radio -- listen on the free radio app. next from washington journal, segment about the ebola epidemic and international response. the u.s. agency for international development wrote about how he completed most projects since 2014. >> we're back at our desk. it is often to talk about electoral politics. ebola.c, >> do is talk about how government is broken and how things do not work and how things should be a lot better. in the course of reporting this

book, it becomes clear that we are not prepared for the next pandemic when it comes. it is not question of with -- if it is going to come, it is a question of one it is going to come. we're in a world in which climate change is increasing in some tropics owns were a lot of deadly viruses live and therefore can spread. we live in a moment when human culture is spreading farther field than ever has before. cities are getting bigger and we are encroaching on nature in ways that we have never before.

googling tom reed and who headed the centers for disease control and prevention, heading the division of the natural -- national institute of health and inside the actual medical facilities were a lot of the patients were treated and where people tried to come up with cures and places like the u.s. army medical research institute for infectious diseases, the cdc itself, places like that and even in the halls of the white house itself where people try to organize global response. there are a lot of characters hear from west africa itself to president obama himself and it is a story that has a lot of heroes. >> take us back to early 2014. do we know when and where this ebola crisis started? >> it started in a very small town called millie oeliandu.

it means this is as far as we go. is a small village with 31 houses across a rickety bridge that people tend to test before they get there. it began in a field where a 2-year-old point named emile was playing right a tree and probably touched something or was bit by about -- a bat. ebola virusnt, the got blood stream did him and his family and traveled outside tucson regional centers and across the international borders. really scared the community about this is ebola had never shown up in west africa. people were not terribly prepared for what they were seeing. it is as if something that was endemic to miami showed up in seattle. the areas were we thinkable is from, the congo, uganda, things

like that is a continent away from west africa. the epidemic spread across international borders, and it finally got to two cities of more than one million people. for much there are direct flights to the middle east and nigeria. .nd to europe that scared a lot of people because for the first time, ebola not only had the ability to fester and really densely packed slums but i also have the opportunity to travel over continents.as we show a picture of the tree > on the edge of that village likely were that young boy was first infected. how many people eventually were infected? comedy people died in the 2014 outbreak? >> the official count is about 28,000 people were infected by the ebola virus. those are the official accounts.

part of the reason it spread is because the officials cannot count everyone who got the virus and cannot treat everybody who got the virus. the actual death count is likely several thousand people higher. the cape town is likely many thousands higher. >> remind us how that compares to previous outbreaks. > there has never been an ebola outbreak that killed more than about 300 people before this. in modern history, this was far and away the largest outbreak of ebola the world has ever seen. take all the previous outbreaks combined and you barely scratch the surface of the number of cases we got in this one. >> we are about the 2014 outbreak. read wilson talking about his emic: ebola and the global scramble to prevent the next outbreak."regional phone lines this morning.

read wilson with us for the next half hour this morning to have this discussion. why is ebola so deadly? itebola is doubly because has a particular impact on the human body. i was like to remind people we - ebo iaot and 52 mor- is not evil. it is trying to survive. livesola virus normally in some other animal. it is probably a bat. scientists have not nailed it down yet. some cells and replicates as much as possible in the cells explode. likes theparticularly cells of the immune system. the ones that take away the discarded disease cells that die

in our bodies all the time. eventually and that melting your organs and internal parts of the body and you die a grimly death. you have this impact on humans and primates, how large gorilla populations have tended to be decimated by a bowl of viruses in various places, even when it doesn't affect humans. host: when an outbreak is confirms, who is in charge of the response? reed: it depends on the country and if they have a relationship internationally. country'sy, the health agency will russia's many people as they can to and a bola -- the country's health agency will rush as many people as they can to end ebola outbreak place. you can keep an eye on the person they have had contact with so if they get infected they can be treated quickly.

in many cases, it falls to the world health organization. . it falls to the centers for disease control and prevention. they will deploy a team of doctors. one of the fascinating things i found is just how much cdc is involved in the course of the outbreak. host: is cdc under control of the who? >> no. they deploy teams to help. they will send teams on world to viruses.se right now, they're worried about yellow fever in brazil. as they send out these teams, this is an agency that used a pat itself on the back for sending a dozen or two dozen disease for some outbreaks. in this outbreak, they sent more than 1400 people to west africa on multiple tours all over the to remotense slums

regionsrural -- rural remote regions. host: when passage from your book on the response. you write, "they had suffered so much, but world had gotten lucky occurredeak there and some someplace like the middle east or southeast asia. the legacy of colonialism of the manpower. had a lot of necessary to come to the aid of the close allies." what does that mean for the next outbreak? reed: we are unlikely to have a touation as favorable response as we had in africa. the united states created liberia. back in the early 1800s, we sent by the number of freed slaves to the region, which created a lot of problems of its own. the fact is we have had this relationship with liberia for 150, 200 years.

when the u.s. sent in 3000 american troops, it was seen as a blessed. there were created as heroes people were going to help the virus to heal. the american approval rating is something like 99% in liberia. they love us. how many other countries is that true? if this had been an outbreak in pakistan or indonesia or china, the 101 airborne would not have been allowed to come in and build the capabilities they were able to. those soldiers went in without guns. the cdc officials went in protection or safety measures or anything else. safety but physical safety protections because we were seen as heroes. how many other countries is that the case in? the next outbreak could come from tropical africa, tropical south america. it could come from a bird market in china where there are flu circulating.

i many of these countries can we go into with overwhelming force? not many. talk about the preparedness for the next outbreak. i want to bring in some calls. bob is in pennsylvania. go ahead. bob: good morning. do you remember the days of louis pasteur, where the milkmaids knocked them down with smallpox? and louis pasteur took notice to it. in the once with were resistant to smallpox. this is the basis of an antibody. when the people that we liberated -- recuperated from the ebola, did they use a serum from the people that recuperated in order to prevent another

person from coming down with this disease? host: things for the question. reed: that is a great question and they did. when you get the a if you're lucky enough to survive, your immune system creates antibodies. you will never get it again, or at least you'll never get the string you got again. -- strain you got again. when some people got the virus they were able to get treated. for got blood transfusions people got the virus. this is one of the tragedies of the liberian man who came to the u.s. and ended up being the only fatality in the u.s. of the ebola virus. there is no one who have the bola virus with his same blood type so he cannot get a transfusion. the two nurses who were infected in the course of treating him both got transfusions from people who had the ebola virus before. one of the others, when of the first american to contracted the

disease, who was a missionary who contracted the disease in monrovia ended up donating a lot of her blood to people who subsequently got the virus. host: how many americans overall were infected and how many died? reed: not entirely clear how many were infected because there are some who have kept their names private. 5, 6 that it least can think of that are in the book. people at the two missionaries in west africa who contracted the virus and came back to the u.s. to be treated. the two nurses in dallas. craig spencer was a doctor in new york who had served in guinea. he contracted it there but started coming down with symptoms after returning.

who stay people private so far. host: how many from the 2014 outbreak did you interview in your book? reed: in talking to -- i met nancy at a hotel across the street from the cdc. and then i talked to craig spencer over email. neither of them wanted to talk for this book. craig spencer described it to me --a very dramatic experience tamatic experience -- raumatic experience. people report having terrible dreams and depression for the rest of their lives after the virus has left their body.

a lot of them didn't want to talk because it was still so fresh. he mailed me the other day and said i did not want to talk then. he may change his mind at some point but i do not want to push him. the fact is it is a virus that affects not only the body but also the brain. waiting.n is go ahead. john: thank you for taking my call. what ison, you just said was supposed to say. the way we respond to the virus was very beautiful because we responded quickly and helped those people immediately. i think what makes me angry when this virus happened is how the republicans react and make an issue about politics. we are human beings. we have to deal with human beings the way we do it them. it was the best thing i have

ever seen in my country when we saw how we responded to this problem quickly and helped those people. not only do that to the countries that we helped but every country that you just mentioned. anytime a virus happens, we might think that if it will not come to the united states but you might come to the united states if we do not do the right thing. the virus that we have right now, we as americans always help people. and we need to act when we see there is a problem, and i thank you that you are covering this. but i wanted to say something about how the politics involved were part of why this happens. host: fix for the call. reed: i would say we didn't respond as fast as we could have. a meal, the first kid who got the fibrous, contracted it -- you got this virus, contracted it in late november 2013.

the first time international observer saul was happening was in january 2014. the world health organization was slow to declare this thing a disaster. they did not formally recognize that ebola was present until late march of 2014. four years ago, as we sit here now, four years ago tomorrow actually, is the first day president obama got -- was briefed on it in his presidential security briefing every morning. the u.s. response did not really ramp up until june, july, august. and then we sent in the 101 airborne in september and most of the troops got there in october. it was several months between when we knew there was ebola and when the world really mobilized to stop this thing. that is why the case counts bounced up so high. we really didn't respond as fast as possible in part because the world health organization itself

did not make a formal declaration that there was a disaster going on. and a lot of other positions take their cues. host: you might be able to work in the west in connection. re: ebola outbreaks confined to the african continent in terms of origin? and: yes in terms of origin human infection of dangerous types of ebola. there are five strains that have been identified around the world. this one was called ebov. the bone and uganda. there is a person that popped up in the ivory coast, right next to liberia.

only one person ever was infected by that virus. it was called the thai forest virus. she survived. and then there's the fifth version, which has the washington, d.c. connection. a lot of these are named after the places where they are discovered. ebola is a river at the congress river. zika is a forest in uganda. the western virus was first described in an animal warehouse near dallas airport where a whole bunch of monkeys died. it serves as the basis of the hot zone that probably planted the seed for the research that i did. and of course the outbreak, flick thatgreat everyone should watch. the western virus does not have an impact on human. it transmits to humans. there have been five or six people who were tested for the ebola virus and they found this

western virus within them but it did not do anything to them. the virus itself, fortunately the one that came here before we knew about ebola, does not have a harmful impact on humans. but the other ones do and they are very bad. . host: catherine, good morning. >> good morning. i have a comment and an example. it will take me less than a minute. i think the u.s. is ace take nation -- is a sick nation. we have major epidemics. cancer, autism, schizophrenia, alzheimer's, lyme disease, and more. we and the world need to make medical research a national priority. an exmaple. the healtht university in november 2017 scientific american article, is studyingn acid

the link between brain acidity and psychiatric disorders. dollars,o spend time, and research to prevent diseases and not to wait for them to occur. host: that is a great point. reed: as tom friedman, the former head of the cdc told me in the book and in subsequent conversations we had, it costs a lot less to focus on prevention than it does to focus on recovery or something like the apple outbreak costs billions of dollars and thousands of lives. something like spending money on disease surveillance and prevention costs a lot less. however, it is a lot less sexy. it is something that politicians talk about cutting government funding, cutting spending, they talk about spending on foreign

governments. why are we spending our money on other countries and bolstering their public health defenses shouldn't they be doing that? the fact is we are the ones that benefit in the end. the virus does not stay within countries. it can spread. the zika virus spread from central africa to micronesia to live in -- central america and cel south america into miami. viruses do not know anything about international boundaries. the more we can do to stop a virus there, wherever it first crops up, the more we protect ourselves here and our own investment save more money on the back end. when interesting thing about this is the obama administration spends a lot of time trying to get the chinese into this particular response. china's version of the cdc over into west and taught them how to build treatment units in hopes of bolstering their own defenses because of a big thing that

public health officials are worried about. a flu that comes out of a bird market in china. if they are able to stop that, before it gets international, we are all going to be a lot better off as the world. to january.iewers a hearing on health emergency preparedness in the senate. this is the assistant secretary for preparedness and response. lth and human services talking about have ready the united states is for tjh next disease -- the next disease. >> are we prepared for public health threats? say,would have to equivocally for some but not all. when thehe reality is concert first came up in 2005, a witnessed the terrorist attacks of 9/11. we were anticipating potentially a pandemic, and we had just kind of experienced katrina but those

are all kind of in the rearview mirror in terms of the threats we are prepared to deal with. quite frankly, if you had to look at a nationstate for that we are considering today or multiple nationstates that are willing to use terrible weapons against us, both physical as well as potentially cyber, i think we are not prepared. quite friendly, those are the things that keep me up at night, as well as a pandemic that could emerge again. from asia. as well as the risks have come up that dr. probably identified with synthetic biology tools that allow people to do unimaginable things intentionally. -- potentially. the key issue that you races we cannot boil the ocean. works.el the resources that have been given today have been somewhat limited.

we have had in some circumstances given events that have transpired with ebola and other events, we do not have the sustained level of funding forssarily, a line item pandemic influenza, that would give us great confidence that we would have a sustained, uninterrupted funding stream. the answer for pandemic is, he arguably you can do more things we cannot do more things with limited resources. if we focus on the national security issue, which i think is vital, again vital to the role, then i think we have to stick to our lane are highlight the fact that right now, to use a defense analogy, we are operating with have an aircraft carrier of resources to basically do this mission. a national security mission to protect 320 million people. that is a challenge. can you talk about the

priority that the trump administration has made preparing for the next one of these outbreaks? reed: i do not want to single out the trump administration because the fact is no administration has made appropriate investments in preparedness. the ebola epidemic led to a supplemental funding bill. $5 billion or $6 billion that paper preparedness in the u.s. --reated new hospitals that capacity within hospitals to treat the a bowl of patients or patients of a deadly fever or viruslike ebola. that money is running out. that money is now running out. we are not replacing it. the cdc has said when they run out of that money in the next fiscal year, 2019, they will

have to pull out 39 of the 49 countries where they are doing this sort of virus events. again, you can stop something when it is small. as the curve bends upward, this spoke of the disaster widens exponentially. jack: good morning, gentlemen. you are in on the perfect target when you said. the problem is there is no money in prevention. it is all about money but there is a solution that is produced by our white blood cells. , it will kill all these viruses through the bugs,. in 15 seconds or less. totally safe. non-toxic. the problem is, big pharma will not embrace it because natural products are ineligible for patent.

ebola is a very easy virus to kill because it is wide open. it does not have a shell on it. music of walking around with bleach -- host: it keeps going in and out but i think we got your question. e thing about this, he brings up a good point. there is not a lot of financial incentives to come up with a cure for something like ebola because it does not break out very much. even in a case where there are 28,000 cases, we consider the flu epidemic that hit the u.s. this year, there were millions of cases. i got the flu. i do not know if you did. people canething fight. they make vaccines for blues us every year,fl they are being made right now for next year's virus. the fact is, there just are not that many incentives to create a treatment. fortunately, we have the scientific resources to do that.

some other pharma companies came up with a vaccine that, according to trial, is 100% effective. the good news is there will never be another book about the a bowl o -- ebola written because the run-up the another outbreak. we have a vaccine that will save an lot of lights. we know now because we had to treat so many, i say we but the responders had to treat the many people. we know a lot better how to care for somebody who has got be a virus. virus -- ebola and how to prolong its of the immune system can do the job necessary. because there are few cases, there is not the financial incentives to do something. host: we have vaccines for every strain? reed: no. ebov.he host: good morning. >> good morning. thank you for taking my call.

like to think the american people and all the people who took part in rescuing my people from this ebola virus. really scary. i do not know what would've the people did not go to rescue us, especially the americans. ked i would like to ta this opportunity to thank the american people for rescuing us. thank you very much. when countries are running away from us, you guys are running towards us and opening your borders. thank you, thank you very much for what you guys did for west africa. host: stay on the line for a second. sierra leone in what happened? >> yes and it was very scary.

we were under lockdown. people would go out for three days or four days and people did not even have food to eat. it was really scary. host: how many responders reacted to this? it is not a story of just americans going in and saving the day. people who could have easily moved here moved to europe and have successful lives but instead they tried to make their countries better. some of them died in the double outbreak.

because they are on the front lines they got it themselves and did not survive but there are a lot of euros in this story. euros in this -- heroes in this story. host: just a couple minutes left. two more questions for you. i did want to show this passage from your book talking about the fear of allah by come next. scientists -- fear of what might come next. how do you fight that? reed: the world health organization has a list of the most dangerous diseases that they prioritize fighting.

one of the diseases they just had is called disease x because we do not know about it. it is was. people. -- it is what scares people. we do not know how to react to it. we do not know where it is going to come from or how it will be transmitted or anything like that. the ebola virus is difficult to catch for you have to touch the bodily fluids of another human being to get it yourself. zika virus is easy to catch. it is spread by mosquitoes but it is not legal to anything but a fetus. it is not legal to a fetus v-- lethal but it does not have a n effect on a vast majority of people who get it. then again, even we talk about something like the spanish flu that was deadly that killed somewhere between 40 million people to 100 million people, the mortality rate was 2.5%. one 20th of the mortality rate of ebola.

what happens if there is a flip has a much higher mortality rate? there is a fluent china right now the good news is it is not transmissible.yet . viruses are simple and biology allows them to mutate. become a virus goes into one of cells.look comes out might be either more deadlier lust of the are more or less transmissible. and we are gambling at every point. an some point the next one is going to come along. how do we fight that? those lessons but into practice when zika broke out. the obama administration realized they had been as forthcoming -- they hadn't been and open with their actions.and their

they had not shown as much actions because they do not want to create a panic wednesday to came along, they were proactive about how they responded. they sent detectives to places like miami and puerto rico were the zika virus first hit. host: a national correspondent for the hill newspaper and author. i appreciate the time. reed: thank you. ♪ >> c-span's washington journal live every day with. news and policy issues that impacted coming up friday morning, radio talkshow hosts share their thoughts on the direction of the country. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern friday morning. joined the discussion.

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