Public Health or Political Pandering?
Kaci Hickox is a nurse who has been part of an MSF [Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières] team helping Ebola patients in West Africa. Upon her return to the US she was given a 21 day jail sentence in a New Jersey hospital isolation ward for that apparent offense, and she makes it clear that she isn’t happy.
CNN covers this and the reaction to the surprise announcement by the governors of New York and New Jersey that everyone who enters the US at Port of New York/New Jersey facilities would be automatically incarcerated for 3 weeks if they had contact with Ebola patients.
In the BBC coverage it is noted that the governor of Illinois has also joined New York and New Jersey in the three week imprisonment.
The governors didn’t talk to the CDC or NYC or anyone who actually knows anything about Ebola, they simply saw an opportunity to gain from the panic over Ebola and they took it. They don’t seem to care that they are discouraging US health care workers from going to West Africa to stop the disease at its source.
October 25, 2014 6 Comments
