A.B. Stoddard: No one at the helm on Ebola

The spread of Ebola in America, once described in repeated reassurances as only a remote possibility, has caught our health system flat-footed. Sadly, that doesn’t come as a big surprise.

But now, weeks after the disease was first diagnosed in our country and began spreading thanks to simple mistakes, it is staggering that there is still no one in charge. Citizens and lawmakers alike are asking if there is a czar or a national doctor, someone who could truthfully articulate the threat and the extent of the errors made so far as well as be held responsible for stopping the outbreak in its tracks. Nope.

{mosads}Pressed several times about who is in charge Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest conceded that though Lisa Monaco, homeland security adviser, has been tasked with “coordinating” the response to the outbreak, she is not in charge. This means no one is accountable for solving this problem; not being in charge makes Monaco free of potential blame should things go fatally wrong.

Currently we have no surgeon general. President Obama’s nominee, named last November, referred to gun violence as a public health problem in a tweet and the National Rifle Association put a stop to his confirmation by the U.S. Senate lickety-split. Though the president now has the rapt attention of everyone who followed the illness and death of Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived in the U.S. from Liberia with Ebola on Sept. 20, Obama has not called for the Senate to confirm Dr. Vivek Murthy as surgeon general because Senate Democrats in tough races don’t exactly want to cross the NRA three weeks before the midterm elections.

But there is a person, as reported this week by the Federalist, who is currently tasked with overseeing public health emergencies and is not on leave or pending confirmation but who has been absent from the government’s public response to the spread of Ebola here thus far. Dr. Nicole Lurie, who is the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Health and Human Services Department, describes her responsibilities in a government video as “help[ing] our country prepare for, respond to and recover from public health threats,” and that the office’s priority is to “have the counter measures — the medicine and vaccines that people might need to use in a public health emergency.” The Federalist story notes the no-bid contract pharmaceutical scandal Lurie was connected to back in 2011, which could be the reason she is now working in an undisclosed location or bunker during the first cases of Ebola in America.

Obama isn’t personally responsible for the errors and missteps that led to two new diagnoses of Ebola. It is even understandable if he was unaware of how woefully unprepared the U.S. was for the spread of Ebola. But he could surely have someone in charge by now. And having piled up a record of incompetence and mismanagement of the federal government, Obama will now own the arrival of Ebola in the history books. He must act with urgency to help stop an outbreak that could kill an untold number of Americans and devastate the economic recovery. Should that occur, no matter what he has done or not done in the bungling of the Ebola response, President Obama will be blamed.

Stoddard is an associate editor of The Hill.