A second case of Ebola has been diagnosed in the United States. A nurse that treated the Dallas patient who died of the disease last week has tested positive for it, after being quarantined Friday with a low-grade fever. What’s particularly alarming about this diagnosis is that the nurse was considered at low-risk form contracting the virus. CDC director Tom Frieden blamed Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas calling the infection a breach in protocol and warned that we might see more cases of Ebola in the coming days.
Frieden’s words are particularly alarming considering that many American politicians and governmental agencies don’t believe the U.S. is financially prepared for any outbreak.
Hillary Clinton spoke last week saying that Federal spending cuts have hurt the fight against the virus. “The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is another example on the response to Ebola — they’re working heroically, but they don’t have the resources they used to have,” she said.
National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins said Sunday that there would have been an Ebola vaccine already had it not been for budget cuts and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal blamed The Affordable Care Act for taking money from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC has received less than $3 billion over the last five years to fight infectious disease, a figure Governor Jindal argues is much too little.
The Ebola virus has clearly become an election issue, with Republican candidates calling for more money and attention to be given to preventing the spread of Ebola in America and criticizing President Barack Obama’s stance on the topic.
According to federal reports, fighting Ebola both abroad and at home could cost U.S. taxpayers $1 billion without even including the cost of treating the virus in domestic hospitals. The report estimates that treating an Ebola victim could cost between $2000 and $5000 daily; protective suits alone cost $1,000 each.
Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli doesn’t believe that throwing money at the situation will make it any better. “It seems to me much more about procedure and information getting out there as opposed to getting money into municipal governments,” he says.
Santoli points to how the United States distributed funding to beef up security in response to terror threats immediately following September 11th, 2001. “We treated every congressional district and even county as if they were equally vulnerable and we funneled money through a bureaucracy to get it there,” he says. “We don’t have time to do that now; this virus is working at its own speed , not on bureaucratic speed. So I guess we have the money… the question is whether we’re mobilized in the right ways.”
The World Bank has estimated that Ebola will cost West Africa $32.6 billion by the end of 2015.
