Diary Prequel Package — page 370

an MSNBC who want to speak to me about the President's announcement and the implications of the announcement. As usual the White House is very nervous about having anybody speaking to the press before or on the day that the president makes an announcement. Therefore I am getting a lot of grief from the communications people downtown and at the White House about all of the requests for me to appear on the media. By grief I mean that they are not clearing me nor are they refusing me. They are just keeping me hanging, which usually means that the requests will be withdrawn by the media people themselves and they will find someone else. This is typical stupidity on the part of the White House and HHS. With regard to the announcement of the President, he is proposing many of the things that I and several of my colleagues have been pushing for. This includes 3000 personnel, a command-and-control center in Monrovia, Liberia, a US Army general in charge of the process. The supply of 17 Ebola Treatment Units consisting of 100 beds per unit, much personal protective equipment, an education program, home health care kits, home test kits, among many other things that are much needed. Hopefully, this will turn around the trajectory of the epidemic. However it will depend on how quickly they get this material on the ground. I am off to the congressional committees. More later. Sept. 17, 2014 - Big day yesterday. POTUS announced military involvement in Ebola at CDC at the same time that I was testifying before a joint Senate Hearing of the HELP Committee and the Appropriations Committee. I testified with Beth Bell from CDC (Tom Frieden was at CDC with the POTUS visit), and Robin Robinson. I was questioned on the POTUS plan, the scope of the epidemic and the possibility of respiratory/aerosol spread of the virus. The latter was triggered by Mike Osterholm's (as usual provocative and attention-getting) statement that the virus could mutate and spread by respiratory and that would be the end of the world. Typical Mike Osterholm. I have been countering this with a reality check about likelihood versus hypothetical. Senators at the Hearing were Dems: Tom Harkin, Patty Murray, Dick Durbin, Jack Reed, Mark Pryor, Barbara Mikulski, Bob Casey, Al Franken, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tammy Baldwin, Chris Murphy and Elizabeth Warren and GOPs: Jerry Moran, Thad Cochran, Lamar Alexander, Richard Burr, Johnny Isaacson, John Boozman. Kent Brantley was witness on second panel. Another example of the WH and HHS press people messing up. They would not let me go on the many press requests (CNN, NBC, etc.) since they wanted Lisa Monaco (NSC) to go on. As it turned out, she was with the POTUS in his motorcade in Atlanta and so no one from USG went on and the media was saturated with the usual suspects (Laurie Garrett, Mike Osterholm, etc.) The WH and HHS press people are truly a bunch of idiot amateurs. Sept. 18, 2014 - Yesterday had Hearing before the House Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs (Africa) chaired by Chris Smith. On the GOP side were: Stockman, meadows, Burgess, Royce (Chair of Full Committee). On Dems side was: Bass, Cicilline, Engel, and McCollum. My co-witnesses were Nancy Lindborg (USAID), Luciana (Lu) Borio (FDA), Beth Bell (CDC). Recurring question was "Who is in charge?" Real answer is