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.
6 comments
“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.”
I suspect that health care workers will just start arranging 3-week vacations in some sane western European country on their way back to the u.s.
the scary possibility is that ordinary travelers from these countries who don’t have the resources to stop off somewhere for 21 days, or the resources to survive a 21-day house arrest, will just lie about where they’ve been. and then if they do get sick, they’ll just be given antibiotics at the emergency room and sent home.
Health care workers are the new Muslims; just ask any politician in the Northeast.
As odd as it sounds, this is Dick Cheney’s fault, though GeeDubya shares a part of the blame. Demonizing an identifiable group of American citizens, removing even their most fundamental legal protections for what IMHO are purely political purposes, is damnable, and I wish the American public were smart enough to reject the tactic, and the politicians along with it. America will not survive as a recognizable descendant of our founders’ nation if media and politicians continue to collaborate in rendering the bulk of the American body politic downright paranoid.
Excuse me… it’s almost Halloween, and I’ve got to locate my Dick Cheney mask.
Oh, hi hipparchia; we were posting at the same time.
The worst possibility is that some of those health care workers will simply start investigating the possibility of emigrating to somewhere in Europe. If you had an occupation in that much real-world demand, would you put up with (as one nurse wrote yesterday) being treated like a criminal, interrogated by a dozen people known and unknown, all hostile, because you pursued your profession? Nurses are needed everywhere, no matter what some doctors may think…
I think the case in Texas showed that the US needs health care workers who know how to treat Ebola patients. These are the people who know how to survive in less than ideal circumstances, and what treatments have been the most successful. Instead of learning from them the politicians are demonizing them because there is an election looming.
What are they going to do when the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Powers, returns from her tour of West Africa to see what is going on first hand? She is based in New York City, and will probably go and return via a NY airport. That should be interesting.
We have already learned that using blood serum from someone who has recovered from Ebola is a very effective treatment. It was used on the nurse in Spain, probably on the two nurses in Texas, and will be used on the doctor in NYC.
They have been cured, but will people accept that they are cured, or will they have to live with the stigma of having caught the disease?
The air bags and ignition switches in cars are more dangerous than Ebola. We shouldn’t ignore potential dangers but we must be reasonable not just stupidly reactive.
Obviously much of the news industry and our governments are not rational.
Come on, Bern, everyone knows that the Free-Market Fairy will deal with the minor deadly problems caused by corporations … 😈
Rational thought began its exit from the scene under Reagan and has gotten progressively worse every year.