NYC Ebola Quarantine Unenforceable And The Honor System Doesn’t Work
by Sara Noble • October 26, 2014
We're ready
New York City is “fully prepared to handle Ebola,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said a day after the first case of the disease hit Manhattan.
“We have the finest public health system, not only in this country, but anywhere in the world. … It is ready for extraordinary challenges,” he said. “The only threat is if one is coming into contact directly with the bodily fluids of someone who has this disease.”
Earlier on Friday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed confidence in the response to the first Ebola case in the city.
“We’ve had weeks to prepare. We took it very, very seriously,” Cuomo said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think we’ve had one of the most comprehensive preparation efforts in the country.”
Along came Craig Spencer who said he took precautions and has no idea how he contracted Ebola. A desperate call was put out for a drug to help the doctor.
Ebola Doctor Craig Spencer, who thought enough of Africans to minister to them but not enough of New Yorkers to stay off the subways, out of cabs and stores, and in his apartment, ended up in Bellevue with Ebola. He probably thought he wouldn’t get the disease.
Nurse Kaci Hickox, who just returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, lambasted the new New York-New Jersey policy of quarantining people coming back from West Africa for 21 days – the disease’s incubation period in most medical professionals’ opinions.
“This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” she wrote in the Dallas Morning News.
Kaci Hickox
Kaci Hickox
“I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine. …The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity,” she said with an inexplicable lack of understanding that she could infect others if she contracted the disease.
i give her a lot of credit for going to Africa but not for potentially exposing innocent people.
The honor system clearly does not work.
Five hours after Spencer entered Bellevue Hospital’s quarantine unit, the city Health Department sent a frantic email marked “URGENT” — asking if New York area hospitals, researchers and pharmacies had an experimental drug that has shown promise against the deadly virus.
The fact is New York City is not prepared. Saying they were was PR to prop up the dogged president who can’t do anything right.
Obama knows the airport exams testing peoples’ temperatures are nothing more than a placebo to calm people. Thirteen percent of those with Ebola never get a fever and people getting on the plane from West Africa know to take Ibuprofen. We know there is no real way to detect most people who will contract Ebola at an airport because the incubation period is three to six weeks, depending on which expert you talk with.
Gov. Cuomo admitted his well-intentioned quarantine policy for health-care workers returning from West Africa was toothless and possibly unenforceable.
“Could you have a hostile person who doesn’t want to be quarantined?” the governor asked Saturday during a campaign swing through Queens. “I suppose you could. But that hasn’t been the case yet.”
Word has it the civil liberties union has concerns about a quarantine. They too have little concern for people if it interferes with their far-left ideology.
I give credit to Governors Cuomo and Christie for trying, but the truth is the one thing that will help, and which Obama won’t do, is to ban travel from West Africa. He had no trouble shutting down travel to Ben Gurion airport when a missile hit in the vicinity.
Yesterday – again – a Democrat appearing on Fox News said that it would be impossible to stop people coming from West Africa because they stop at other airports in Europe first. He doesn’t even know that West Africans have their passports stamped with visas.
The ridiculous Frieden comment about not being able to get to “zero risk” with a quarantine is still being blabbered about.
Mr. Obama continues to say a travel ban will hurt more than help fight the disease in West Africa. An absurd comment given it would mean fewer potential Ebola victims would enter the country.
The transparently nonsensical argument they like to use is that it would be hard to get medical personnel into West Africa.
Think Progress, a far-left “think” tank that carries Obama’s water or he carries theirs – not sure – had the most absurd reasons listed on October 16th. The title of their article was “4 Reasons Why a Travel Ban Won’t Solve the Ebola Crisis.”
Who is asking for a travel ban to “solve” it.
The article states that officials won’t be able to track people with symptoms.
I ask you, will it be easier if they are traveling all over the U.S.? Will they track them as well as they track people jumping visas or Fast & Furious guns?
It will delay the inevitable.
Since when is delay a bad thing as the professionals work on a vaccine or a cure? And since when is it inevitable? Haven’t we been told something quite different?
Think Progress complained about getting personnel into West Africa.
I guess they never heard of charter flights or military planes.
Their last was best. They are worried about West Africa’s economy. What about ours if we have serious outbreaks here?
There is no good argument for refusing to levy a temporary travel ban from West African nations where 10,000 people now have Ebola, a disease which spreads exponentially. Many countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and Mexico have instituted a travel ban.
Everything done by our administration so far has been half-measures or PR stunts.
Mr. Obama and his administration are more concerned about West Africans than they are about Americans.
He did do the politically important thing – he hugged a formerly Ebola-stricken victim, nurse Nina Pham. He’s always ready with the photo-ops. Leads on it in Mr. Obama’s favorite media outlets read – All Is Back to Normal.
hug photo-op
photo-op hug seen ’round the world.
Now, if he hugged her in the hospital, that would have been news.
http://www.independentsentinel.com/nyc-ebola-quarantine-unenforceable-and-honor-system-doesnt-work/
