Ebola has been around for many years but recently there was an outbreak in Africa that resulted in one man being infected, who then flew to Dallas, Texas and became the first person in the United States to die due to this insane disease.  This outbreak was a matter of life or death for some people. The biggest issue was, “how many people in the United States would it infect?” That is what the United States and President Obama wanted to avoid.

“Here’s the bottom line. Patients can beat this disease. And we can beat this disease. But we have to stay vigilant. We have to work together at every level — federal, state and local. And we have to keep leading the global response, because the best way to stop this disease, the best way to keep Americans safe, is to stop it at its source — in West Africa.”

This statement comes from President Obama’s October 25th Weekly Address on the issue of the Ebola outbreak. The main issue was to secure the outbreak in Africa and to make sure that we were prepared enough in order to make sure no one became infected.

During the Ebola outbreak, the midterm elections were happening, so Congress was out of session so everyone in the administration acted together as one to make sure that everyone was prepared for the outbreak. They all came into agreement that the only way to protect from the outbreak was to make sure that the crisis with Ebola in Africa was contained. The administration at the start wanted a mandatory quarantine in the major cities where 94% of all flights from countries that were affected by Ebola  fly into but that could not be agreed upon. The best idea they came up with was  to have those people who were previously in those affected countries monitored in the privacy of their own homes and make sure that they were not spreading it to other people if they were infected.

From Greg Laden’s blog, he says that the government wanted to do a full intervention in order to come up with a vaccine in the majorly affected areas. The problem with this idea is that it could have taken up to 6 months for that process. He knew that they could not be a major scale outbreak in the U.S.A. He talks about the ways we as a country could stop the outbreak if it were ever to happen like stop all flights and the fact that people can have symptoms of the disease days after being exposed to someone who is infected. This process could be avoided with “self-monitoring” and making sure that people take care of themselves and realize where they are coming from.

All in all, I do like the way the U.S.A. responded to the Ebola Crisis. It was sad to see that citizens had to suffer and some actually pass away but it was good that not many people had been infected.