‘We didn’t follow through’ on lessons learned from Ebola

Former Pentagon aide Christopher Kirchhoff wrote a 2016 report about lessons from the Ebola epidemic. He talked with STAT’s Andrew Joseph about the Covid-19 response: 

• On why governments aren’t more prepared: “We made some initial investments to grow the capacity of the system but we didn’t follow through.”
• On outbreaks worse than Ebola: “Those of us in the Ebola response knew we got lucky, not only because the pathogen wasn’t airborne, but because the outbreak happened where it did.”
• On testing: “It’s hard to express in words how our inability to test early and to contact trace has set us back. It’s honestly launched us into a new reality that none of us have clear or clever ideas about what to do.”