Are these calls for closing the borders the product of political opportunism? Xenophobia? In some cases they are. But some of them represent good faith attempts to protect public health, both here and abroad. The editors of the National Review have endorsed a travel ban, for example. In their editorial, they went out of their way to stress the importance of helping the victims of Ebola in West Africa, by making exceptions for aid workers and such. But they’d stop others from going to those countries, and handle returning visitors on a case-by-case basis.
These are not crazy arguments. But most public health experts remain opposed to such a sweeping travel ban, because they believe the potential downsides are a lot bigger than the potential upsides. These experts make some pretty compelling arguments of their own.
Mike Leavitt, former HHS Secretary agrees:
A former HHS secretary under President George W. Bush says he sees “lots of problems” with using travel bans to contain diseases like Ebola.
Republican Mike Leavitt was in charge of bird flu preparedness under Bush. He says that at the time, officials studied a travel ban intensely but concluded such an approach might not work.
Leavitt tells The Associated Press that a travel ban is intuitively attractive and seems so simple.
But would the U.S. expand the ban to European countries if people there got exposed? And what to do about Americans who want to come home?
Then again, he’s not running for anything.
Speaking of travel bans, NY Times:
No restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters or other places where members of the public congregate. No travel by airplane, ship, long-distance bus, train or other modes of commercial transportation.
Such are the restrictions that dozens of health care workers who treated the Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan are being asked to follow for the 21-day maximum incubation period of the virus.
The documents were drawn up by the Texas state health agency and Dallas County officials after an infected nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, took two flights between Dallas and Cleveland in the days before she developed symptoms of Ebola and was diagnosed with the disease.
County Judge Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive and its director of homeland security and emergency management, said he was confident that all of the workers would agree to sign the documents. “These are hometown health care heroes,” he said. “They want to do this. They’re going to follow these agreements.”
Remember, short of crossing state and international borders, quarantine is a state function. This is TX administering that function.
More politics and policy below the fold.
