Capital Times: Bill Berry: White House missing in action in pandemics fight
Bill Berry, columnist for the Capital Times

“…Just last week came word that health officials with the World Health Organization fear a new outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus may spiral out of control in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. This, almost unbelievably, came in the exact week when the Trump White House announced Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer was leaving his post as senior director for global health security and bio-threats. Further, the office doesn’t exist anymore. Further still, the administration announced plans to ask Congress to cut $252 million in unused funding for Ebola that was allocated in 2014. Maybe Congress will ignore this nonsense. Oh, and four years after the U.S. pledged to help the world fight infectious disease epidemics such as Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced it is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out. … Meanwhile, no one knows who at the White House would be in charge of a pandemic now…” (5/14).