BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Newly-installed Ebola czar Ron Klain appeared for the first time on Wednesday with his new boss President Obama in the Oval Office — and said not a word.
In fact, the president didn’t even introduce Klain or acknowledge him during a brief press avail after their hour-long meeting.
Klain nodded his head a few times as Obama recapped the U.S. response to Ebola and new federal policies now in place.
Obama said he is “cautiously more optimistic” about the situation in the U.S., noting that dozens of people who had interacted with Thomas Eric Duncan have now been cleared.
The president said Amber Vinson and Nina Pham “seem to be doing better” and that Wednesday he called their co-workers at Texas Presbyterian to give a pep talk.
“Spirits were good,” Obama said. “People were very proud of the work that they’ve done and understandably so.”
Obama said the American people should have confidence that the government is in a much better position to deal with any additional cases of Ebola.
He also noted a “silver lining” in the Ebola scare: “It’s a reminder of how important our public health systems are, and in many ways, what this has done is elevated that importance.”
“There may come a time sometime in the future where we are dealing with an airborne disease that is much easier to catch and is deadly,” he said, “and in some ways, this has created a trial run for federal, state and local public health officials and health care providers.”
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