Saturday, October 04, 2014

Obama must take a bigger stand against Ebola

UPDATE October 6, 2014: Thank you President Obama:

White House Now Seems Open to New Steps on Ebola in U.S.

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I am extremely frustrated that Obama is not doing more about the Ebola case - and the potential for an Ebola outbreak. If there are good reasons for why the following steps are not being taken, I want to know what they are.

1. Why are flights from countries with Ebola outbreaks not being quarantined? There may be some good reasons why, but I haven't heard them yet, and until a convincing reason is given it looks very bad that we have not done so. As we have seen in the case of the Ebola patient in Texas, he lied on his screening form.  And who wouldn't lie, if they thought they had Ebola and were headed for the United States? Your chances for survival are much better in an American hospital than in a Liberian hospital.

It seems to me that the only way to prevent those infected with Ebola from entering the US is with a quarantine at American airports. If there is any other way to do this, I haven't heard of it yet.

2. Why isn't there a hazmat team assembled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention? The response so far to cleaning up the Texas victim's apartment has been to let clueless county officials handle it and hope for a private contractor to do the clean-up.

The Center for Disease Control must create an Ebola hazmat team to address this kind of clean-up. Too much is at stake for health and politics to screw around with this.

It would be so awful, so ironic, if the president who made affordable healthcare for all a reality in this country ends up being blamed for a health crisis. This must not be allowed to happen!

And of course Fox News is already attempting to exploit their advantage.