On November 20, 2014 Rep. Kelly of Pennsylvania asked for and was granted permission to address the United States House of Representatives for a few minutes to talk about ebola concerns.
What he said scared the hell out of everybody:
“Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, today I rise because I want to talk about a piece of legislation that I am dropping with a colleague from the Senate, Senator Rubio. It is H.R. 5746. Its title is Keeping America Safe from Ebola.
Now, I know a couple weeks ago, Ebola was in the headlines everywhere and we couldn’t stop talking about it. Every newscast was filled with more and more information about Ebola. There was a great concern around not only our country, but around the world about this disease that was so lethal and what were we going to do to stop it.
Well, I didn’t know that much about Ebola, so what I decided to do was go back and look in and find out as much as I could about Ebola and find out how we ever became even knowledgeable of Ebola.
I found out that there was a doctor in 1976 by the name of Dr. Peter Piot. He is a Belgian doctor. He discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. In fact, my staff and I said: Okay, we know Dr. Piot discovered Ebola. We know he knows about this virus. Let’s find out from him the true information that we need to have. If this is such a dangerous disease, if this is such a dangerous virus, if it is so lethal, shouldn’t we try to find out everything that we can about Ebola?
And so I contacted Dr. Piot. He was in London. Let me just tell you who he is.
Dr. Peter Piot is not only a doctor, but he has a Ph.D. He is a clinical microbiologist. He is the director of the legendary London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He is the former Undersecretary General of the United Nations and a former executive director of UNAIDS. He lives in London, and he has spent his entire life studying infectious diseases.
Despite the fact that when he was in med school and he had said: I am going to study infectious diseases, he was told: You don’t have to worry about infectious diseases. I don’t know why you would even be concerned about infections diseases. The world is no longer being troubled with or being threatened with infections diseases, Dr. Piot thought: That doesn’t make sense. There is no reason for us not to continue to study.
So he did study. In 1976, as I have already told you, he is the doctor that discovered the Ebola virus.
Now, you may wonder, so what was our conversation like?
I said: Well, Dr. Piot, I just want to tell you, here in the States, we are very concerned now about Ebola. In fact, we have written about Ebola. We have said this is a Paul Revere moment when people have to really understand that there is something coming that we are not ready for.
Dr. Piot said to me: You know what, Mr. Kelly, I am glad you called me, because let me tell you a little bit more about Ebola. Let me tell you that right now what the world is looking at, and not just your country but the world is looking at a dress rehearsal for the next great virus. It is true that this one is very lethal, but this is tactile. In other words, you have to come in contact with it some way. But it is constantly mutating, as are other viruses.
And I said: Okay, Doctor. Because our idea was, first of all, you must isolate those who have this disease.
He said: That is right.
I said: Well, I can remember growing up, if you had the mumps or the chicken pox or the measles, the first thing you were told is you can’t go to school. You have got to stay home, because you don’t want to carry this into a school or with your friends. So we would stay home. They would isolate us from the general population. Even though we were children and we would only go outside and play, they said, No, not until you are clear. It just seems so basic.
He said: It is absolutely basic. We must contain it to West Africa. We cannot let it get beyond those shores.
Now, because of who we are today and the technology we have today, we can be sitting in this wonderful House this afternoon and we can be in Rome tonight. We can be halfway around the world in a very short period of time. It is not like the old days where these diseases, these viruses were carried and it took months for them to get from shore to shore and from country to country. It now can travel very quickly. It mutates very quickly.
So I said to Dr. Piot: What else should we do?
Number one, isolate. Number two, quarantine.
I said: I have heard of quarantines.
He said: Well, you should have heard of quarantines. Back in Italy, when the bubonic plague broke out, they took people who were infected and they put them on an island. They left them there for a quarantine, or 40 days. They were then allowed to come back in if they survived, to enter the general population.
Isn’t it amazing that during those days everybody understood you must isolate, you must quarantine. Why? So you don’t infect the general population. It is so basic. But yet we are trying to struggle today to find out how do we contain this disease, this lethal disease? What can we possibly do?
The answers, my friend, are so obvious.
The other thing that Dr. Piot talked about–I want you to think about this. Dr. Piot discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. Fast forward, 1986, 1996, 2006, and now 2014. It has been almost 40 years since Dr. Piot discovered the Ebola virus. In those 40 years, we have not developed a vaccine to inoculate people against the Ebola virus.
It is unthinkable that at this time in human history we are still playing around trying to figure out what we should do. The answer is it better be politically correct or we can’t possibly do it.
So we are going to risk entire populations. We are going to risk infecting people that have absolutely no contact but come in contact because somebody is able to travel the world freely–somebody wasn’t isolated, somebody wasn’t quarantined because it doesn’t fit our political agenda. This makes no sense.
This administration appointed an Ebola czar. That is as far as it went. We have got an Ebola czar. We don’t have an Ebola agenda. We don’t have an Ebola strategy. We don’t have anything to combat this very lethal virus.
What is it going to take to wake this country up?
And I would just suggest that while it is no longer a headline, it is still very important–not just to every citizen of this great country, but every citizen of the world. And so the answer is to isolate. The answer is to quarantine. The answer is to develop a vaccine.
The problem with developing a vaccine, there are at least four vaccines that are available right now. Dr. Piot told me the greatest advances have been made by our Department of Defense. The United States Department of Defense has made the greatest progress in developing a vaccine for Ebola.
I said: Then why don’t we just bring it out?
He said: It has not been tested on humans.
I said: That doesn’t make sense.
He said: Of course it doesn’t make sense, but that is how these infectious disease concerns work.
I said: So what would the process be?
He said: We have tested it on monkeys. We haven’t tested it on humans.
The biggest thing when it comes to a vaccine is what dosage should we be giving. You have to give the right dosage in order to defeat the disease.
Now, think about if we develop a vaccine. We can now talk to the medical providers, and we can talk to the doctors and nurses that go into these infected areas and say: We are going to inoculate you. You are not going to come home with this lethal disease.
How basic is that?
Then the question is: So what are we waiting for? Why are we not developing this today? Why are we not fast-forwarding this? It is because there is a new headline.
Now, we are going to talk about immigration. Forget about Ebola. That is by the wayside. The election, that is ancient history. It was 2 weeks ago. We are not going to worry about that, but we are going to worry about immigration today. We are going to turn our backs on a discovery that will save thousands and thousands of lives. We are going to turn our backs on science that we know to be true and on a cure that we know is there. We are at the threshold right now.
I want to read from Dr. Piot’s book because there were several things that really struck me. He not only worked on the Ebola virus, he also worked on the AIDS virus.
He said: Perhaps, most important, I have seen over and over and over again how a catastrophe like AIDS brings out the very best and very worst in the human species, regardless of whether a person is well-educated or illiterate. These experiences largely compensated for the numerous–coming to a cure for AIDS.
This is what he said: These experiences largely compensated for the numerous–and just translate Washington into this–brain-killing meetings that I had to endure during my tenure at UNH, where I learned not to be guided by the modern plague, the quarterly result, the short-term view, but to focus on the ultimate goal of saving as many lives as possible.
What he is saying is forget the politics. Keep your eye on where it is you are trying to go. Let’s fix this problem. Let’s save as many lives as possible.
As I finished up the book, Dr. Piot finishes it this way. He says: Above all, the history of AIDS is one of refusing the inevitability of death because of a lack of treatment, defeat, prejudice, and the institutional obstacles in moving mountains beyond familiar territory. It is perhaps the strongest example of global altruism out of a rational necessity in our evermore interconnected world.
As I talk to you today, H.R. 5746 and a bicameral piece of legislation which is crafted with Senator Rubio from the Senate, all we are asking for is to please wake up. Understand that this is truly a Paul Revere moment for the world.
As I talked to Dr. Piot, he said: Mike, this is a dress rehearsal, and I am going to send you my book so you can see why I feel the way I feel.
The title of his book is “No Time to Lose.”
How many times in our lives have we looked back and we said, “If only I had known, I would have fixed it. If only I knew what was going to happen if I didn’t act, I would have fixed it”?
My friends, there is truly no time to lose. The vaccine is right on the threshold of being available to us, but it is not just Ebola that I worry about, and it is not just Ebola that this country should worry about, and it is not just Ebola that the world should worry about. It is what is coming.
Believe me, we have not seen the end of infectious disease. We have not seen the end of lethal viruses that will cripple us, as a Nation, and could become the weapon of bioterrorists that would use it at any cost without any regard for human life.
We have the ability right now, within our hands, within our grasp, to develop a vaccine in order to defeat this horrible virus. All that I would ask is that we come together in this House, the American people’s House–it is not a Republican House, not a Democrat House, but the American people’s House–to once again conquer a disease that could infect not only our own American citizens, but the citizens of the world.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.”
Source: Congressional Record
Note:
Is there a cure?
No. Patients with Ebola are treated with supportive therapy, which includes balancing their fluids, maintaining their oxygen levels and blood pressure, and treating them for any complicating infections, the CDC says.
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