A visibly agitated President Obama on Wednesday ripped into critics of the U.S. response to the Ebola virus, insisting that his administration was leading the charge to “snuff out” the deadly disease.
“When I hear people talking about American leadership and then are promoting policies that would avoid leadership … [and have us] hiding under the covers, it makes me a little frustrated,” the president said, joined by healthcare workers who treated the disease in West Africa, including American Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly.
With less than a week to the midterms, the president is making public remarks almost daily in an attempt to fend off charges that his administration was caught flat-footed by a virus that has traveled from West Africa to the United States.
Governors implementing Ebola policies that contradict the president’s blueprint, however, are undermining the White House’s message.
Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey have ordered 21-day quarantines of health workers returning to their states from West Africa. The White House has called those policies unnecessary and motivated by fear and politics.
The president’s remarks Wednesday were aimed as much at those governors as they were international leaders, whom the White House says have not done enough to fight the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“It is going to take some time for these countries to battle back,” Obama said, pressing for a greater international response. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
Although two American nurses were recently declared Ebola-free days after contracting the virus, Obama on Wednesday warned that additional victims could emerge on U.S. soil.
“Until we stop this outbreak in West Africa,” Obama said, “we may continue to see individual cases in America in the weeks and months ahead.”
