"You're doing a heckuva job, Friedie."
Thomas Frieden, the head of the Center for Disease Control, is opposed to a travel ban from West Africa in order to prevent the Ebola virus from coming here. Below he gives his reasons and you can listen to him being interviewed by Fox News' Neil Cavuto. At around the 2:30 mark, Cavuto asks Frieden how you stop someone from West Africa who has been exposed to Ebola but not showing any symptoms from getting on a plane and coming to the US. His answer? "That's why we are looking at other options." When pressed by Cavuto to name one of those options, his answer was, "Well, stay tuned."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/10/09/cdc-chief-why-dont-support-travel-ban-to-combat-ebola-outbreak/?intcmp=obnetwork
I don't get Frieden's reasoning that having a travel ban from these countries will result in the spread of the virus in Africa. Nobody is arguing against our specialists going to West Africa to attack the virus at its source. However, until the virus is controlled, it is crazy to allow anyone with those passports to board a plane going anywhere. Speaking of crazy, a panel of the MSNBC mad-haters this week said issuing a travel ban would be racist because, after all, West Africans are all black as if we wouldn't say the same thing if Ebola were in Scotland. Rubbish.
Frieden has continually told us not to worry. Yet, one man has already come here with the virus, exposed others to it, and has since died. Perfectly in line with Cavuto's question, this man, Thomas Eric Duncan, fit that profile perfectly. He got sick after arriving in the US, went to a hospital in Dallas, and was sent home with anti-biotics. Don't worry?
Another thing to consider is why wouldn't a West African who fears he or she has been exposed not want to get to the US or Europe where they can be more properly treated (the Duncan case notwithstanding)?
If we start seeing more cases of Ebola showing up in the US courtesy of unrestricted travelers from the affected countries, you can call it Obama's Katrina.
It has been a long time since the world had to worry about such a thing. The periodic cholera epidemics of the 19th century come to mind. Also the flu pandemic of 1918. It is hardly on anyone's radar screen that a genuine public health emergency can justify quarantine. But it can. The laws are on the books. They are constitutional. And yes, we should be prepared to invoke them. I can dimly remember when I was a child, if someone in a family had a contagious disease, local authorities could quarantine the home. Not done for decades, but that's because we vaccinate against all those diseases that use to be quarantined.
ReplyDeleteThese new enterovirus outbreaks... that might be another cause to bring the use of quarantine back.
But there is no excuse for not having an Ebola vaccine and other drugs developed by now. We've known about this for almost 50 years. Unfortunately, capitalism provides no motive to develop a vaccine for people who are poor, far away, and black. So now we reap the usual whirlwind. When its coming our way, we demand action, and its a little late. No man is an island. (Note: quarantine was notoriously ineffective in stopping cholera, mostly because commerce could not be unduly burdened).