With Ebola now turning up in two large American cities, and the White House's new "Ebola czar" still declining to appear before Congress, a House member tracking the response to the disease says the Obama administration continues to put politics before public health.
"It is infuriating," Rep. Blake Farenthold, of the Comittee on Oversight and Government Reform, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV on Friday.
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In an interview that ranged from travel bans to the behavior of an Ebola-infected New York physician, the Texas Republican also blasted President Barack Obama and his new Ebola czar, Democratic political operative Ron Klain.
"They're more interested in politics than dealing with a health care crisis," said Farenthold.
"He should have been at the hearing today," Farenthold said of Klain, who on Friday skipped
a hearing on Ebola chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa's Oversight and Government Reform panel. "We need a medical doctor, not a spin doctor."
It was Klain's second
noteworthy absence since being named point man on the crisis.
But Farenthold also signaled that Congress is basically stuck with him.
"We've got to make the best of it," he said. "But if he's going to coordinate all of government, he needs to coordinate with Congress, who signs the checks."
Farenthold said he wants to hold the administration to its promise to treat Ebola — which has now spread from western Africa to episodes in Dallas and New York — with "an overabundance of caution."
He said one cautionary measure is to ban commercial flights between the United States and the west African countries — Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia — hit hardest by an infectious disease that has already killed more than 4,500 people, according to official estimates.
Farenthold proposed a workaround: military fights.
"it's not like we don't have any airplanes in the military," he said. "There's C-130s. There are a ton of military airplanes we can send relief workers, equipment and doctors in. We don't need to let tourists from these countries come on commercial airliners with innocent folks."
A critic of the administration's initial plan to set up Ebola screening for passengers at five U.S. airports, regardless of whether travelers from western Africa landed at one of the five, Farenthold credited the White House with changing course and instead ordering all commercial air travel from Ebola-affected countries through those five hubs.
"They're trying," he said, adding that "funneling everyone from the affected countries to the five airports is a step in the right direction. But I don't think it's enough.
"I think we ought to follow the lead of some of our European allies and just say, look, no travel there on commercial air. And if you need to get in and out for humanitarian or military reasons, we've got military transports or charter flights that can do that," he said.
Farenthold also questioned the decision-making of Craig Spencer, the New Yorker and Doctors Without Borders aid worker who returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea on Oct. 17, and developed the disease six days later.
Health officials are racing to retrace
Spencer's movements, which reportedly included a subway train ride and a bowling alley excursion in one of the world's most densely populated cities.
According to reports, Spencer developed fever on Thursday morning and went to a hospital, where he remains in isolation, and had been taking his temperature daily — in keeping with protocols coordinated between Doctors Without Borders and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"The issue is what are the protocols for someone coming back from that area, and there are conflicting reports," said Farenthold. "But I certainly think taking public transportation within the first 21 days, getting on a crowded subway in New York, would be questionable behavior."
"I would be spending as much time as possible in my home, and getting takeout delivered, rather than going out in public," he said.
Farenthold said he took heart from news that the second Dallas nurse infected with Ebola has also
been declared free of the virus.
Three Dallas infections, beginning with a dying Liberian man, were the first U.S.-based Ebola cases in history and triggered a national uproar over the federal government's tardy response to the disease's unprecedented spread.
"I think we are learning from our mistakes," said Farenthold. "We see a lot of government finger-pointing — one agency pointing the finger at the other, or the CDC saying the nurses violated protocol — right before they changed the protocol. You've got nobody willing to accept responsibility.
"But we have moved forward … and I think that's something that's going to be — is — one of the key factors in keeping Americans safe and limiting the spread of this disease," he said.