Now that two of the nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital are Ebola-free -- along with Dr. Kent Brantly, nurse Nancy Writebol, and NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo -- and the treatment protocols at isolation facilities from Omaha, to NIH, to Emory University are working, all we need are political clowns to gin up public fear and paranoia. Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, Memorial Sloan Kettering's infectious disease control director, take it away:
"Right on cue, as if in an attempt to push the discussion ever further toward irrelevancy, the twin towers of presidential posturing, Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo, agreed to hog the spotlight together in order to get presidentially tough over an issue that needed no decisiveness at all: What to do about the small trickle of health-care volunteers who return to the States from West Africa? Tired, apparently, of all the goddamned evidenced-based pussy-footing coming from people who understand science and public health, the Two Big Guys made their kick-butt pronouncement: They are throwing those weenie volunteers into the 21-day slammer, no ifs or ands or buts. Goddammit."And how did that work out? New York Dem Governor and relentless opportunist Andrew Cuomo backed down from his earlier order that people arriving from West Africa having direct contact with Ebola victims (e.g., health workers) be quarantined in a government facility. Now, they're restricted to their homes. His counterpart in New Jersey, blowhard traffic cop and head of New Jersey's Rethug crime family Chris "Krispycreme" Christie reluctantly followed suit, but not after digging himself deeper in his belligerent, anti-medicine/anti-science hole. Quarantined nurse Kaci Hickox, who has tested negative for the virus, blasted Krispycreme's ham-fisted posturing, saying.
"First of all, I don't think he's a doctor; secondly, he's never laid eyes on me; and thirdly, I've been asymptomatic since I've been here."The only thing showing symptoms are cowardly political weasels and bullies carrying the 2016-itis disease. They are the ones requiring quarantine.
