Tough guy governors Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and Chris Christie (R-NJ) made big news Friday when they announced a mandatory quarantine of people returning to the U.S. from the Ebola-stricken countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Their new policy—made without consultation of city or federal officials—was immediately put to the test by Christie when nurse Kaci Hickox arrived at Newark from Sierra Leone and was detained and put in a makeshift quarantine at a New Jersey hospital, essentially a plastic tent inside the hospital with no running toilet or shower. Christie had the bad luck of detaining the wrong nurse, as Hickox immediately began a media campaign to protest her detention and retained a civil rights attorney.
The Obama administration and actual public health experts immediately began pushing back, as well. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads up the infectious disease unit at the Centers for Disease Control and is thus someone who actually knows about infectious disease control, went on no less than five Sunday shows, attempting to quell the panic Cuomo and Christie were feeding with their overreaction. Fauci reminded Chuck Todd and the Meet the Press audience that "the best way to stop this epidemic is to help the people in West Africa. We do that by sending people over there." Sending people over there is made much, much harder when those people end up stuck in a plastic tent and have to give up three weeks of income on their return.
After three days of being made to look like overreacting idiots, Christie and Cuomo both began to soften their stance. Cuomo relented to say that quarantine could happen at healthcare workers' homes, and that if necessary the state would help them financially to replace their lost salaries. Christie, however, did his usual blustery thing for Fox News Sunday, saying "I absolutely have no second thoughts about this" quarantine policy.
That was Fox News Sunday, though. Come Monday morning, Christie caved, announcing that Hickox is free to return to her home in Maine on a private plane. It's important to note that Hickox has tested negative for Ebola and has exhibited no symptoms. Which every single doctor that showed up on every Sunday show reiterated meant she posed no threat at all to public health in terms of Ebola. Public health experts—and Ebola experts like the people who have been treating patients in West Africa under the rigorous training program of Doctors without Borders—know, too. So maybe, just maybe, they'd be the first people governors would talk to when figuring out policy options for the disease.
It's also important to note that the doctors and nurses to travel to West Africa to fight this disease deserve our respect and our thanks. We need to respect them enough to trust that they are not going to endanger anyone at home and that they know the disease well enough to monitor their own health. We should also acknowledge that they know the disease well enough to get themselves to a hospital the minute they feel any symptom because they don't want to die.
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The Ebola fight is not in New York City. It is in West Africa. That fight is not going to be won if healthcare workers are discouraged from joining it. It's not going to be won by ill-informed politicians in the U.S. and their political posturing. That's as true for Chris Christie as it is for all the Republicans screaming for travel bans.
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