Helen Branswell:
As West Africa’s Ebola outbreak continues to rage, some experts are coming to the conclusion that it may take large amounts of vaccines and maybe even drugs – all still experimental and in short supply – to bring the outbreak under control.
Embedded in that notion is the reality that the catastrophic epidemic may remain unchecked for months, given that these products haven’t yet been proven to be safe or effective in people, and won’t be available in significant amounts any time soon. Experimental Ebola drugs in particular will remain in scarce supply for a considerable time.
“It is conceivable that this epidemic will not turn around even if we pour resources into it. It may just keep going and going and it might require a vaccine,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Canadian Press in an interview.
“As the epidemic gets more and more formidable and in some cases out of control it is quite conceivable, if not likely, that we may need to deploy the vaccine to the entire country to be able to shut the epidemic down. That is clearly a possibility.”
NEJM:
Even if adequate safety and immunogenicity are demonstrated in the phase 1 studies, vaccines will not be available in substantial quantity until the first quarter of 2015 at the earliest. For that to occur, funding must be secured for production. Even if an effective vaccine can be produced, it is not likely to be 100% effective, so to succeed in stemming the current outbreak, a coordinated effort to improve capacity and provide clinical care in affected countries needs to be scaled up urgently.
More politics and policy below the fold.
CSM:
Turkey’s deadliest riots in more than a decade have prompted fears of growing strife within the country’s Kurdish minority after Kurds erupted at the plight of the Syrian border town of Kobane, where their kinsmen are struggling to fend off attacking Islamic State fighters.
At least 19 people were killed, 89 wounded, and 345 detained in Turkey since protests Tuesday night gripped the country’s Kurdish-populated southeast, a region that recently has absorbed a wave of nearly 200,000 refugees fleeing the IS onslaught in Syria.
Many among the country’s 15 million Kurds accuse the government in Ankara of abandoning the defenders of Kobane, target of a three-week IS assault.
NJ.com:
Despite calls by party leaders for would-be presidential candidates keep the gloves on, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is privately disparaging Chris Christie as the “Rudy Giuliani of this cycle,” to donors, according to a new Politico report that suggests a particularly nasty fight among GOP candidates is brewing even before the start of the 2016 campaign season.
The report, quoting multiple sources, noted that Cruz is making the comparison to potential donors as he tries to expand his appeal beyond conservative Tea Partiers and access the easy campaign cash the flows most readily to those candidates with the highest national profiles. Christie, buoyed by media coverage of Hurricane Sandy and more recently, from his barnstorming tour around the nation’s GOP gubernatorial races as head of the Republican Governors Association, is an obvious target.
But Cruz’s comparison of Christie to Giuliani was no accident, says Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, adding, “There’s an awful lot of coded messages in there.
Adam C. Smith:
First a confession: For most of the past year, my gut has told me that Rick Scott would likely win a second term and that there was a reasonable likelihood it wouldn't even be close. Around the start of October, as Charlie Crist was not only still standing but actually neck and neck or ahead of the incumbent governor, it became clear this race is a coin toss and Crist might actually pull it off.
Now I'm thinking Crist may have become the clear frontrunner.
Jonathan Capehart:
To ensure there is no repeat of last year’s disastrous rollout, [HHS Secretary Sylvia] Burwell told me that she and her team are testing the hell out of HealthCare.gov’s capabilities. They are looking at how consumers and insurers interact with the Web site. They are testing its security. And they are load-testing the site to see if it can handle the crush of traffic that caused far too many crashes during the last open enrollment. In addition to the importance of testing, Burwell said federal officials learned “that the consumer waits until the last minute.” That has implications not only for messaging but also for site traffic as the Feb. 15 conclusion of the enrollment period approaches. Burwell is confident the mistakes of last year will not be repeated.
David Montgomery on South Dakota politics:
"EB-5" is a complex affair at the intersection of government, business, crime and politics in South Dakota. A former state cabinet secretary died by suicide while awaiting indictment last year, it's spawned numerous bankruptcies, lawsuits, audits and investigations, and it's currently dragging down Republican nominee Mike Rounds' bid for the U.S. Senate.
Here's a primer on what you need to know to understand EB-5: