Company Near Ferguson Riots Awarded Contract To Urgently Deploy Their Ebola Transport Isolation System

A Saint Louis company within rioting distance of the Ferguson unrest has just won a two million dollar urgent contract to urgently deploy a palletized airborne isolation chamber capable of holding 12 Ebola patients for military transport. The company has been developing the product as a follow on to the Airborne Biological Containment System they developed for Phoenix Air Group. Several aspects of the contract including who the DoD has tasked with handling these Ebola evacuations have been redacted, but its safe to guess Phoenix Air Group is involved.

"The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) contracting activity proposes to procure, without using full and open competition, the development and validation testing of a Transport Isolation System (TIS) to be used for the safe evacuation of Ebola-exposed or Ebola-infected personnel from affected areas. DTRA intends to award a Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF) letter contract to Production Products Manufacturing and Sales Co., Inc. (PPStL) of St. Louis, Missouri. The contract is expected to be approximately four and a half months in duration, with a not-to-exceed (NTE) price of $2,380,505.76"

"Open and competitive channels of acquisition are not suitable in this case due to the urgent national need to rapidly develop the TIS for immediate use in support of the Ebola outbreak"
Given the urgent need spelled out in the contract and PPStL's proximity to the Ferguson, Mike Brown protesters may just have a new venue to show their true colors.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2014

CDC Says It Will Actively Monitor 65,250 Ebola Exposed Travelers Entering The USA Per Year
The CDC has notified the Office of Management and Budget that CDC expects to actively monitor 65,250 at risk Ebola travelers entering the USA per year. Obviously CDC came to this number by counting the number of travelers that have already entered the USA in the last 3 months and projecting it out to 12 months.

Reverse engineering CDC's projection, 16,313 Ebola exposed travelers have entered the USA since the Ebola outbreak began. Clearly such a large number of potentially Ebola infected travelers undergoing active monitoring for 21 days creates a huge risk and manpower requirement. To that end, CDC is creating a daily robo-call system to contact these people (in both French and English) everyday for 21 days.

"CDC is also requesting the incorporation of a telephonic, automated survey administered either through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) phone system which asks travelers if they have developed a fever or any other symptoms potentially indicative of Ebola exposure (OMB Control No 0920-1034). This system is used to assist states in actively monitoring those travelers from Ebola affected countries for 21 days after arrival. The additional burden requested for the use of the IVR system is 91,350 hours."

No matter which way CDC attempts to cut it, the Ebola response is currently overwhelming the CDC. Automating aspects of the response may serve to lessen some of that burden, but it comes at the cost of reduced quality and increased risk as as anyone who has ever had to press 1 to hold for a human on an automated voice service system knows - more at url