Ezekiel Emanuel, a former White House adviser on ObamaCare, is calling the Pentagon’s plans for an Ebola rapid-response team “overkill.”
“I’m a little confused by it, why we need the Pentagon to do it. We have a lot of incredibly competent healthcare people in the federal government at the [National Institutes of Health] and other facilities,” Emanuel said Monday on MSNBC.
{mosads}”I think that may look like it’s actually a little bit of overkill,” he added.
The Defense Department said Sunday it was readying a 30-person team “that could, if required, provide short-notice assistance to civilian medical professionals in the United States,” responding to Ebola, according to a statement from Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby.
The team will head to Fort Sam Houston in Texas this week for training, Kirby added.
Emanuel — brother of Rahm Emanuel, a former Obama White House chief of staff and current Chicago mayor — cautioned against overreacting to the three confirmed Ebola cases in the U.S.
He pointed to Nigeria, which the World Health Organization declared Monday to be Ebola-free.
“It shows you that with a good, well-functioning healthcare system, this is readily controlled and we can reduce transmission,” he said.
“With the added education by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] we really are going to put this thing in a box,” Emanuel added.