Sam Stein reports
Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts: NIH Director
Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has "slowed down" research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.
"NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It's not like we suddenly woke up and thought, 'Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'" Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. "Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready."
It's not just the production of a vaccine that has been hampered by money shortfalls. Collins also said that some therapeutics to fight Ebola "were on a slower track than would've been ideal, or that would have happened if we had been on a stable research support trajectory."
"We would have been a year or two ahead of where we are, which would have made all the difference," he said.
While I certainly don't wish to introduce a political or partisan angle to this tragic outbreak, especially during the election season, (snark alert "I'm shocked, truly shocked to discover partisan politics occurring here on Daily Kos during the election season, ... and by me, no less!"), the consequences of the Paul Ryan - Republican austerity approach, aka "we want a government so small we can drown it in a bathtub" couldn't be more apparent.
Right here, right now we have evidence of how cutting essential budgets is leaving unprepared and off-stride for this crisis in a way that is costing lives.
The NIH's "purchasing power is down 23 from what it was a decade ago."
An even more dire situation exists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is a subdivision of NIH.
Paul Ryan and the Republican austerity extremists talk about budget cuts in the abstract as if they are doing "good things." Here we see the reality of what these cuts can mean in real life. Would we not be remiss not to mention this?
Collins also puts the Ebola outbreak in perspective by reminding us that 50,000 people will contract HIV this year and more people will die in one day of HIV than of Ebola in its known history.
Meanwhile concern over how the nurse at Texas Presbyterian Health Hospital became infected with Ebola even though she says she followed the proper protocol. One representative of a national nurses union complained of a "blaming the victim" mentality - criticizing the C.D.C. leadership for talking as if it is the nurse's fault for "breaching protocols," that she may not have been properly trained on how to strictly adhere to.
5:38 AM PT: Please consider checking out this important new study on the terrible impact global warming is having and will have on marine life in the tropics.
Many marine fish and invertebrates to disappear in the tropics by 2050 due to global warming
5:46 AM PT: American nurse with protective gear gets Ebola - how could this happen?
, by Holly Han of CNN.
CNN) -- On the surface, the nurse seemed to have taken all the precautions needed to protect herself from Ebola.
She wore a mask, gown, shield and gloves. Her patient was isolated in an American hospital.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there was a breach in protocol, but haven't elaborated on what it means. Instead, it said the protocols laid out for American hospitals work.
CDC officials have spoken to the infected nurse, and she wasn't able to point to a specific breach.
"At some point, there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection," the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said at a news conference Sunday.
6:37 AM PT: 2nd Ebola Case in U.S. Stokes Fears of Health Care Workers:
“This individual was following full C.D.C. precautions,” Dr. Varga said, adding, “Gown, glove, mask and shield.” Asked how concerned he was that the worker tested positive despite the precautions, he replied, “We’re deeply concerned about this new development.
The C.D.C. has said that for health workers in the United States, gloves, gowns, masks and face shields or goggles would be protection enough. But many health workers across the country, seeing images of people in Africa completely encased in full-body hazardous-material suits, have requested similar protection.
On Sunday, National Nurses United, the country’s largest union and professional association of nurses, continued to sound the alarm and call for hazardous-material suits at all hospitals.
“I’m angry about this,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director. “We want the first line of defense to be the most prepared. Our hospitals are resisting us. The C.D.C. doesn’t say that we need hazmat suits. If this doesn’t change dramatically, we will picket every hospital in this country if we have to.”