Pirate's Cove

Representative Chris Coons, Democrat-Delaware, makes some good points. He also makes some seriously dumb ones. I wonder whether his opinion would change if some of these people coming from Ebola areas ended up in Delaware?

Those who help Ebola patients should be honored, not punished

The best way to protect Americans from Ebola is by stopping the virus at its source.

That’s why President Obama has committed up to 4,000 U.S. military engineers, logistics specialists and public health trainers and $1 billion in funding to help eradicate the virus in West Africa. That’s why philanthropist Paul Allen pledged $100 million in support last week and why Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, visited the affected countries this week.

Interestingly, the military members sent involuntarily to West Africa will be quarantined. Strange. Furthermore, if we want to stop it at its source, then we need to keep it at its source, not allow it to roam around the streets of the U.S.

We cannot protect Americans at home without sending Americans to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone. Instead of demonizing those who volunteer for service, through stigmatizing mandatory quarantines or the imposition of a travel ban, we should be honoring them.

I see what you did there. Using a time honored system of keeping people who are potential disease carriers (the current outbreak of Ebola has roughly a 60% mortality rate) away from other people to limit the potential spread is “demonizing”. Let’s not forget that they volunteered to go to those countries, unlike our military members. And, they should be celebrated for taking the chance and putting themselves in harms way To Help. Seriously. Kudos. That doesn’t mean they should be allowed to wander around until the threat has passed.

Interestingly, the same Democrats tend to treat our military members as uneducated hillbillies and scumbags.

There’s a simple way to do that: The president should guarantee that all U.S. citizens who travel to West Africa to help fight Ebola will be allowed to return to the United States, that any medical care they need as a result of their trip will be provided free of charge and that wages lost to any government-imposed quarantine will be reimbursed. That’s the least we can do for the volunteers, missionaries and military personnel working to end this outbreak.

On one hand, they volunteered. This should be on them. On the other hand, I’m OK with it. But, um, why should we need to reimburse them if they are quarantined, because Coons had previously argued against quarantine?

But some of our political leaders have been sending the opposite message. The measures imposed by officials in New York and New Jersey last weekend — although later softened — sent a dangerous, punitive message to these dedicated people. Forced quarantines and the barring of people without Ebola symptoms are tactics not backed by science.

Wait, didn’t he just argue that people should be reimbursed after being quarantined?

I’m not sure about honoring these people, but they should be respected. And they should respect the citizens of the U.S. by being quarantined till the threat of contagion passes.

Read: Rep. Chris Coons: Stop Being Mean To Those Who Come To US Possibly Striken With Ebola »

You’re familiar with the nurse, Kaci Hickox, who was the center of a kerfuffle in New Jersey when she was involuntarily quarantined after returning from West Africa, threatening to sue, because she apparently knows best, and apparently has no qualms about potentially exposing other people to Ebola. Now, Maine is looking to quarantine her

(Fox News) Maine health officials said Tuesday that they are prepared to go to court to force nurse Kaci Hickox to comply with the state’s “voluntary” 21-day quarantine period for health care workers who have treated Ebola patients, as the nurse vows to defy the state.

Hickox, on Wednesday, told NBC’s “Today” that she doesn’t “plan on sticking to the guidelines” and is “appalled” by the home quarantine policies “forced” on her.

“I truly believe this policy is not scientifically nor constitutionally just, and so I’m not going to sit around and be bullied around by politicians and be forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public,” she said, saying she’s in “perfectly good health.”

Jazz Shaw wrote about this earlier this morning, in that Maine had been looking for a way to enforce a quarantine, and now we know how.

As a nurse, she should know better, yet, she is exposing herself to her boyfriend (BTW, does she know that the main way to catch Ebola is through transfer of bodily fluids?), who will then expose himself to others

On Monday, Hickox traveled from New Jersey to Maine, where her boyfriend is a senior nursing student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. Her boyfriend opted to leave Fort Kent to spend time with her during the quarantine period, officials said Tuesday.

If Hickox were to show Ebola symptoms, then her boyfriend and any others who had contact with her also would be subject to quarantine, Mayhew said.

The news of Hickox’s return to Maine swept across the town of Fort Kent and the university campus, which has 1,400 students.

Faith Morneault, a 19-year-old behavioral science student, said news that Hickox may be headed to Fort Kent had caused “a lot of panic” among students. But she said she understands her desire to go home.

“You can’t freak out in this situation. You have to understand it,” she said.

So, if she starts showing symptoms (hopefully not), then she will have caused lots of other people to be forced into quarantine. Which is a time honored way of dealing with disease.

The very fact is, Ebola is a tremendously hard disease to catch. Yet, every so often, we have big outbreaks. More people will die from the common flu this year than Ebola. Yet, Ebola illicits a visceral reaction from people simply upon hearing the word. Even those who do not really understand what it does, it causes fear and anxiety. Mention the Bubonic Plague, and there is little concern, yet, on average, 9 people in the US will catch it. People think it’s a disease from almost a 1000 years ago. Jazz goes on

But this is really just a microcosm of the larger, national hypocrisy on this issue. Noah already highlighted (in much more polite words than I could have managed) the doublespeak of the President when he attempted to explain how mandatory quarantines of people who are actually working with Ebola patients are insulting and bad, but quarantining our troops who do not have such contact is an obvious choice. In fact, there seems to be little that the administration and their media surrogates can agree on except for four things:

1. Chris Christie is a terrible person and we shouldn’t do anything he says.
2. Mandatory quarantines are insulting and bad for America.
3. We obviously need to go ahead and do exactly what Christie put in place.
4. But under no circumstances should we call it a mandatory quarantine.

If you get the flu, you isolate yourself from other people. Ms. Hickox is practicing bad medicine, and is irresponsible to potentially expose others because she is, as so many others nowadays, utterly selfish.

More:  How’d that self-quarantining work with the NY doctor, Dr. Craig Spencer?

“He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” a source said.

Spencer finally ’fessed up when a cop “got on the phone and had to relay questions to him through the Health Department,” a source said.

Huh. Meanwhile

A new CBS News poll finds that Americans overwhelmingly support quarantine for travelers arriving from West Africa. Eighty percent think U.S. citizens and legal residents returning from West Africa should be quarantined upon their arrival in the U.S. until it is certain they don’t have Ebola. Just 17 percent think they should be allowed to enter as long as they do not show symptoms of Ebola.

Certainly, it is correct that it is enormously difficult to contract Ebola. That said, why make it easier to spread? Nip it in the bud. Also, those who have voluntarily put themselves in harms way should not be ostracized nor denigrated. They’ve done a good thing. Yet, they will ruin the notion of people doing good work if they are so selfish that they recklessly potentially expose other people. If you went to work, the supermarket, the mall, etc, and saw someone in the throes of the flu, would you say “great, freedom! Civil rights! No one should be confined!”? Or would you think the person was a selfish you-know-what for exposing other people, including yourself?

Read: Ebola Nurse Balks At Voluntary Confinement »