After insisting that there was no need to take any additional measures to combat Ebola, President Obama took several additional measures. Among other things the CDC issued updated guidelines for wearing and removing protective gear (the fi rst guideline was incorrect); restrictions were placed on travel from certain countries; and an "Ebola Response Coordinator"was appointed. Of course, the administration considers this to be a political or communications problem, not a public health crisis, so it appointed a person whose healthcare experience is essentially limited to having been sick once or twice in his life. The man, Ron Klain, is a partisan Democrat who has no expertise in medicine, public health, Ebola, or even in managing anything. He did work for Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, and helped to dole out stimulus funds. Mr. Klain missed the fi rst two White House Ebola meetings. That matters less than the fact that those meetings took place at all, for Cabinet meetings in the Obama administration have been few and far between. Even more signifi cant is that the President cancelled two days worth of campaign events and fundraisers, and that's something that is almost unprecedented. It is not a natural thing to bring in someone who has absolutely no expertise in or familiarity with a given subject to "coordinate" the government's response to a crisis. But Mr. Klain does have gobs of political experience, as a fi xer, a 'go-to guy,' as a spinmeister and attack dog, and the President has determined that is what he requires now: not a reassuring fi gure with an impressive resumé, but someone who will protect the President from the fallout of a few years of his own bad decisions. The fact remains that if Thomas Duncan, the Liberian man who entered the US, having contracted Ebola, had told the truth about his Ebola exposure, none of this would have happened. There would have been no secondary contaminations, and no Americans would have contracted the disease in this country. A rigorous screening program and a quarantine regimen could have prevented this, but neither was in place, so we have paid the price. Ironically, President Obama paid the price as well, in the only way that matters to him -- suffering serious political damage
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