A sensible discussion on Ebola
Chuck Todd and Meet The Press finally put on a substantive program that showed a few rays of what good journalism could look like. The discussion on Ebola was mostly substantive. There were a few instances where political reporters showed their lack of objectivity and journalistic decency however. The experts effectively squashed their flawed reasoning.
Chuck Todd had two unbiased experts on the show. Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist/writer and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Gabe Kelen is Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins, Director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR), and Director of the Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER).
Early on Chuck Todd showed an important table that put Ebola into context. Ebola as an actual killer in America is rare compared to many other diseases, activities, and natural events that should give American much more concern.
Chuck Todd allowed his panel to ask the professionals questions. Manu Raju started off with a leading question. “We were talking about budget cuts and the ability to find a vaccine,” Manu Raju said. “The bottom line is that still the NIH has billions of dollars a year that it spends on finding vaccines. I am wondering, to what extent do you think the government is to blame for not prioritizing efforts to find a vaccine for Ebola?”
Laurie Garrett pushed back at Raju calling his statement grossly unfair. Her answer revealed the reasons why strong government involvement in healthcare is a must unlike what many who oppose healthcare reform believe. “No one could convince industry that it was in their interest to build up a huge stockpile of something that might never get used, might never get purchased,” Laurie Garret said. “So in fact there was a vaccine center at NIH. They did develop a possible prototype Ebola vaccine. … There was no incentive to take it through the pipeline for commercialization.” In effect private industry cannot be counted on nor should they be counted on for these types of vaccines are other health issues because their motive is profit (justifiably) and not the well being of a citizenry. That is the government’s job.
Stephanie Cutter went on to make the point about the effects of budget cuts on the response to healthcare events like Ebola. Dr. Gabe Kelen had likely the most prescient statement on the real problem with funding and political realities.
“Here is how it works,” Dr. Gabe Kelen said. “You have a fixed budget. A crisis comes. You move all your resources into that. And now the real question is not this, we are concentrating on this. We got a wake up call on it. What is it that the resources have been moved away from that two years from now that someone is going to criticize, ‘Why didn’t you look at this? God you are not prepared.'”