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.
They haven't been the "lead dog." CDC and USAID have assumed that role overseas. The CDC has as its main mission the control and prevention of disease on a global basis. So what is different this time? I believe it is the political agenda of the Obama administration.
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.?
They are not just "line troops." And according to the WP, Despite President Obama’s call for increased involvement of the U.S. military in the fight against the rapidly escalating Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the United States is hamstrung by a lack of military medical personnel with expertise dealing with the deadly virus, a top official in charge of coordinating the U.S. response said Tuesday.
There isn’t an existing cadre of people who have experience in treating this epidemic other than” the aid group Doctors Without Borders, said Nancy Lindborg of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Pentagon announced Monday that it would set up a 25-bed field hospital in Liberia to help provide medical care for health workers responding to the epidemic, prompting criticism from international aid groups and global health advocates who said the action was paltry compared with the need in the hardest-hit countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Lindborg said Tuesday that the hospital is intended to provide health care for foreign workers, not Liberians. The goal of the hospital is to “provide assurance that there will be quality health care available for health workers” who have or might volunteer to go to any of the affected countries, she said.
The World Health Organization has said the outbreak is “increasing exponentially” in Liberia. In Montserrado County alone — where the capital, Monrovia, is located — there is a need for 1,000 treatment beds; only 240 exist.
The Defense Department has provided some equipment, supplies and staff in the region since the outbreak began months ago. But the expectation was that Obama’s remarks on Sunday would produce more substantive action and that the U.S. military, with its enormous logistical capacity, extensive air operations and highly trained medical corps, could address gaps in the response quickly.
But the United States does not have a workforce trained in the special protocols for Ebola, Lindborg said. WHO is currently training 500 new workers in Liberia, and the U.S. government is supporting that effort, she said.
“I would like to know, do they think the response to date by the U.S. government will make any difference in the course of events in the current epidemic?” said Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, which has been the aid group working most actively since the outbreak began months ago.
During the same news briefing Tuesday, a top Pentagon official declined to provide specifics about other military assets that could be deployed.
“We’re continuing to evaluate where to best support the overall effort,” said Michael Lumpkin, assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflicts.
I am not confusing anything. Making the military the lead dog in this effort makes no sense. They don't currently have the medical people trained to fight Ebola. The question that needs to be asked is why isn't CDC leading this effort rather than the military? And it appears the military is still unclear about its role.