Former Secretary of State warns Trump's Ebola response could get Americans killed

President Donald Trump’s policy in trying to contain Ebola may get Americans killed, a former Secretary of State warned on Tuesday.

“As secretary of state, one of us saw firsthand how indispensable the U.S. was in arresting the epidemic,” former Secretary of State John Kerry wrote with his daughter, public health expert Dr. Vanessa Kerry, in a Wall Street Journal editorial. He had described how the Ebola virus had spread through West Africa in September 2014 and risked becoming a global pandemic. The dangerous pathogen is highly lethal, with an average case fatality rate of 50 percent. The common symptoms include fatigue and weakness, fever, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and internal hemorrhaging.

“As a physician and global health leader, the other has spent years helping countries strengthen the systems that stop outbreaks,” the two Kerrys added. “Today, another Ebola outbreak is unfolding in Central Africa. Absent a more competent response than we have seen, the outcome could be tragic.”

They added that the World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared a recent Ebola outbreak in the Congo as a “public health emergency of international concern,” with more than 1,000 suspected cases already on the record. Because the disease has since spread into Uganda, and is present in areas marked by poverty, armed conflict and displacement, authorities have struggled to contain it through contact tracing.

“In response to the 2014 epidemic, the U.S. led a historic international public-health mobilization,” the Kerrys wrote. “President Obama treated Ebola as a humanitarian emergency and a national-security priority. The strategy wasn’t simply to keep Ebola out of the U.S. but to stop transmission at the source.”

They added, “More than 3,500 U.S. personnel were deployed across West Africa. Dozens of ministerial-level entreaties by the State Department helped deliver contributions of medical personnel from the U.K. and allies across Europe. The U.S. put boots on the ground to build treatment centers and labs, train thousands of health workers, and support safe burial teams. Congress approved $5.4 billion in emergency funding. Coordinators at the State Department ensured that the Defense Department, Health and Human Services Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, CDC and international partners all worked together. Approximately 28,600 people were infected and more than 11,000 died, but hundreds of thousands of lives were spared because the U.S. and the international community acted decisively.”

By contrast, Trump’s implementation of Project 2025 has weakened the same systems that protected Americans from Ebola at the time.

“The dismantling of USAID; cuts to U.S. foreign assistance, vaccine initiatives, global health funding; and America’s withdrawal from the WHO have left major gaps in international disease surveillance and response,” the Kerrys wrote. In addition to Trump, the world’s richest man Elon Musk and vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were key to implementing some of those initiatives. Instead of using the past successful containment programs, Trump is instead implementing measures the Kerrys perceive as inadequate.

After elaborating on the numerous services that America used to provide and now cannot do, they concluded, “The administration still has time to change course and mobilize America’s scientific expertise, public-health capabilities and diplomatic leadership. The costs of waiting, in dollars and lives, are vastly greater than the costs of acting now.”

The Kerrys are not alone in criticizing Trump’s Ebola response. Speaking to AlterNet earlier this month, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts also said that the president’s inadequate measures are putting Americans at risk.

“Travel bans are generally not effective for the control of infectious diseases,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told AlterNet. “For instance, the Omicron variant was first discovered for COVID-19 in South Africa on November 26, 2021 and was here in San Francisco two days later because air travel is so frequent and SARS-CoV-2 can spread when asymptomatic.”