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Medicine Government United States Politics

Obama Administration Seeks $58M To Put (Partly) Toward Fighting Ebola 105

The Associated Press reports (here, as carried by the Washington Times) that The White House is asking Congress for $58 million above current levels to speed the production of promising drugs to fight Ebola and additional flexibility for the Department of Homeland Security to cope with the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children still arriving at the southern border. ... [T]he $58 million request for the Centers for Disease Control would help the agency ramp up production and testing of the experimental drug called ZMapp, which has shown promise in fighting the Ebola epidemic in western Africa. It would also help keep the development and manufacturing of two Ebola vaccines on track. The White House request also seeks to use $10 million in unused balances at the Department of Health and Human Services to help with the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The scarcity of ZMapp, the most promising treatment known for Ebola, is such that the third U.S. doctor to have been returned after being infected by the disease will be treated without it.
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Obama Administration Seeks $58M To Put (Partly) Toward Fighting Ebola

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  • Nice (Score:1, Insightful)

    With Ebola in the news, its the popular thing to do.
    • Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ruir ( 2709173 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @08:17PM (#47838993)
      And then, the only sane thing to do that is suspend commercial flights and quarantine people who are coming from that part of the world, is not done.
      • Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @09:08PM (#47839149)

        Despite what people think Ebola is not very contagious in the western world where personal hygiene is actually practised. Ebola requires prolonged exposure or direct contact with bodily fluids. It's not like a influenza which can easily spread around an office from a simple sneeze.

        Personally I was more concerned about the SARS outbreak a few years ago than a few people coming and going from a "part of the world" which has an Ebola epidemic.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ruir ( 2709173 )
          Have you notice this world is ever so increasingly small with the ever commoditisation of fast transports, and that we have multicultural immigrations pretty much anywhere, which often live the same or only slight differently than in their original cultures/origin? And last time I noticed, once they start bleeding and vomiting, for instance in a packed plane, bus, mall, supermarket, or hospital waiting room, it will be mayhem no matter how much they follow personal higiene.
          • by ruir ( 2709173 )
            Immigrants, not "immigrations", damn automatic dictionaries.
          • which often live the same or only slight differently than in their original cultures/origin?

            You come across as incredibly racists / ignorant. I live in a country with a massive immigrant population from places like India, Pakistan, Africa, and SE Asia. I have also visited many countries of their origin. While some of what they do may be considered by you to be unhygienic it's a far cry from what goes on in their own countries.

            Travelling around the world I have seen people in major cities dedicate on the streets, wash food in the same water they just wash their cloths, wash themselves en-mass in a

        • Re:Nice (Score:4, Funny)

          by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Saturday September 06, 2014 @01:25AM (#47839761) Journal

          personal hygiene is actually practised

          Quite right. Simple measures
            Wash your hands, cover your mouth while coughing, seal the gloves of your suit with duct tape, stay home from work, use a glovebox, Get plenty of sleep and exercise, decontaminate yourself with a disinfectant shower, manage your stress, ensure that the air is filtered and sterilized,, drink plenty of fluids, decontaminate and sterilize your garbage, and eat healthy food.

        • Ebola requires prolonged exposure or direct contact with bodily fluids.

          Ah, like AIDS, then? Well the US is safe then, because AIDS never made any progress there.

          At least, not among White Middle-aged Guys. Not even their own wives would have promiscuous sex with them. Which is confusing, being that only White Middle-aged Guys are given the cure for Ebola.

    • Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by guises ( 2423402 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @09:38PM (#47839263)
      Are you seriously trying to imply that the only reason to address an ebola outbreak is to score popularity points? Or are you saying that your personal bias is so strong that if Obama's name is on it, it must be bad? Even when it's as no-brain obvious as this?

      Reporter: "Thousands of people are dying from a massive outbreak of a terrible disease."
      Reporter: "Libya's health infrastructure has been completely overwhelmed. A number of hospitals, including their largest, have been closed and quarantined."
      Obama: "Yeah, we should do something about that."
      Mr D from 63: "Oh ho! Look who's jumping on the bandwagon!"
      • I didn't imply anything. Are your simply assuming that I am due to your own bias's?
        • Oh bullshit. You implied exactly what he said, and then, like the coward you are, backtracked and said "oh wait I didn't imply anything that's all in YOUR head!" Spare us your trolling in the future, please.
          • I see you are emotionally invested in this. Please, recognize that politicians of all parties act on events getting play in the headlines. Its not like Ebola is a new problem.
      • You should have been around during the Bush administration. People took everything the man ever said, twisted it, and started frothing at the mouth condemning it. It was ugly - this is mild in comparison.
      • Are you seriously trying to imply that the only reason to address an ebola outbreak is to score popularity points?

        I personally wouldn't think so, no. But the state of play as given easily supports the notion that, despite its independent merits, it's definitely a convenient political lever as well, a.k.a. "Rahm's Rule" [fee.org]:

        TFA states somewhat in passing that this is part of a package of so-called "anomalies" to the upcoming Continuing Resolution, including, as the article coyly puts it, "additional flexibility" for border control, without providing any numbers or other details. Being the curious sort, I just spent about

    • by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Should there be an ice bucket challenge for Ebola? I'm sure if we had one of those, it would be sorted out in a jiffy!

      I have a hypothesis that in a western hospital, the survival rate might be a bit more than 50%, too. We don't have a large sample size to judge by, yet.

      • You are highly optiimistic. There is a fair chance the 40% that survive in West Africa have had a lifetime of low level exposure to similar things. That is not probable in America (or Europe).

        Even while the top five hospitals in the country each have a single case to deal with, the survival rate may be good - it wont be the situation when there are more cases than hospitals.

        Either a heap of people follow Obama's lead or "we gonna be toast!"

    • by Chryana ( 708485 )

      Disclaimer: I am not a citizen of the US, but I am in favor of any actions my government will take to help fight ebola.
      Maybe you should think for twenty seconds before shooting your mouth off.
      - It is still early enough that it is (relatively) cheap to contain the disease. If the disease is left to run amok, it is going to be astronomically more expensive to fight. When should action be taken? When the disease crosses into the Europe? Into North America? Into the US?
      - This is a valuable opportunity to learn

      • You are making a lot of assumptions regarding my post, mostly it seems based on your own perceptions or seeming need to feel defensive. I simply made an observation, I'll leave judgement to those like you who feel the need to make it.
  • Partly (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "To Put (Partly) Toward Fighting Ebola...". The majority of it will go to buy votes.

  • I think the money for Ebola is a boondoggle, but heck, not as bad as most of those things.

    But continued financing of the Export Import Bank is an outrage. Obama himself said it should be shut down when he was a candidate.

  • cost-benefit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by supernova87a ( 532540 ) <kepler1&hotmail,com> on Friday September 05, 2014 @08:50PM (#47839095)
    When you compare against all the other assinine things that $58 M have been spent on (to the tune of being merely a drop of the bucket in larger spending bills) within pork programs, we should be jumping to take advantage of helping in this situation. The level of waste in this kind of spending is close to zero.
    • by readin ( 838620 )
      I agree we should fund this. But we should also cut spending somewhere else to pay for it. If Ebola is important enough to spend the money on (and I believe it is) then it is important enough to find the money to spend by cutting other programs. When you see someone proposing spending without explaining how to pay for it as the President is doing here (and plenty of Congressmen are equally guilty), they're not being serious about governing- they're campaigning.
  • Oh wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by symbolset ( 646467 ) * on Friday September 05, 2014 @09:10PM (#47839157) Journal
    You people are horrible.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Slashdotters are not a particularly nice bunch. They're hopelessly cynical about EVERYTHING, and always look at stuff with the most negative of perspectives. Nothing is ever simple, everything must have an ulterior motive. Worst of all, they think that this totally cynical and frankly, miserable attitude to life makes them superior to other people because they somehow know how the world really works.

      In the case of this story, it's in Obama's interest to address the Ebola outbreak, if for no other reason to

  • The administration wants $58M more money (new debt) to fight Ebola AND pay for kids at the border... How much of the $58M is for Ebola and how much is for the kids crossing the border? Oh, and in addition, they want to reallocate another $10M in unspent money at HHSto fight Ebola.
    • by gfxguy ( 98788 )
      Yes... these are separate issues and should be voted on separately. I won't do the rant I did in response to an earlier post, but spending bills need to be for lone or related projects. They only do this so that when someone votes "no" because of the border issue they can be accused of wanting people to die from Ebola.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Too bad they used up a dose on the foolish doctor that gave no credit to the doctors and scientists that formulated the treatment, instead giving all credit to the invisible man in the sky who happily lets thousands die of this disease.

  • by l2718 ( 514756 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @10:46PM (#47839415)

    ZMapp is not a mass-produced medication. It is an experimental treatment. Calling it "scarce" gives entirely the wrong impression -- it is amazing that it is available for clinical use at all.

    It's certainly worth it to produce ZMapp in significant quantities -- people would rather take an untested drug than try to survive Ebola -- but there is no "scarcity" here. Perhaps if many people wish to try it we'll have a better idea if it actually works.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      ZMapp is not a mass-produced medication. It is an experimental treatment. Calling it "scarce" gives entirely the wrong impression -- it is amazing that it is available for clinical use at all.

      It's certainly worth it to produce ZMapp in significant quantities -- people would rather take an untested drug than try to survive Ebola -- but there is no "scarcity" here. Perhaps if many people wish to try it we'll have a better idea if it actually works.

      Wrong.

      Calling it scarce completely fits all dictionary and popular use definitions of the word 'scarce'.

    • by guises ( 2423402 )
      "Scarce" is accurate - the drug is derived from genetically modified tobacco plants of which there are only a very limited number. Obviously they're working on producing more, but the plants don't grow overnight.
  • by Radical Moderate ( 563286 ) on Saturday September 06, 2014 @02:29AM (#47839863)
    a fraction of a fighter jet [defense-update.com] for that!
    • I mean, is there a good place to PUT IT so that something good can be made to happen? (Instead of pure waste?)

      I've regularly seen situations where throwing more money than a certain amount at something simply doesn't help. You can only ramp up programs so fast, bring equipment into operation so fast, get people in, trained, and working productively so fast.

      It's quite possible that President Obama asked the people doing the work, "how much money can you absorb right now to accelerate things?" and got told

  • I learned from a blog entitled Vaccines and Therapies Targeting Ebola Virus May Meet Breakthroughs [lifome.com] that the United States National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration are collaborating to speed up the clinical trials of vaccines. They announced that, in this September, an Ebola vaccine would be ready for clinical trials. Does anybody know the latest news about this vaccine?

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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