Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

U.S. says diseases like Ebola should be viewed as security threats
Yahoo! News ^ | September 27, 2014 | David Morgan (Reuters)

Posted on 09/28/2014 4:11:25 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration urged the international community Friday to view outbreaks of Ebola, MERS and other deadly diseases as global security threats that require broad and rapid responses to protect the safety of populations and economies.

Top U.S. officials from the White House, Pentagon and State Department met with representatives from 44 countries and multilateral agencies, including the United Nations and World Bank, to call for implementation of 7-year-old global standards for dealing with deadly epidemics and other health dangers, including biological attacks.

President Barack Obama, who this week urged members of the United Nations to do more against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, told Friday's meeting that the current response to disease outbreaks often amounts to an ill-coordinated scramble with tragic consequences.

"With all the knowledge, all the medical talent, all the advanced technologies at our disposal, it is unacceptable if, because of lack of preparedness and planning and global coordination, people are dying when they don't have to," the president said.

The worst-ever outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which has killed nearly 3,000 people in West Africa over the past six months and could reach a total number of 20,000 cases by November, was front and center in the discussion.

"If left unaddressed, Ebola has the potential to cause instability the likes of which we haven't seen since Liberia's civil war," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience that included health ministers and other officials from countries with a combined population of 4 billion people.

The international community is mobilizing thousands of personnel and pouring billions of dollars into an Americana-led effort to control the Ebola outbreak, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says could infect 550,000 to 1.4 million people by January if nothing is done.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bioterror; ebola; epidemics; globalsecurity
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-43 next last
To: lonevoice

The first “rapid response” should have been to close the damn border.


21 posted on 09/28/2014 4:41:31 PM PDT by Pride in the USA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

This is why the United States Army is the leader in infectious disease and biological warfare.

They already have the job of dealing with such threats to national security domestic and foreign and our ability to operate in contaminated areas and still function and fight.


22 posted on 09/28/2014 4:44:07 PM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

With all the things the UN does so well, is it any surprise that the front lines in the Ebola crisis are maned by largely Christian missionary and charity organizations and groups like Doctors without borders. It’s time we abolished the UN and applied the money wasted and stolen there to supplement the efforts that actually do the work.


23 posted on 09/28/2014 4:46:03 PM PDT by JimSEA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Well, another “security risk” arrived at NIH near DC this afternoon. That brings the total number to 5.


24 posted on 09/28/2014 5:17:23 PM PDT by bgill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JimSEA
"With all the things the UN does so well, is it any surprise that the front lines in the Ebola crisis are maned by largely Christian missionary and charity organizations and groups like Doctors without borders. It’s time we abolished the UN and applied the money wasted and stolen there to supplement the efforts that actually do the work."

Not a chance Jim. Did you know that Communist Alger Hiss wrote the original UN charter. He was in the Roosevelt state department until Whittaker Chambers exposed him.

25 posted on 09/28/2014 5:33:07 PM PDT by blam (Jeff Sessions For President)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: DoughtyOne

26 posted on 09/28/2014 5:36:29 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Avoid Bethesda for the time being.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

At its current rate of infection, doubling every 21 days, the entire population of earth will have been infected in 420 days, about December 2015. Half the population (3.6 billion) will be dead. The good news is that the survivors will be more or less immune and, like bubonic plague from the 14th century, ebola will only be a fading nuisance disease for the next few centuries. It might have been a Bilderberg population reduction plot but this is how building species immunity has always worked, from Black Death to bee disappearance syndrome to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.


27 posted on 09/28/2014 5:51:04 PM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (HELL, NO! BE UNGOVERNABLE! --- ISLAM DELENDA EST)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
"U.S. says diseases like Ebola should be viewed as security threats"

Nah. Take time out to drool a little. There's no hurry.


28 posted on 09/28/2014 5:55:05 PM PDT by familyop (We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of corruption smelled around the planet.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - Monty Python’s Life of Brian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ


29 posted on 09/28/2014 6:04:35 PM PDT by familyop (We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of corruption smelled around the planet.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: 2ndreconmarine; Fitzcarraldo; Covenantor; Mother Abigail; EBH; Dog Gone; ...
Ping…

A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread

30 posted on 09/28/2014 6:05:40 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Really???...Then close the borders and cancel all flights in and out of affected countries you retard!


31 posted on 09/28/2014 6:18:17 PM PDT by formosa
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: formosa
Really???...Then close the borders and cancel all flights in and out of affected countries you retard!

That makes too much sense. No elitists could ever accept that because it is too easy and would deny them a fear agent. That's the same reason we don't quarantine Muslims but lock down Americans instead.

32 posted on 09/28/2014 7:51:31 PM PDT by trubolotta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: ansel12

Hate to keep bothering you sir, but I can’t help but think our Army is getting itself into another Little Bighorn. Hope I am wrong and just being idiotic.


33 posted on 09/28/2014 7:54:13 PM PDT by pleasenotcalifornia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

So do open borders ... represent a security threat that is.


34 posted on 09/28/2014 7:55:52 PM PDT by Let's Roll (Save the world's best healthcare - REPEAL, DEFUND Obamacare!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: pleasenotcalifornia

You have the same feelings that I had for about the first 30 hours, I was outraged, at first I was thinking we were sending in labor to do what Africans could do, but then I got into looking at it deeper.

People forget that the military, and mostly the Army, are the very experts and people who deal with this stuff, and biological warfare and in all areas, from laboratories to the battlefield.

I also looked at what they will be doing and it is stuff that only they can do, building 17 treatment facilities totalling 1700 beds, and building a hospital to treat infected medical workers (that will serve as a confidence builder for them, the military also plans to run schools to train 500 medical helpers, PER WEEK, and they will be handling massive movement of supplies and materials.

The military needs this experience, and they darned well better be able to pull this off, or else we are telling the world and our enemies, that biological agents are our achilles heel, and that all the military expertise that we thought we had in protecting our people and our forces from devastation from biological agents, was all fake, and that all they have to do is get some Ebola across the border and they take out the country, or infect a couple of soldiers and our generations of training falls apart as the military contaminates each other and all of it’s bases, in some B horror movie scenario of military incompetence as they all stand around going “golleee, infectious diseases, and weaponized bio agents, we weren’t ready for that threat!”.


35 posted on 09/28/2014 8:09:09 PM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: ansel12

Yes the Army folks have been at this since near the end of World War II and yes they are probably the preeminent specialists on Ebola. But this operation is so huge in its scope and so dangerous because of the subtlety of a microscopic enemy that has become widespread. It will be only through an Act of God that we pull this off without a hitch. I’ll pray for His Mercy.

As for our enemies, if we did little they still couldn’t be sure that biological weapons are our Achilles heel, now we are in the position to prove our strength or weakness in this regard one way or another. Hope we are using the right strategies and tactics so all goes well.

Our servicemen and women are very brave indeed.


36 posted on 09/28/2014 8:50:31 PM PDT by pleasenotcalifornia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: pleasenotcalifornia

Actually the Army has been at this since the 1800s.

An operation of 3,000 Gis is hardly an operation that is huge in scope, and i don’t know what you call a “hitch”, or why you think we can conduct operations like this without hitches.

Being so terrified of disease that we won’t even show up would prove that bio is our achilles heel.

In the age of terrorism and biological warfare, and total global mobility of even the world’s peasant classes, our military BETTER be able to pull off a peacetime mission like this.


37 posted on 09/28/2014 8:57:35 PM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks; neverdem; ProtectOurFreedom; Mother Abigail; EBH; vetvetdoug; Smokin' Joe; ..
The game of Ebola Roulette continues...

*click* spin *click* spin *click* spin…

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

Bring Out Your Dead

We’re gonna need

a bigger cart!

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

38 posted on 09/28/2014 9:00:14 PM PDT by null and void (If the wage gap were real, American companies would be hiring millions of women to save a buck)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ansel12

I just haven’t met any former GI’s that thought our Army was close to infallible.

I think that 3,000 personnel anywhere means that many more than these will be going in and out of Liberia, such as military and civilians (Press, Politicians, and Contractors) that are not subject to the purview of USAMRIID.

Okay I’m a idiot so you don’t need to reply in that vein.


39 posted on 09/28/2014 9:27:08 PM PDT by pleasenotcalifornia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: pleasenotcalifornia

I have never even heard the topic of Army infallibility come up, so that was a silly thing for you to say.

That seems about all you had to say, you don’t like the military being involved, I heard you the first time.


40 posted on 09/28/2014 9:32:56 PM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-43 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson