LETTERBOY

All of these regulations will cost time and money to devise and to enforce. So you'd be wasting money, since they won't work.

jkhuggins

And, furthermore, enforcing those regulations means that the people who were doing something else (presumably) useful won't be doing that, but enforcing this ineffective regulations instead. It's not just that it's an ineffective use of time and money; it's that it's a distraction from other provably useful tasks.

alanR

Based on "bangs per buck" it would be cheaper to spend the money in West Africa

Meanwhile Lunatics take over asylum

Xyzzy

This is all de jour for the US government. They have an entire organisation dedicated to this purpse. It's called the TSA. @:-) If we had them perform this task we wouldn't be taking resources from anything useful.

Indelaware

Perhaps someone ought be taken to court for slandering his good name. In what way is traveling to the United States in order to visit one's fiancee and mother not consistent with the terms of a tourist visa? To suggest that the departed knew he was infected is simple fantasy since he traveled prior to any symptoms and even if a blood test had been performed on him at ROB, the virus would be at such a small count that its presence would not have been identified. Besides, plans for his travel had been made well in advance of the incubation period leading up to the development of symptoms.

Why do people refuse to accept the empirical?

Every respectable scientific organization has pointed out time-and-time again the counter productivity of a travel ban. There is only one reason to ban travel: paranoid hysteria.

The economic cost of banning travel would surely be in the $100s of billions. A travel ban would allow the virus to go unchecked; to spread across the globe until it is a pandemic.

Western countries have in now way proven themselves inept. Sure, there have been a few minor missteps (largely on the part of a for profit hospital in Texas) and a sad slowness to aide the three affected countries, but that does not amount to ineptness.

It is certainly your right to reject science and to dismiss the qualified as inept. Even if one rejects all the certain counter productive effects of a travel ban, what about the math?

A 90% ban will not stop Ebola from spreading; only combating Ebola at its hot spots - by maximizing aide, capital investment, and transportation will. Consider this analysis of the effects of a 90% travel ban:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamar.../ebola-travel/


The purpose of the TSA to to deter the would be petty-terrorist. The one-off copycat fool. They do this job quite well, especially compared to the exceptionally poor work done by the for profit, lowest bidder, system of employing minimum wage workers of poor training, limited education, and often questionable immigration status which existed previously. To think that the TSA's purpose is to stop the committed, well funded, terrorist is foolish - just as foolish as thinking that locks keep crooks away. Still it is better to have a lock which doesn't consist of the lowest quality components.

FliesWay2Much

First of all, the NY Times Would disagree with you.

It has been widely reported that he lied to authorities when he departed his own country. Ironically, I've got to believe that he would have had a much better chance at survival if he had been forthright and if his family members had been forthright. All he had to do was to tell the story reported in the NY Times. We don't know why he was turned away the first time. All we can assume is that the decision was based on what he told them at the ED.

I'm not arguing the medical or contagion data, which I happen to agree with. I'm arguing that you and I would certainly have paid the bill in any foreign country in which we received medical attention. Let me state it another way: Regardless of one's own personal medical insurance, any medical facility in or out of your country would expect to be paid for the care they provided you. I expect the taxpayers of Dallas and the State of Texas and everywhere else his trail of exposure has cost expenditure of public funds to be reimbursed.

You want to go where?

You will be waiting a long time. I doubt he had the funds to pay for his care in Dallas let alone anything else.

However, I think it a bit much to expect him to care for the monitoring of people who were possibly exposed in Ohio. The nurse in question should never have left Dallas before the incubation period was up.

Xyzzy

The girlfriend of the man who died in Dallas -- and her family -- have been released from quarantine. They shared an apartment with him for at least a few days and were in the apartment for a few days after he was admitted to the hostpital. Perhaps nw those screaming the loudest for tavel bans, etc. will realize that this disease really is a lot harder to catch in its early stages. That's not to say we should ignore it, just that we need to act with cool heads and not out of mass-media-induced panic.

sentinelmed

This is the necessary step taken forward by officials. This will help prevent ebola from spreading to a large extent. I wish no one ever suffers from this.

catocony

It won't help at all, even if Ebola was spreading. It isn't.

Xyzzy

It seems that the DHS is nw requiring anyone travelling to the US to arrive at one of the 5 airports being discussed here. What happens to those who have tickets to other airports or were in-transit when this was announced? Will we turn them back?

You want to go where?

What happens if they are American citizens? Will they be denied entry to their own country?

catocony

The only thing they can do is get the airlines to not sell bookings from originating airports in those three countries to final destinations not on the list of 5. Since all of those travelers have to make a connection before getting on a US-bound flight, I don't know what DHS and CDC are trying to accomplish. It's an issue for countries that have non-stops to those three African countries.

Indelaware

So now the airlines are responsible for knowing from where a passenger has traveled from? Sure if the travel is all on the same PNR. But when one is traveling on multiple PNRs or even across multiple means of travel -- e.g. fly from CKY/FNA/ROB to CMN, take the train to Tangier, then the ferry and a bus to MAD... CBP has already said it is difficult for them to tell where a passenger has been when the trip is across multiple air tickets, but can one really expect private sector workers to have their intelligence tools?

And what happens when a person traveling from one of the affected areas arrives into a port of entry at PHL, CLT, DFW, LAX, etc. or arrives by boat into a sea port? Will they be refused entry? Or will the airline be fined?

Another case of hysteria driving policy rather than common sense and facts driving policy.

Xyzzy

Exactly.

I wish some of the furiously talking heads would address the fact that people LIVING WITH the late Mr. Duncan did NT contract Ebola even though they were with him for several days when he was clearly exhibiting signs of the disease. Clearly he wasn't very contagious at that stage. Had he been any sicker he wouldn't have been able to travel. Those two facts would tend to eliminate any of the causes of the current CHN (Cable Hysteria Netwrk) crisis de jour.