President Obama said Sunday that the U.S. military will begin aiding what has been a chaotic and ineffective response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, arguing that it represents a serious national security concern.<\/p>\nThe move is a significant ramp up in the U.S. response and comes as the already-strained military is likely to be called upon further to address militant threats in the Middle East. The decision to involve the military in providing equipment and other assistance for international health workers in Africa comes after mounting calls from some unlikely groups \u2014 most prominently the international medical group Doctors Without Borders \u2014 demonstrating to the White House the urgency of the issue.<\/p>\n
The epidemic, which has killed at least 2,100 people in five African countries, is unlikely to spread to the United States in the short term, Obama said Sunday on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d But if the United States and other countries do not send needed equipment, public health workers and other supplies to the region, that situation could change and the virus could mutate to become more transmissible, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then it could be a serious danger to the United States,\u201d Obama said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to get U.S. military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there,\u201d he said, \u201cto provide security for public health workers surging from around the world.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your what hurts? Via: Washington Post: President Obama said Sunday that the U.S. military will begin aiding what has been a chaotic and ineffective response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, arguing that it represents a serious national security concern. The move is a significant ramp up in the U.S. response and comes as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44898,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44897\/revisions\/44898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}