'We will regret this': Cuts leave U.S. vulnerable to Ebola, contrary to Musk assurances

we will make mistakes we won't be perfect but when we uh make mistake we'll fix it very quickly uh so for example with uh usaid uh one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola Ebola prevention I think we all want Ebola prevention so we restored the Eola prevention immediately and there was no interruption that's not true um today Donald Trump's top campaign donor claimed during a weird like filmed for TV cabinet meeting that although he had accidentally in his role as Donald Trump's top campaign donor ended all uh Ebola prevention efforts of

the US Government after they realized that's what had happened it was restarted was just a very brief Interruption and it all can or not even an interruption it was very briefly stopped but then restarted without without interruption um people who actually work on these matters for the US government and in this field say none of this is true Public Health experts including current and former usaid officials say that um the Ebola prevention efforts were hobbled um that they've not been restarted um in 2014 you might remember there was an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa

doctors from the United States went to countries like guinea to go uh track cases and treat patients a doctor named Craig Spencer was one of those doctors who responded to that outbreak and he became the first person in New York City to test positive himself for Ebola in October 2014 after he was abroad treating Ebola patients in Guinea uh with with Doctors Without Borders Ebola has a really high mortality rate it kills more than half the people it infects in Dr Spencer's case he had 19 days in the hospital but he survived today he wrote

this in response to Elon musk's remarks about ebola prevention being accidentally stopped but then started back up again with no interruption he said quote on January 29th this year Uganda reported an ebola outbreak normally the us would have quickly sent one of our Ebola experts to help the response but this time we didn't because we couldn't because this Administration wouldn't let them go right when this outbreak was declared normally the us would have helped set up border screening and other measures on the ground but this time we didn't normally we would have spoken with the

who about helping end the outbreak but this time we didn't because CDC staff weren't even allowed to talk to them joining us now is Dr Craig Spencer he's associate professor of health services policy and practice at Brown University School of Public Health he's also the New York City emergency room doctor who survived Ebola after treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders um nearly uh about a decade ago now Dr Spencer I really appreciate you you being here tonight thank you good to see you again so it's always good to see you because you

had Ebola uh and so anytime that I see you I feel like I have hope that these sorts of things can be survived these horri horic these horrific diseases I I have to ask what your reaction was to seeing um Elon Musk today bring up Ebola unprompted laugh about it and then suggest that while he had accidentally cut off all US Government efforts to combat it everything was fine now because it had all been restarted without interruption well Rachel I was remarkably confused because for the past month I have been talking to people who normally

would have responded to this Abola outbreak in Uganda the marberg outbreak in Tanzania and guess what they didn't for the last decade I have followed every single outbreak of viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola I know everyone that is doing this I know where they're responding I know the people in Uganda at the Ministry of Health I've heard from people who normally would be supported by our country by our government to set up border screening to do the contact tracing on the ground they're not getting paid countries are asking them to work for free because us

usaid normally would have supported them here in this country alone we normally would have sent people almost immediately once these outbreaks are declared guess what we didn't do this and the result is right now people around the world are looking to the United States saying what are your commitments what is true about your support what Elon Musk said today was just categorically untrue we did not get rid of a bullet prevention and then put it back in place El Elon Musk and do were responsible for actively and actually stripping off the letters of the usaid

the agency from its headquarters in Washington DC on the first day of this Administration Donald Trump signed an executive order to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization and just very recently hundreds of CDC workers those Frontline doctors and epidemiologists who would be responding to outbreaks like Ebola abroad Ebola in the United States and other in infectious threats that you've just highlighted 750 of those people were let go regardless of what Elon Musk and others say we have set ourselves up to be very sorry for an infectious threat maybe next week maybe

next month maybe next year but I've been saying over and over again we will regret this