OK, we shouldn't really be in panic mode over Eboal -- I get that. It's not that easily spread, and our health care workers are the best in the world and blah, blah, blah. But surely we're right to be a little worried when our public officials treat us to one stunning display of incompetence and incoherence and another. The insults to our collective intelligence are just getting more and more galling:
Barack Obama updated the public on the government’s efforts to halt the spread of this disease. He took only one question which was focused on the seeming inconsistencies in his administration’s policy of opposing quarantine for health care workers but embracing it for service men and women who serve in Ebola-affected regions.
“They are, first of all, not treating patients,” Obama said. “Second of all, they are not there voluntarily. It’s part of their mission that’s been assigned to them by their commanders and ultimately by me, their commander-in-chief.”
“They are already, by definition if they’re in the military, under more circumscribed conditions,” the president added.
The president added that health care workers who travel to Ebola-affected regions to help contain the situation are not as easily monitored as soldiers. “We don’t want to do anything that’s not based on science and best practices,” Obama concluded.
…Huh?
I’m not trying to be reflexively contrary, but how does it make any sense that soldiers whose movements and mission is “circumscribed” should be isolated and monitored, but voluntary health care workers, who cannot be tracked, should not be avoid being quarantined if they are suspected of displaying Ebola-like symptoms?
Moreover, if the aim is not to scare health care workers from voluntarily traveling to West Africa, what does he think an involuntary quarantine of American troops will do? Did I miss the conscription act that the president signed into law? Why wouldn’t think cavalier disregard for the interests of American troops serving at their own discretion overseas have a depressing effect on future enlistments?
The White House’s logic simply does not make any sense.
Speaking of "cavalier disregard" for the interests of other people, did nurse Kaci Hickox go down a few notchers on your hero scale?
New Jersey officials announced Monday they plan on releasing the nurse quarantined over fears she was exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in West Africa.
Kaci Hickox said over the weekend she planned on filing a federal lawsuit over her confinement, saying she felt “like a criminal.”
In a statement, the New Jersey Department of Health said she has been asymptomatic for the last 24 hours.
“After being evaluated in coordination with the CDC and the treating clinicians at University Hospital, the patient is being discharged,” the statement read.
I don't quite understand how someone can be brave enough to risk her own health by going to West Africa then be so callous about risking other American's lives. What the hell is the big hardship about being quarantined for a few weeks? She felt "like a criminal"? Get over it, sweetheart.
