Views On Ebola: Federal Mistakes Prompt State Quarantines; Media Amplifies Worries
A selection of opinions on efforts to control the spread of Ebola.
The Wall Street Journal:
The Incredibility Infection
So the Obama Administration is pressuring the Governors of New York and New Jersey behind the scenes to reverse their decision on Friday to impose a mandatory quarantine on health workers returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa. Well, if it weren’t for the Administration’s incompetence in handling Ebola risks on U.S. soil, maybe the state leaders wouldn’t have felt they had to take matters into their own hands. (10/26)
The New Republic:
An Ebola Quarantine For New York
Of course, the argument for quarantine may be less about medicine than it is about mass psychology. Ebola is a scary disease and quarantine's main, perfectly worthy goal may simply be to calm the public. But in public health, as in medicine, the first principle is Do No Harm. Medical experts and health officials worry, for example, that quarantine might discourage aid workers from traveling to West Africa, at a time when the region desperately needs more personnel to fight the epidemic. (Jonathan Cohn, 10/25)
The Washington Post:
The Cure For Our Ebola Panic Is More Panic
Just start typing “can I get ebola from” into Google and it suggests all kinds of frenzied questions. “A toilet seat?” “sneezing?” (Soon: “A czar?” “Dreams?” “Impure thoughts?”) We have enough panic to fill the 24-hour cable news channels 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the occasional break for commercials (to panic about the loss of our sexual potency or panic about what will happen to Grandma if she falls in the house when she is alone). ... Now people are saying we need to calm down. That this panic is doing more harm than good. That, in the scheme of things, we (in America, anyway) are far less likely to contract Ebola than to be killed by lightning, bees or sharks. People say this as though it is reassuring. Frankly, it is the opposite. If you want me to calm down, do not tell me about other things that are more likely to kill me. (Alexandra Petri, 10/24)
Bloomberg:
You Can't Cure Ebola With Money
I support government spending on basic research. But I really do not support the wrongheaded idea that medical research is like ordering groceries from Peapod: Just dial up what you want, and if you’re willing to pay the cost, you can have the goodies. In fact, it’s more like a lottery: if you don’t play, you can’t win, but at best, you still lose an awful lot. An Ebola vaccine is entering trials right now, and if it succeeds, that will be incredible news. But it could fail in many ways, and acting as if it’s a guarantee is grossly irresponsible. (Megan McArdle, 10/24)
