Coronavirus Advice From America’s Foremost Ebola Doctor
Dr. Bruce Ribner, who successfully treated multiple Americans with Ebola in 2014, offers perspective on Covid-19
There’s little denying that the United States was ill-prepared for the coronavirus pandemic. Testing capacity is still staggeringly slow, health workers don’t have enough protective equipment, and there are not enough ventilators. But the United States is not without scientists and medical professionals who think ahead.
During the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak, I had the opportunity to visit and interview Dr. Bruce Ribner, medical director of the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit at Emory University Hospital. In 2014 he led the treatment of multiple people in the United States who contracted Ebola, in large part because Emory had a state-of-the-art isolation unit that was built specifically for the treatment of highly contagious infections. The unit was something Ribner had advocated for for more than a decade before the Ebola pandemic. He knew it was only a matter of time before a new, highly contagious disease spread around the world, and that the United States would need a place to treat people.
“It is certainly possible to overreact to a potential epidemic, but we seem to be…
