Obama Taps Ron Klain as Ebola Czar, Research Paper Example

While it appears that it is necessary to fight non-curable contagious diseases like Ebola in the United States, the policy that is currently enacted by Ebola Czar, Ron Klain, is not completely efficient nor necessary. According to the Washington Post, he plans to protect the country by “detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country” and will have an “aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in West Africa” (Eilperin & Nakamura, 2014). The effective portion of this approach stems from detecting and isolating Ebola patients within the country. Since Ebola can be spread from person to person through bodily fluids, it is important to track the individuals who have come into close contact with infected individuals. A major concern comes into play when citizens have been on an airplane with an infected patient, as air is recirculated throughout the flight. To prevent such a spread, useful education and prevention programs have been established by hospitals and airports alike.

A major advantage of Klain’s work is that there are now many hospitals and clinics that are adequately trained to recognize Ebola symptoms. Since the disease is a pressing concern, the physicians and nurses will check patients right away to determine if they have the high-grade fever and other symptoms indicative of the disease. If this is the case, the infected individual will be asked to wear a mask and be isolated immediately. This will prevent the spread of the disease at a possible source, so increasing awareness of the disease symptoms and how healthcare facilities should react to deal with such a potential patient is an excellent step towards preventing the spread of the disease to new people and locations.

Furthermore, to stop the spread of Ebola, it is certainly necessary to screen passengers at the airport that have travelled from West Africa, and especially from the countries that are currently experiencing endemics and epidemics. Therefore, it was an ideal move to hire professionals to screen these individuals’ at large airports, such as the John F. Kennedy airport in New York City. When these individuals are detected, it is essential that they are sent for medical attention immediately.

One of the major criticisms of Klain’s statements, however, is that we should prevent travel from Africa to the United States in order to prevent the spread of the disease to U.S. citizens. According to the laws of epidemiology, this would simply not work. Infected individuals from Africa will still travel by land, infecting more and more people in Africa, who do not have access to the same healthcare standards they would in the United States. As a consequence, the country would have to deal with a larger population of potential individuals coming into the states to begin with, which would completely undermine our efforts to eradicate the disease.

Overall, efforts should be focused on medical research that would help develop more effective treatments or a cure for the illness and less about infected individuals travelling to the United States. There are many effective screening methods that have been put in place that should prevent such a widespread infection from occurring. An additional major consideration is that Ebola is an endemic in Africa due in part to the living standards and water quality of the individuals living there. The United States has infrastructure set in place purposely to prevent major water contaminations, and this should help slow down the spread of the Ebola virus here, just as it protects us from many other preventable diseases on a daily basis.

The infrastructure that is currently set in place by the Department of Homeland Security is adequate for handling issues that pertain directly to support of the Department of Defense, but they are less prepared to handle natural disasters. Fortunately, the technology that the United States government has been able to access and utilize over the years have contributed to our efforts to defend ourselves against terrorists. However, it is interesting that we have not been able to use the same technology and research to be able to accomplish the same to prevent and handle the consequences of natural disasters on the home front.

As a consequence, the Department of Homeland Security needs a significant “redo” to improve the overall security and safety of the U.S. critical infrastructure. Many of the cities in the United States are old and as a consequence, the existing infrastructure cannot withstand earthquakes and hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina was one of the government’s greatest wakeup calls to this issue. Even though efforts have been going on for many years by both volunteers and the government to reverse the damage that has been caused by this disaster, many people are displaced from their homes even today. Furthermore, many still do not have running water because the pipes were too old and damaged to be repaired.

This event signifies that the Department of Homeland Security would not be adequately prepared for a major, wide-spread incident that could disrupt our food supply, impact transportation, overwhelm the healthcare sector, and disrupt the banking system. To prepare for these emergencies, it would be essential for the Department of Homeland Security to partner with the Center for Disease Control to determine how biological threats, potentially including Ebola, could be eliminated rapidly and efficiently from our water supply. A second move that would be necessary is to reorganize the structure of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and to train their employees in a manner that if any given emergency were to occur at a moment’s notice, they would be well-organized and well-prepared to do the job that is needed of them. Lastly, it is necessary to establish a fast-paced communication system between local city agencies and individuals on the scene to ensure that medical care and rescue services can be provided immediately and in an orderly fashion. An extension of this concept would be to establish volunteer reserves for these forces during times on an emergency to compensate for any shortages of service.

As demonstrated recently by terrorist organizations, these groups have the ability to contaminate the water of their enemies (Taub, 2014). Although this has not occurred yet, we must consider that this would allow us to become weak, so we must prepare for what could happen in advance so that we are ready. The Department of Homeland Security has not run through enough of these scenarios, so it would be useful for them to partner with medical professionals to alleviate these issues. Furthermore, FEMA service distribution and access to local services during events such as Hurricane Katrina and Sandy were inadequate, which demonstrates that there is a need to bolster these two systems as well.

Doing all three of these things will ultimately help us become more prepared for catastrophic events, independently of what the event actually is. It is best to be ready for everything, which is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure to its citizens.

While there are beneficial aspects of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), drafted by the Department of Homeland Security, it is difficult to determine how many aspects of the strategic plan will be accomplished and whether or not the department considered many of the evolving threats that could be considered as a primary factor of the country’s security (Homeland Security, 2010). From my first approach of the Executive Summary of the SSP for the Water Plan, I felt strongly that the executive summary was broad and sent the general message stating that the government is examining the water supply and determining how to protect it. However, it didn’t appear that these plans were well developed, and didn’t leave me with a sense that I would be able to trust that real plans would be put in place to do so. If I were a small water authority in the mid-West who reviewed the SSP, I would nonetheless use these guidelines to implement research to determine measurable ways that would help determine the safety of the water supply, in addition to compile a variety of indicators that would help me determine if a security breach had occurred.

Second, I would ensure that I had an adequate ability to contact the federal government if I had suspected any source of contamination, whether it would be due to natural causes or a terrorist attack. Since the water supply of a single facility could reach a broad array of people, it is the responsibility of the water authority to determine how to prevent the contamination from spreading to other facilities. Containing the threat is of utmost importance, but may require help from higher officials depending upon the resources that each town or local water facility has available to it. Ultimately, this should involve a degree of preparedness to oversee the removal of physical, chemical, and biological contaminants.

It is difficult to determine whether these are just paper studies that don’t impact me as the source of the local water supply, as it would be necessary to carry out more research to understand if this were the case. One of the largest shortfalls of the plan is the difficulty in managing and coordinating sector-specific agency responsibilities. While collaborating with all the federal and state departments is requested, the plan does not point out a specific way that this should be accomplished. Since communication difficulty has been a primary example of problems that have occurred in previous national disasters, it would be necessary to determine how these issues would be resolved as it pertains to water facilities. Furthermore, risk assessments are currently conducted of such facilities, so it would have been helpful for the report to indicate specifically what it believes that security breaches currently are, to begin as a starting point for further assessment.

The two significant improvements to this plan that I would request include private/public interaction and regulations. It is necessary for all water treatment facilities to be held to the same standards in order to ensure the entirety of the United States water supply is protected adequately. This process is directly tied into effective communication, as it is necessary for these plans to have a series of debates both among each other and with federal and state forces to ensure that these regulations are considered adequate in light of the laws that have been put in place for this purpose. It is possible that this situation would be enhanced by third party agencies, thereby brining private interaction into the mix. This is therefore a conversation that needs to occur before we can be sure that the water supply will be completely safe.

To ensure the overall security of the water system, it would be necessary to ensure that the existing infrastructure is strong enough to withstand a minor physical attack (DC Water, n.d.). This would involve checking the physical structures that are in place to ensure that the pipes or major water containers would not break. A second policy that should be set in place is to ensure that decontaminants already exist for the chemicals and waste that would have the potential to contaminate the water for the DC metropolitan area. This would include studying chemical neutralizers for large doses of chemical contaminants and consideration of using microbes to break down human waste if the concentration of this were to grow too large as well. A third policy would to be ensure that the agency is able to maintain direct communication with those that utilize the water supply, so that if a contamination were to occur, they would be able to warn the users before any severe sickness were to occur. Furthermore, this would allow the agency the opportunity to educate the public about water purification techniques and water source alternatives that can be used in order to ensure that everyone remains healthy and hydrated.

It is important to put these preventative measures in place because the responsibility of the sanitation commission is double fold; it is both to prevent these disastrous incidents from occurring and determining how they could be quickly solved if they were to occur. Preventing these disasters should be of utmost concern however, because it is more difficult to correct a situation than it is to prevent it. Therefore, stabilizing the infrastructure is of utmost importance, followed by running the different possible contamination scenarios and addressing them on the basis of what the best solution for each contaminant would be. Next, it would be necessary to run drills to determine how this message would be spread to the public quickly if there were to be an issue. To ensure that this would be a fast procedure, these education systems should already be in place, but repeatedly announced to serve as a reminder of proper protocol for each particular situation.

Ultimately, this plan would be effective because it is not costly, and the costs do outweigh the consequences of not being prepared. A water contamination of the Washington DC metropolitan area’s water supply would be very costly to rectify if this system was not set in place. Furthermore, it is important to develop these methods and start testing them early, so that improvements may be made as time goes on.

References

D.C. Water. (n.d.). Facilities. Retrieved from http://www.dcwater.com/about/facilities.cfm

Eilperin J, Nakamura J. (2014). Obama taps Ron Klain as Ebola czar. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/10/17/obama-taps-ron-klain-as-ebola-czar/

Homeland Security. (2010). Water Sector-Specific Plan. Retrieved from http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nipp-ssp-water-2010.pdf

Taub A. (2014). What if ISIS took Fox News’ advice and tried to weaponize Ebola? A play in one act.Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2014/10/21/7024273/ebola-isis-terrorist-dialogue