Posted on 11/15/2014 12:27:30 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at a White House event on Thursday to discuss the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus epidemic, Vice President Joe Biden said the United States should have a hospital that is capable of treating the disease in “every state of the Union.”
A reporter from the Wall Street Journal quoted Biden in the pool press report, which is e-mailed to other reporters, after the vice president met with “leaders of faith, humanitarian, and non-governmental organizations that are responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa and educating their communities about Ebola-related issues here at home,” according to the White House statement on the event.
“Biden said that the United States needs a hospital that's able to respond to Ebola in ‘every state of the Union,’” the pool report stated. “Why take the chance, he asked, noting that the administration was not expecting Ebola cases in every single state in the union.”
On Sept. 16, President Barack Obama spoke at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about how the country’s medical experts and hospital were “prepared” to deal with the virus.
“In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home,” Obama said. “We’re working to help flight crews identify people who are sick, and more labs across our country now have the capacity to quickly test for the virus.”
“We’re working with hospitals to make sure that they are prepared, and to ensure that our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely,” Obama said.
On Oct. 7, Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expressed confidence in the U.S. health care system in a blog on the CDC website.
“We have learned immensely from this first U.S.-diagnosed case and we are implementing additional actions to make sure health care workers and hospitals around the nation are as prepared and informed as possible,” Frieden said. “CDC is committed to making sure every U.S. health care system and health care worker is prepared for Ebola.”
But after the death of Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan from Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas on Oct. 8 and two nurses who treated him being diagnosed with the disease, the government assigned the women to two of the few U.S. hospitals deemed capable of caring for the women – the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland and Emory Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. (Both nurses are now free of Ebola.)
The pool reporter stated in his email that the event was meant to send a signal to Congress to approve the $6.18 billion the Obama administration has asked for in emergency funding “to continue to prevent, detect and respond to the Ebola epidemic.”
The pool reporter noted that Ebola Response Coordinator Ron Klain spoke for two minutes and Senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett spoke even less, citing laryngitis.
Biden, however, spoke for 25 minutes to those on hand, which included World of Hope, ONE, Bread for the World, the International Medical Corps, World Vision, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Save the Children and the law firm Latham & Watkins, according to the pool report.
"I'll be very blunt,” Biden said. “The emergency funding request that we have on the Hill now; I'm going to be completely honest.”
“We need you and your constituents to help carry the word because, your views -- each individual organization that's represented here -- carries a lot more weight in this environment, this political environment we find ourselves in, than anything I can say, the president can say, Speaker Boehner can say,” Biden said. “It is the currency that is most negotiable.”
“I'm being very blunt with you in addition to thanking you,” Biden said. “The more you continue your advocacy for the need for this emergency funding, the better we all will be."
According to the CDC, as of Nov. 12, 5,147 people have died from Ebola in three West Africa nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, with a handful of cases and deaths in other countries in the region.
Any decent hospital should be able to treat Ebola, we don't need to build 46 more super centers to treat Sars and worst, we just need to avoid being caught totally flat footed like we were in Dallas.
great idea!
Send that proposal with schematics to FEMA and the Defense Department.
Correct you are. I worked 23 years in private industry and 12 in a government funded outfit. The waste of tax payer funds in government outfits is beyond belief. Coming from a survive by making profit environment of private industry and then working in a place where only thing that matters is how to spend the funds available, it really made an impression on me. But I should’nt complain, I was able to retire early!
All 57 of them!!
Here in NJ government workers (at all levels) have succeeded in chasing out the private sector and those taxpayers able to follow their jobs to less-costly states; on the federal level they just chase jobs to other countries. Eventually it just collapses; no money for new government employees to provide services due to the costs of the retired former employees.
This is a precursor to single-payer for the inevitable collapse of the insurance industry due to Grubercare. Once they have these hospitals set up in each state, they’ll be under federal control, and they’ll eventually become the only place to get care for ANYTHING.
If they are going to allow those basterds in here make them all stay i DC!!!
Why does Biden's home state of Delaware need its own biosafety level 4 hospital rooms. It's a very small state that is very close to other much more populous states. Why should Rhode Island have one, since it is commuting distance from Boston. My state of Texas probably should have at least 2 or 3 such facilities given the geographical size and the fact that it has an estimated 27 million population.
Perhaps he could start with getting rid of Obamacare which is a burden on hospitals.
Let’s see, positive air ventilation, Category 5 suits for all workers and 20 workers per infected patient...hum, carry the two, add four, that would be about a billion per building, not including the nurses and doctors which are billed separately.
All 57?
Why, is it going to get that bad and they know it?
That too.
But it really is all a moot point if there were a real outbreak. We’d need lots and lots of facilities and containment areas. Not even a 2 or 3 in each of the larger States would do it.
Well, certainly a lot of regional ones. RI can use the one at Boston.
That said, details... This administration has become edept at misappropriating funds to “soft” applications to their cronies.
People should be quarantined “in Place”. They’re getting drips and not much more. Send in a ONE trained nurse or doctor 24/7.
A dozen people in NYC alone could cause devastation to the surrounding areas just from people leaving the city.
Yep if there had been an attack, we were obviously unprepared, what we need to prevent is returning to that same state of unpreparedness after 5 or 10, or 15 years of nothing happening.
It is a shame to see this cycle happen over and over.
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