A little understanding of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and the basics of how diseases spread tells us that the Republican proposal to ban travel from West African nations stricken by Ebola is not only worthless, but it will do more harm than good.
Our health care system is really, really good at dealing with "leakers" from West Africa, ie small numbers of people infected with Ebola, but who are not yet showing symptoms. There are probably going to be more of those, people who show up at our airports coming from West Africa with zero symptoms, but who develop symptoms days after arriving in the country. Those people know that they need to seek medical care immediately, and will proclaim to everyone in an emergency room that they are from West Africa and have Ebola - and our Ebola response system is finely tuned to deal with those "leakers" in small numbers, notwithstanding screwups by local facilities.
In other words, the travel ban is designed to block entry to the very "leakers" that our Ebola response system can handle.
So, "leakers" are not the problem, the problem is What Comes Next. And, it ain't pretty.
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Since our system can handle individual "leakers", what is the problem?
The real danger is global pandemic, spread from West Africa. What happens when there are a million cases in West Africa, and it spreads to the rest of Africa? What happens when it spreads from Africa to Asia and Europe - in giant numbers, not individuals? What happens when it spreads further in the western Hemisphere, and crosses our borders in the hundreds of thousands of cases? That is what a giant pandemic looks like, and a West Africa Travel Ban won't help at that point.
The real danger is the current epidemic spreading out of control around the world, not a handful of leakers coming into the country.
And, guess what - a West Africa Travel Ban stops aid workers from America going to West Africa to end the epidemic; if the government won't let people come here from West Africa, then few people are going to travel from here to there, for fear they will not be allowed back. Even if the Republicans exempt aid workers from the Travel Ban at first, after the first "leakers" come back, ie aid workers infected by Ebola, then the Republicans will ban everyone from coming back, and the infection spreads out of control.
In short, the Republican proposal may very well be the cause of a global pandemic that eventually envelopes America.
Analogy mode = ON
Suppose you have a nice wooden house, and you discover that there is a fire three blocks away from your house. You install a Cinder Control System on the roof, and discover that a single cinder landed on your roof, and your Cinder Control System (a kid with a garden hose) didn't immediately extinguish that one cinder. You panic, and your response is to ban all travel to that fire three blocks away, leaving no one to be able to put out the fire three blocks away, which ultimately spreads everywhere until all the houses around yours are on fire, and you burn up.
Analogy mode = OFF
The travel ban could kill you.