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.
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.