia as part of the Obama administration's Ebola virus-response strategy, the White House said late Monday night.
....'A general from U.S. Army Africa, the Army component of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), will lead this effort, which will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The Army is expert in things like this and always helps with it’s experts and science, but we are already doing that and have done it in every Ebola outbreak going back to the first one in 1976, but that doesn’t mean regular troops, and by the thousands.
“Defense Department personnel are on the ground in West Africa and in U.S. laboratories fighting to control the worst outbreak in the African history of the Ebola virus, which a senior Army infectious disease doctor called a “scourge of mankind.”
Army Colonel James Cummings, a doctor and director of the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System in the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, said the battle against the virus since the outbreak began in West Africa in March focuses on trying to stop disease transmission.
“We had a large footprint in Africa,” Cummings said of the Defense Department’s response to the first Ebola cases reported in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire. Since that time, the Defense Department has answered numerous calls for assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO), nongovernmental organizations and ministries of heath and defense, he said.
Defense personnel provide a wide array of support to the Ebola-stricken African nations, from logistical help to guides for clinical management of the virus, Cummings said, adding the U.S service members “bring a level of excellence second to none, working in response to host nations and WHO in the most-affected countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia.”
While little known, this is something the Army specializes in, but not with thousands of line troops.
“The U.S. military, and in particular, the Army, has had a longstanding mission in preventing and treating infectious and parasitic diseases in troops, dating to the late 1800s.
The Armed Forces Press Service reported late Friday that military health workers, including an entomologist from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, already are in the affected area providing support ranging from logistical assistance to “clinical management” — assisting in treating affected populations.
“DoD personnel bring a level of excellence second to none, working in response to host nations and WHO in the most-affected countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia,” Army Col. James Cummings, a physician and director of the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center told AFPS.
Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon since the late 1970s, mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates — in the current outbreak, roughly 60 percent to 72 percent of those who have contracted the disease have died — and its stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.
Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have sought to develop a vaccine or treatment for the disease.”
I suggest the following ones:
Obama Pelosi Reid Sheila Jackson Lee!!!!!
And that’s just to start.
How about Sharpton, obviously Ebola is racist - it primarily goes after black people. He needs to go rile them up!
No, you must be kidding! Why on earth would we want to infect our military and have them come back here to infect their families and the rest of the US? You must really be bucking for the tribulation.
The entire area needs to be quarantined.
Without some number of armed U.S. forces to protect our personnel and guard equipment/supplies during transport and configuration, the equipment/supplies would likely be stolen/abused.
I'm not happy about sending our boys, but our other personnel need them. It's kind of like the Haiti earthquake response ... but with Ebola. 😕
What’s this “You people” crap?
What the hell are soldiers supposed to do with ebola? Shoot it?
We have a civilian organization, the Center for Disease Control, that has both the expertise and experience to control the spread of disease. They would be the ones directing that effort should we have an outbreak here.
No doubt, even with the military involved, it will be CDC in overall charge of the effort.
“DoD personnel bring a level of excellence second to none, working in response to host nations and WHO in the most-affected countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia,” Army Col. James Cummings, a physician and director of the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center told AFPS.
This is just more official propaganda to justify sending an unprecedented large military mission to Africa to combat Ebola. Whether it is justified or that it is the best strategy remains to be seen. We are putting US lives at stake in this effort.
The 2014 Ebola outbreak is the largest Ebola outbreak in history and the first in West Africa. The current outbreak is affecting multiple countries in West Africa (see Affected Countries) but does not pose a significant risk to the United States. A small number of cases in Nigeria have been associated with a man from Liberia who traveled to Lagos and died from Ebola, but the virus does not appear to have been widely spread.
CDC is working with other U.S. government agencies, the World Health Organization, and other domestic and international partners and has activated its Emergency Operations Center to help coordinate technical assistance and control activities with partners. CDC has also deployed teams of public health experts to West Africa and continues to send public health experts to the affected countries.
You and your kin would make fine volunteers to go to Liberia. Get the training and go. Me and my kin will stay here and pray for y’all.
The U.S. response to the crisis, to be formally unveiled later by President Barack Obama, includes plans to build 17 treatment centers, train thousands of healthcare workers and establish a military control center for coordination, U.S. officials told reporters.
You seem to want to pretend that the Army isn’t expert in this field that they specialize in.
You also use that old quote to claim that Army Col. James Cummings, a physician and director of the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center was saying it to justify thousands of ground troops being sent to Africa, I don’t think he was doing that back when he was discussing what his unit does.
Between the Army’s specialization in biological warfare and the CDC’s role in what they do, I’m not certain who is better at running large, complex, international operations, and bringing strong leadership, you seem to think the CDC is expert at that rather than the Army.
I made it clear that I am against the madness of sending in line troops to do what Africans themselves can do, but I do think the public should learn more about how specialized in biological agents the Army is, few people realize how diverse the Army’s area of expertise is.
My take: ebola has gone airborne and this will mostly be a mop-up operation.
I would prefer CDC to be in charge. It is their mission. Obama will be stopping at the CDC headquartes today. No doubt he will be spelling out their role in this effort.
And the Defense Department is concerned, one Pentagon official told MailOnline, about the public perceptions aroused when American G.I.s patrol ground zero in a disease outbreak that could plunge three or more countries into chaos if it worsens significantly.
Combat soldiers and Marines 'will be on hand and ready for anything,' said the official, who has knowledge of some, but not all, of the Ebola-related planning. 'But hopefully it will be all logistics and hospital-building.'
'The president has ordered us to help, and we're eager to do it,' he said. 'Now it looks like we're going to be the lead dog, and that's bound to make a lot of people nervous. It's understandable.'
'But no one wants U.S. personnel enforcing someone else's martial law if things go south and the entire region is at risk.'
'At this point in a response like this, we would normally play a support role for USAID and the CDC,' he said, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Count me as one of those people who is nervous about sending our troops in harms way.
Hogwash. In those African countries, 500 people die of pneumonia for every one that dies from Ebola. Obama's goal is to bring Ebola to America.
What is with you?
I’m against sending in line troops as well, why do you keep pretending otherwise? Who are you arguing with on that score?
I’m just trying to educate people on the role that the Army plays in science and biological outbreaks like this.
You can’t seem to get it through your head that the Army has been heavily involved in running it’s own research and labs and operations similar to the CDC, and has ALWAYS been involved in the Ebola outbreaks.
“The U.S. military, and in particular, the Army, has had a longstanding mission in preventing and treating infectious and parasitic diseases in troops, dating to the late 1800s.”
“Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon since the late 1970s, mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates — in the current outbreak, roughly 60 percent to 72 percent of those who have contracted the disease have died — and its stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.
Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have sought to develop a vaccine or treatment for the disease.
Last year, USAMRIID scientists used a treatment, MB-003, on primates infected with Ebola after they became symptomatic; the treatment fully protected the animals when given one hour after exposure.”
You keep confusing describing the Army’s biological research and medical capabilities, and them already being in Africa, with this decision to send in 3.000 line troops.
That’s correct and is consistent with my original post.
“They’re not going to fight Ebola. They’re going to protect American assets that are currently in place. Their function will primarily be logistics and hospital building.”
Appreciation ping.
Just part of the attempt by the Kenyan maggot to use the military for jobs having nothing to do with their commitment to defending the country. How many soldiers will die this miserable death?
WTF?????????
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