Source: CNN, 9-27-18 Prepared Written Testimony of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh Nomination Hearing to Serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court September 27, 2018 (submitted September 26, 2018) Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Feinstein, and Members of the Committee: Eleven days ago, Dr. Ford publicly accused me of committing a serious wrong more than […]
Source: CNN, 9-27-18 This morning, we continue our hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. We will hear from two witnesses, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. I’d like to thank Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh for accepting the […]
Source: CNN, 9-26-18 Written Testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford United States Senate Judiciary Committee September 26, 2018 Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Feinstein, Members of the Committee. My name is Christine Blasey Ford. I am a Professor of Psychology at Palo Alto University and a Research Psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. I […]
Source: National Post, 9-26-18 The following is the full speech U.S. President Donald Trump gave at the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly Annual General Debate in New York City on Tuesday. Madam President, Mr. Secretary-General, world leaders, ambassadors, and distinguished delegates: One year ago, I stood before you for the first time […]
Source: Vox, 9-7-18 Former President Barack Obama speaks to students at the University of Illinois, where he accepted the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government on September 7, 2018. Scott Olson/Getty Images BARACK OBAMA: Hello, Illinois! I.L.L.! I.L.L.! Okay, okay. Just checking to see if you’re awake. Please have a seat, everybody. It is […]
Source: CNN, 9-1-18 Meghan McCain delivered a tribute to her father, the late Sen. John McCain, on Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Read the transcript: “The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for, and I hate very much to leave it.” When Ernest Hemingway’s Robert Jordan at the close […]
Source: Town & Country, 9-1-18 To John’s beloved family, Mrs. McCain, to Cindy and the McCain children, President and Mrs. Bush, President and Secretary Clinton, Vice President and Mrs. Biden, Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, Vice President Gore, and as John would say, my friends. We come to celebrate an extraordinary man. A statesman, a […]
Source: Town & Country, 8-30-18 “My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain. I have had the dubious honor over the years of giving some eulogies for fine women and men that I’ve admired. But, Lindsey, this one’s hard. The three men who spoke before me I think captured John, […]
Source: Time, 7-17-18 MR. OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. AUDIENCE: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can! ADVERTISEMENT MR. OBAMA: Thank you. To Mama Graça Machel, members of the Mandela family, the Machel family, to President Ramaphosa who you can see […]
Posted by bonniekgoodman on October 19, 2014
https://historymusings.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/political-musings-october-19-2014-obama-rules-out-west-africa-congressionally-supported-travel-ban-over-ebola/
Source: WH, 10-6-14
Roosevelt Room
4:04 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. I just had an opportunity to get a full briefing from my entire team across administrations — across agencies on the aggressive steps that we are taking to fight the Ebola epidemic, to stop the epidemic at its source in West Africa but also to make sure that we are doing everything we need to do to prevent an outbreak here in the United States.
As I’ve said from the start of this outbreak, I consider this a top national security priority. This is not just a matter of charity — although obviously the humanitarian toll in countries that are affected in West Africa is extraordinarily significant. This is an issue about our safety. It is also an issue with respect to the political stability and the economic stability in this region.
And so it is very important for us to make sure that we are treating this the same way that we would treat any other significant national security threat. And that’s why we’ve got an all-hands-on-deck approach — from DOD to public health to our development assistance, our science teams — everybody is putting in time and effort to make sure that we are addressing this as aggressively as possible.
I know that the American people are concerned about the possibility of an Ebola outbreak, and Ebola is a very serious disease. And the ability of people who are infected who could carry that across borders is something that we have to take extremely seriously. At the same time, it is important for Americans to know the facts, and that is that because of the measures that we’ve put in place, as well as our world-class health system and the nature of the Ebola virus itself — which is difficult to transmit — the chances of an Ebola outbreak in the United States is extremely low.
Procedures are now in place to rapidly evaluate anybody who might be showing symptoms. We saw that with the response of the airplane in Newark and how several hospitals across the United States have been testing for possible cases. In recent months we’ve had thousands of travelers arriving here from West Africa, and so far only one case of Ebola has been diagnosed in the United States, and that’s the patient in Dallas. Our prayers are obviously with him and his family.
We have learned some lessons, though, in terms of what happened in Dallas. We don’t have a lot of margin for error. The procedures and protocols that are put in place must be followed. One of the things that we discussed today was how we could make sure that we’re spreading the word across hospitals, clinics, any place where a patient might first come in contact with a medical worker to make sure that they know what to look out for, and they’re putting in place the protocols and following those protocols strictly. And so we’re going to be reaching out not only to governors and mayors and public health officials in states all across the country, but we want to continue to figure out how we can get the word out everywhere so that everybody understands exactly what is needed to be done.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, we’re constantly reviewing and evaluating the measures that we already have in place to see if there are additional improvements. We continue to look at any additional steps that can be taken to make sure that the American people are safe, which is our highest priority.
And finally, we had a discussion about what we’re doing on site in West Africa. There’s been already extraordinary work done by the Department of Defense in conjunction with the CDC in standing up isolation units and hospital beds. We are making progress. The environment is difficult because the public health system there has very few resources and is already extraordinarily fragile.
And I’ll be very honest with you — although we have seen great interest on the part of the international community, we have not seen other countries step up as aggressively as they need to. And I said at the United Nations, and I will repeat, that this is an area where everybody has to chip in and everybody has to move quickly in order for us to get this under control. Countries that think that they can sit on the sidelines and just let the United States do it, that will result in a less effective response, a less speedy response, and that means that people die, and it also means that the potential spread of the disease beyond these areas in West Africa becomes more imminent.
So I’m going to be putting a lot of pressure on my fellow heads of state and government around the world to make sure that they are doing everything that they can to join us in this effort. We’ve got some small countries that are punching above their weight on this, but we’ve got some large countries that aren’t doing enough. And we want to make sure that they understand that this is not a disease that’s going to discriminate, and this is something that all of us have to be involved in.
So the bottom line is, is that we’re doing everything that we can to make sure, number one, that the American people are safe; I’m confident that we’re going to be able to do that. But we’re also going to need to make sure that we stop this epidemic at its source. And we’re profoundly grateful to all our personnel — our medical personnel, our development personnel, our military personnel who are serving in this effort. It’s because of their professionalism, their dedication and their skill that we are going to be able to get this under control, but this is a faraway place, with roads that in many cases are impassable, areas that don’t have even one hospital. We’re having to stand up, essentially, a public health infrastructure in many of these areas that haven’t had it before, and that requires an enormous amount of effort.
I’m very grateful for the people who are on the front lines making this work. It’s a reminder once again of American leadership. But even with all the dedicated effort that our American personnel are putting in, there are going to be — they need to be joined by professionals from other countries who are putting up similar effort and similar resources. And so I hope they’re going to be paying attention over the next several weeks so we can get on top of this.
Thank you.
Q What do you say to the American people who remain nervous in spite of your assurances?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I just explained to them that the nature of this disease — the good news is, is that it’s not an airborne disease. We are familiar with the protocols that are needed to isolate and greatly reduce the risks of anybody catching this disease, but it requires us to follow those protocols strictly, and that’s exactly what we are in the process of doing. And the CDC is familiar with dealing with infectious diseases and viruses like this. We know what has to be done and we’ve got the medical infrastructure to do it. But this is an extraordinarily virulent disease when you don’t follow the protocols.
And so the key here is just to make sure that each step along the way — whether it’s a hospital admissions desk, whether it is the doctors, the nurses, public health officials — that everybody has the right information. If they have the right information and they’re following those protocols, then this is something that we’re going to be able to make sure does not have the kind of impact here in the United States that a lot of people are worried about. But that requires everybody to make sure that they stay informed. Most particularly, we’ve got to make sure that our health workers are informed.
We’re also going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening, both at the source and here in the United States. All of these things make me confident that here in the United States, at least, the chances of an outbreak, of an epidemic here are extraordinarily low.
But let’s keep in mind that, as we speak, there are children on the streets dying of this disease — thousands of them. And so obviously my first job is to make sure that we’re taking care of the American people, but we have a larger role than that. We also have an obligation to make sure that those children and their families are safe as well, because ultimately the best thing we can do for our public health is also to extend the kind of empathy, compassion and effort so that folks in those countries as well can be rid of this disease.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Q Are you looking to the private sector —
THE PRESIDENT: A lot of volunteering. Thank you, everybody.
END
4:15 P.M. EDT
Posted by bonniekgoodman on October 6, 2014
https://historymusings.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/full-text-obama-presidency-october-6-2014-president-barack-obamas-remarks-after-meeting-on-ebola-announcing-airport-screening-transcript/
Posted by bonniekgoodman on October 3, 2014
https://historymusings.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/political-musings-october-3-2014-is-texas-ebola-patient-thomas-eric-duncan-a-terrorist-criminal-or-victim/
Source: WH, 9-27-14
In this week’s address, the President reiterated the forceful and optimistic message of American leadership that he delivered in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week. America is leading the world against the most pressing challenges, including the fight to degrade and destroy ISIL, the effort to stop the Ebola epidemic, and the movement to confront the threat from climate change. The world looks to America and its commitment to freedom in the face of uncertainly, and as the President said, it will continue to do so for generations to come.
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
September 27, 2014
Hi, everybody. American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world. That was true this week, as we mobilized the world to confront some of our most urgent challenges.
America is leading the world in the fight to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL. On Monday, our brave men and women in uniform began air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. And they weren’t alone. I made it clear that America would act as part of a broad coalition, and we were joined in this action by friends and partners, including Arab nations. At the United Nations in New York, I worked to build more support for this coalition; to cut off terrorist financing; and to stop the flow of foreign fighters into and out of that region. And in my address to the UN, I challenged the world — especially Muslim communities – to reject the ideology of violent extremism, and to do more to tap the extraordinary potential of their young people.
America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Along with our allies, we will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy. And this week, I called upon even more nations to join us on the right side of history.
America is leading the fight to contain and combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. We’re deploying our doctors and scientists — supported by our military — to help corral the outbreak and pursue new treatments. From the United Kingdom and Germany to France and Senegal, other nations are stepping up their efforts, too, sending money, supplies, and personnel. And we will continue to rally other countries to join us in making concrete commitments to fight this disease, and enhance global health security for the long-term.
America is engaging more partners and allies than ever to confront the growing threat of climate change before it’s too late. We’re doing our part, and helping developing nations do theirs. At home, we’ve invested in clean energy, cut carbon pollution, and created new jobs in the process. Abroad, our climate assistance now reaches more than 120 nations. And on Tuesday, I called on every nation – developed and developing alike — to join us in this effort for the sake of future generations.
The people of the world look to us to lead. And we welcome that responsibility. We are heirs to a proud legacy of freedom. And as we showed the world this week, we are prepared to do what is necessary to secure that legacy for generations to come.
Thanks, and have a great weekend.
Posted by bonniekgoodman on September 28, 2014
https://historymusings.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/full-text-obama-presidency-september-27-2014-president-barack-obamas-weekly-address-america-is-leading-the-world-on-american-leadership-in-fights-against-isis-ebola-transcript/
Source: WH, 9-26-14
South Court Auditorium
11:51 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the White House. Thank you for being here. I want to welcome members of Congress, leaders from across my administration, and our friends and partners — leaders in public health not just from the United States, but from around the world. Thank you for joining us to advance a cause that touches us all — the health of our people and the security of our nations and of the world.
Today, of course, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of West Africa. And I know that some of you have been there, doing heroic work in the fight against Ebola. You’ve seen firsthand the tragedy that’s taking place. In Liberia, in Sierra Leone, in Guinea, people are terrified. Hospitals, clinics, treatment centers are overwhelmed, leaving people dying on the streets. Public health systems are near collapse. And then there are the secondary effects — economic growth is slowing dramatically, governments are being strained. And if left unchecked, experts predict that hundreds of thousands of people could be killed in a matter of months.
That’s why I’ve told my team that fighting this epidemic is a national security priority for the United States. It’s why I recently announced a major increase in our efforts. Our military command in Liberia is now up and running. We’re standing up an air bridge to move health workers and supplies into West Africa more quickly. We’re setting up a field hospital, new treatment units, a facility to train thousands of health workers. So this is an area where the United States has an opportunity to lead, and we’ve been making a major contribution.
But yesterday at the United Nations, I joined with Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Dr. Chan and said this has to be a global priority. Over the last week, culminating yesterday in New York, more countries and organizations have announced significant commitments, including health care workers, and treatment facilities, and financial support. And today I want to thank, in particular, the government of Japan, which has pledged to provide some 500,000 pieces of ventilated protective gear — head gear, gloves and boots — to help keep health workers safe as they treat patients in the region.
So we’ve got to now keep up this momentum. This epidemic underscores — vividly and tragically — what we already knew, which is, in a world as interconnected as ours, outbreaks anywhere, even in the most remote villages and the remote corners of the world, have the potential to impact everybody, every nation.
And though this Ebola epidemic is particularly dangerous, we’ve seen deadly diseases cross borders before. H1N1. SARS. MERS. And each time, the world scrambles to coordinate a response. Each time, it’s been harder than it should be to share information and to contain the outbreak. As a result, diseases have spread faster and farther than they should have — which means lives are lost that could have been saved. 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. So we have to do better — especially when we know that outbreaks are going to keep happening. That’s inevitable.
At the same time, other biological threats have also grown — from infections that are resistant to antibiotics to terrorists that seek to develop and use biological weapons. And no nation can meet these challenges on its own. Nobody is that isolated anymore. Oceans don’t protect you. Walls don’t protect you. And that means all of us, as nations, and as an international community, need to do more to keep our people safe. And that’s why we’re here.
We have to change our mindsets and start thinking about biological threats as the security threats that they are — in addition to being humanitarian threats and economic threats. We have to bring the same level of commitment and focus to these challenges as we do when meeting around more traditional security issues.
And what I’ve said about the Ebola epidemic is true here as well: As the nation that has underwritten much of global security for decades, the United States has some capabilities that other nations don’t have. We can mobilize the world in ways that other nations may not be able to. And that’s what we’re trying to do on Ebola. And that’s what we’ll do on the broader challenge of ensuring our global health security. We will do our part. We will lead. We will put resources. But we cannot do it alone.
That’s why, back in February, before the current Ebola outbreak, we launched this Global Heath Security Agenda, and I pushed this agenda at the G7 meeting, because we could see something like this coming. And we issued a challenge to ourselves and to all nations of the world to make concrete pledges towards three key goals: prevent, detect and respond. We have to prevent outbreaks by reducing risks. We need to detect threats immediately wherever they arise. And we need to respond rapidly and effectively when we see something happening so that we can save lives and avert even larger outbreaks.
Now, the good news is today, our nations have begun to answer the call. Together, our countries have made over 100 commitments both to strengthen our own security and to work with each other to strengthen the security of all countries’ public health systems. And now, we’ve got to turn those commitments into concrete action -– starting in West Africa. We’ve got to make sure we never see a tragedy on this scale again, and we have to make sure we’re not caught flat-footed. Because you know better than I do that not only can we anticipate additional outbreaks, but we also know that viruses in large populations have the opportunity to mutate in ways that could make them even more deadly and spread more rapidly.
So first, we’ll do more to prevent threats and outbreaks. We’re going to partner with countries to help boost immunization rates to stop the spread of preventable diseases. We’ll work together to improve biological security so nations can store, transport, and work with dangerous pathogens safely. Here in the United States, we’re working with our partners to find new ways to stop animal diseases from crossing over into people -– which, of course, is how Ebola started. And with the executive order I signed last week, we now have a national strategy to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, to better protect our children and grandchildren from the reemergence of diseases and infections that the world conquered decades ago.
Second, we’ll do more to detect incidents and outbreaks. We’ll help hospitals and health workers find ways to share information more quickly as outbreaks occur. We want to help countries improve their monitoring systems so they can track progress in real time. And we’ll intensify our efforts to diagnose diseases faster. And technologies now exist, today, that diagnose many illnesses in minutes. And one of the things that we need to do is work together to find ways to get those new technologies to market as quickly as possible and distributed as quickly as possible.
In too many places around the world, patients still have to wait sometimes for days to find out if they’re sick, which means that in the meantime, they’re infecting friends and they’re infecting family. We can do better on that. So we’re going to keep working to get new technologies to hospitals and health workers who need it so they can diagnose patients quickly and do more to save lives at the earliest stages of disease.
And finally, we’ll do more to respond faster when incidents and outbreaks happen. The United States will continue to help countries create their own emergency operations centers, with rapid response teams ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Just like our military conducts exercises to be ready, we’ll lead more training exercise as well, helping countries stress-test their system and personnel so that in the event of an outbreak or biological attack, they know how to find the source, they know how to mitigate the impact, they know how to save lives. They can institute best practices that in many advanced countries we take for granted. Under the CDC, this is their job. If they find something out, they know how to isolate it rapidly; they know how to conduct the epidemiological studies, and they know what protocols to follow. Every country has the capacity to do that. Because a lot of times, it’s not high-tech, doesn’t require huge resources; it does require planning and preparation.
As we’re often seeing in West Africa, often the greatest need in a crisis is personnel who are trained and ready to deploy. So we’re going to keep working to strengthen the global networks of experts. When a crisis occurs, there are enough specialists standing by, ready to work.
And today, I’m pleased to announce a new effort to help health workers respond to diseases like Ebola. As many of you know firsthand, the protective gear that health workers wear can get incredibly hot, especially in humid environments. So today, we’re issuing a challenge to inventors and entrepreneurs and businesses of the world to design better protective solutions for our health workers. If you design them, we will make them. We will pay for them. And our goal is to get them to the field in a matter of months to help the people working in West Africa right now. I’m confident we can do this.
So here’s the bottom line: No one should ever have to die for lack of an isolation tent or a treatment bed, as is happening in West Africa. No community should be left at the mercy of a horrific disease. No country should be caught by surprise if an outbreak starts to become an epidemic. We’ve got to act quickly. And we’ve got to meet the commitments that we’re making here today, and track our progress and hold each other accountable.
So you can anticipate that I will be bringing this up with the heads of state and government that you report to. I especially want to thank the governments of Finland and Indonesia, who’ve agreed to lead this effort going forward. I want to thank South Korea, which will host this conference next year. I want to keep the momentum going.
And as we go forward, let’s remember what we’re working toward -– more families, more communities, more nations that are better able to provide for their own health security. And one thing I want to point out, because all of you have been working in the field for many years and understand these issues far better than I ever will. Even as we are working on preparedness, understand that the U.S. commitment — and hopefully the world’s commitment — to just building a better public health infrastructure generally remains. It’s one thing for us to make sure that we can anticipate diseases — identify diseases early and respond to them rapidly. But as everybody here knows, if the body is strong, if communities are strong, if nations are strong, then their immune systems are a little bit stronger. And so part of what we will also continue to have to do is make sure that children are well fed, and that they’re getting their immunizations, and that people have opportunity to get out of extreme poverty. That’s also part of the long-term agenda.
So we have a very narrow, specific issue in terms of how we respond to the potential outbreaks of epidemics like we’re seeing in West Africa. I don’t want people to think that somehow that distracts us from some of our broader public health goals. But right now, what we’re focused on today is to make sure that we have the opportunity to succeed in a situation in which success will never actually be seen. It will be the attacks that we prevented, and the infections that we stopped before they started, and the outbreaks that don’t explode into epidemics.
The scenes we’re seeing in West Africa are heartbreaking and they tear at our conscience. But even now, in the face of unimaginable suffering, there’s still hope. There’s hope in people like Dr. Melvin Korkor from Liberia. I know he shared his story with you earlier here today. I think it’s important for the world to hear it, for those of you who are just tuning in.
When the Ebola outbreak first began, in a different part of Liberia from where Dr. Korkor lives, he and his colleagues didn’t think they were at risk. So they kept seeing patients, including some with fevers. And as many of you know, one of the tricky things about Ebola is sometimes it presents itself early with symptoms that could be malaria or typhoid. So Dr. Korkor and his colleagues didn’t have enough latex gloves to use on those illnesses -– they saved gloves for things like surgeries. One of those patients turned out to have Ebola. A few nurses got sick. After caring for them, Melvin tested positive as well.
He lay in bed surrounded by other patients, forcing himself to eat and drink even though he had no appetite, watching others die. He fought off despair by reading his Bible and tried to stay calm. And he says, as he describes it, “I said to myself I was going to make it.” “I said to myself I was going to make it.” The days passed. Doctors and nurses gave him the best comfort and care that they could, and Melvin pulled through. He survived. And he says, “It was like being reborn.” And now, nearly two months after being declared disease free, he’s counting down the days until his hospital reopens and he can get back to work in just a few weeks.
So, Melvin, your story reminds us that this virus can be beaten, because there are strong people, determined people in these countries who are prepared to do what it takes to save their friends and countrymen and families. But they need a little help.
At this very moment, there are thousands of health workers like Dr. Korkor in West Africa –- on the ground, in cities, neighborhoods, in remote villages, doing everything they can to stop this virus, whatever it takes. And we have the tools to help them, to save lives. We have the knowledge and resources –- not just to stop this outbreak, but to prevent something like this from happening again.
It is our moral obligation and it is in our national self-interests to see this work through, to help them, to help ourselves; the commitment to make our nation and our world is more secure, and the determination to work together to protect the lives of people. We have to be as strong and as determined and as driven as Melvin.
Thank you all for being part of this critical work. The United States is proud to be your partner. I’m looking forward to making sure that all these experts here get the support that they need from their leadership. And hopefully, as a consequence of meetings like this translated into action, we’ll be savings lives for many years to come.
All right. Thank you. (Applause.)
END
12:10 P.M. EDT
Posted by bonniekgoodman on September 28, 2014
https://historymusings.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/full-text-obama-presidency-september-26-2014-president-barack-obamas-speech-at-global-health-security-agenda-summit-about-ebola-outbreak-transcript/
Source: WH, 9- 16-14
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Georgia
4:01 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. Please be seated. I want to thank Dr. Frieden and everybody here at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for welcoming me here today. Tom and his team just gave me an update on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, our efforts to help mobilize the international community to fight it, and the steps that we’re taking to keep people here at home safe.
Tom and his team are doing outstanding work. Between the specialists they have on the ground in West Africa and here at headquarters, they’ve got hundreds of professionals who are working tirelessly on this issue. This is the largest international response in the history of the CDC. After this, I’ll be meeting with some of these men and women, including some who recently returned from the front lines of the outbreak. And they represent public service at its very best. And so I just want them to know how much the American people appreciate them. Many of them are serving far away from home, away from their families. They are doing heroic work and serving in some unbelievably challenging conditions — working through exhaustion, day and night, and many have volunteered to go back. So we are very, very proud of them.
Their work and our efforts across the government is an example of what happens when America leads in confronting some major global challenges. Faced with this outbreak, the world is looking to us, the United States, and it’s a responsibility that we embrace. We’re prepared to take leadership on this to provide the kinds of capabilities that only America has, and to mobilize the world in ways that only America can do. That’s what we’re doing as we speak.
First and foremost, I want the American people to know that our experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low. We’ve been taking the necessary precautions, including working with countries in West Africa to increase screening at airports so that someone with the virus doesn’t get on a plane for the United States. 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. 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.
And here I’ve got to commend everybody at Emory University Hospital. I just had the opportunity to meet with Doctors Gartland and Ribner and members of their team and the nurses who — sorry, doctors, but having been in hospitals, I know — (laughter) — they’re the ones really doing the work. And I had a chance to thank them for their extraordinary efforts in helping to provide care for the first Americans who recently contracted the disease in Africa. The first two of those patients were released last month and continue to improve. And it’s a reminder for the American people that, should any cases appear in the United States, we have world-class facilities and professionals ready to respond. And we have effective surveillance mechanisms in place.
I should mention, by the way, that I had a chance to see Dr. Brantly in the Oval Office this morning. And although he is still having to gain back some weight, he looks great. He looks strong and we are incredibly grateful to him and his family for the service that he has rendered to people who are a lot less lucky than all of us.
As we all know, however, West Africa is facing a very different situation, especially in the hardest hit countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and in Guinea. Tom and others recently returned from the region, and the scenes that they describe are just horrific. More than 2,400 men, women and children are known to have died — and we strongly suspect that the actual death toll is higher than that. Hospitals, clinics and the few treatment centers that do exist have been completely overwhelmed. An already very weak public health system is near collapse in these countries. Patients are being turned away, and people are literally dying in the streets.
Now, here’s the hard truth: In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic of the likes that we have not seen before. It’s spiraling out of control. It is getting worse. It’s spreading faster and exponentially. Today, thousands of people in West Africa are infected. That number could rapidly grow to tens of thousands. And if the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us. So this is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security — it’s a potential threat to global security if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic. That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease.
And that’s why, two months ago, I directed my team to make this a national security priority. We’re working this across our entire government, which is why today I’m joined by leaders throughout my administration, including from my national security team.
And we’ve devoted significant resources in support of our strategy with four goals in mind. Number one, to control the outbreak. Number two, to address the ripple effects of local economies and communities to prevent a truly massive humanitarian disaster. Number three, to coordinate a broader global response. And number four, to urgently build up a public health system in these countries for the future — not just in West Africa but in countries that don’t have a lot of resources generally.
Now, this is a daunting task. But here’s what gives us hope. The world knows how to fight this disease. It’s not a mystery. We know the science. We know how to prevent it from spreading. We know how to care for those who contract it. We know that if we take the proper steps, we can save lives. But we have to act fast. We can’t dawdle on this one. We have to move with force and make sure that we are catching this as best we can, given that it has already broken out in ways that we had not seen before.
So today, I’m announcing a major increase in our response. At the request of the Liberian government, we’re going to establish a military command center in Liberia to support civilian efforts across the region — similar to our response after the Haiti earthquake. It’s going to be commanded by Major General Darryl Williams, commander of our Army forces in Africa. He just arrived today and is now on the ground in Liberia. And our forces are going to bring their expertise in command and control, in logistics, in engineering. And our Department of Defense is better at that, our Armed Services are better at that than any organization on Earth.
We’re going to create an air bridge to get health workers and medical supplies into West Africa faster. We’re going to establish a staging area in Senegal to help distribute personnel and aid on the ground more quickly. We are going to create a new training site to train thousands of health workers so they can effectively and safely care for more patients. Personnel from the U.S. Public Health Service will deploy to the new field hospitals that we’re setting up in Liberia. And USAID will join with international partners and local communities in a Community Care Campaign to distribute supplies and information kits to hundreds of thousands of families so they can better protect themselves.
We’re also going to build additional treatment units, including new isolation spaces and more than 1,000 beds. And in all our efforts, the safety of our personnel will remain a top priority. Meanwhile, our scientists continue their urgent research in the hope of finding new treatments and perhaps vaccines. And today I’m calling on Congress to approve the funding that we’ve requested so that we can carry on with all these critical efforts.
Today, the United States is doing even more. But this is a global threat, and it demands a truly global response. International organizations just have to move faster than they have up until this point. More nations need to contribute experienced personnel, supplies, and funding that’s needed, and they need to deliver on what they pledge quickly. Charities and individual philanthropists have given generously, and they can make a big difference. And so we’re not restricting these efforts to governmental organizations; we also need NGOs and private philanthropies to work with us in a coordinated fashion in order to maximize the impact of our response.
This week, the United States will chair an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Next week, I’ll join U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to continue mobilizing the international community around this effort. And then, at the White House, we’re going to bring more nations together to strengthen our global health security so that we can better prevent, detect and respond to future outbreaks before they become epidemics.
This is actually something that we had announced several months ago at the G7 meeting. We determined that this has to be a top priority; this was before the Ebola outbreak. We anticipated the fact that in many of these countries with a weak public health system, if we don’t have more effective surveillance, more effective facilities on the ground, and are not helping poor countries in developing their ability to catch these things quickly, that there was at least the potential of seeing these kinds of outbreaks. And sadly, we now see that our predictions were correct. It gives more urgency to this effort — a global health initiative — that we have been pushing internationally.
Let me just close by saying this: The scenes that we’re witnessing in West Africa today are absolutely gut-wrenching. In one account over the weekend, we read about a family in Liberia. The disease had already killed the father. The mother was cradling a sick and listless five-year-old son. Her other son, 10-years-old, was dying, too. They finally reached a treatment center but they couldn’t get in. And, said a relative, “We are just sitting.”
These men and women and children are just sitting, waiting to die, right now. And it doesn’t have to be this way.
The reality is that this epidemic is going to get worse before it gets better. But right now, the world still has an opportunity to save countless lives. Right now, the world has the responsibility to act — to step up, and to do more. The United States of America intends to do more. We are going to keep leading in this effort. We’re going to do our part, and we’re going to continue to make sure that the world understands the need for them to step alongside us as well in order for us to not just save the lives of families like the one I just discussed, but ultimately, to make sure that this doesn’t have the kinds of spillover effects that become even more difficult to control.
So thank you very much to the entire team that’s already doing this work. And please know that you’ve got your President and Commander-in-Chief behind you. Thank you.
END
4:14 P.M. EDT
Posted by bonniekgoodman on September 16, 2014
https://historymusings.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/full-text-obama-presidency-september-16-2014-president-barack-obamas-remarks-on-the-ebola-outbreak-announcing-he-is-sending-1000-troops-to-combat-the-disease-transcript/
