. . . and other hogwash from Politico.
1. It would choke off aid and could worsen the outbreak. Politico argues that a charter flight could cost $200,000 per person, and would stifle the inflow of health supplies to West Africa. But suppose we let commercial flights fly in, but not take any people out who hadn't been quarantined first? Sure, airlines would be reluctant to sell one-way tickets for $1,200 and take a loss on an empty return flight, but they could charge double for all one-way tickets. $2,400 a seat still beats $200,000. In any case, we've already got the military sending in supplies. What's more, every time we treat a case of Ebola here we spend a minimum of $500,000 in direct medical costs, not to mention the cost of all the after-the-fact tracking and isolation efforts. Letting Duncan in has resulted in three such bills so far. I don't see the good sense in economizing on charter-flight expenses. What do you think it's cost Frontier Airlines for word to get out that one of its aircraft may have been contaminated? How much money will Texas Health Presbyterian lose? Would you schedule surgery there now?
2. It would make it harder to track infected people. Because they would lie and hide. None of that happening now, I guess.
3. Lawmakers are long on opinions, short on practical ideas. This is the usual "but Republicans won't get specific about alternatives" complaint, which works only when you're determined not to read a word Republicans publish on whatever the subject is, from healthcare to Ebola. What's the mystery about the practical way to make a travel ban work? We do it with communicable diseases in plants and animals all the time. More than a dozen countries already have imposed a travel ban on West Africa. Are their bans imprecise, impractical, or confusing in some way?
4. The math doesn't add up. The argument here seems to be that airport temperature screenings don't often turn up a problem. What to make of such a bizarre objection? Who's proposing airport temperature screenings that they're already supposedly doing anyway? We're talking about either an outright ban until the epidemic abates in West Africa, or a strict 21-day quarantine. We'd hope that a quarantine wouldn't identify many infected people, either, but the point isn't all the people who breathe a sigh of relief after 21 days and keep traveling: it's the occasional person who comes down with symptoms in that time and immediately goes into super-isolation and treatment. Politico's other argument is the vague "best to treat the problem at its source" business that I've been hearing everywhere. I agree it's a really good idea to treat the problem at its source, but that obviously entails keeping the problem largely at its source while we try to treat it. Ebola is not going to get any easier to stamp out if we let it swamp all the first-world hospitals, too.
2 comments:
I love how the official line is "but we can't quarantine those countries, because then we can't get aid in there!" This is an excuse a child would use. If the government cannot craft a quarantine that only prevents travelers who have been to those countries for the past 21 days from flying into the US (and passports should absolutely reveal if they have), WITHOUT blocking aid shipments, then I submit that such a government is clearly too impotent or incompetent to run anything. Quite literally THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES have managed to successfully implement such quarantines. Is the US actually incapable of doing something those countries can? Is that seriously what they're arguing?
The worst thing the West has done to Africa is the foreign aid.
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