For the people on Daily Kos who are in the grip of ebola fear and think that the government needs to take more aggressive measures, you now have a leader for your cause.
EXCLUSIVE – RAND PAUL: OBAMA 'DOWNPLAYING' EBOLA THREAT TO AMERICA
“They’re downplaying and underplaying the risk of this,” Paul said in an interview with Breitbart News backstage at an event where he endorsed Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) for re-election.
“They keep emphasizing that it’s so hard to transmit. Well if it’s so hard to transmit why are doctors getting it with masks, gloves, boots and hats—the whole works?” he asked.
“Could we have a worldwide pandemic? The Spanish flu in 1918 killed 21 million people, the plague in the 14th century killed 25 million people; I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I think we should have travel restrictions at this point in time coming from Africa,” Paul added.
“The head of the CDC a month ago was saying it’s no big deal and that we needed to still have this conference that they were having in New York, but it’s like well gosh can we have a conference delayed for a couple months? If this thing takes off in a big city or God forbid our marines get it on a ship, all you got to do is if you’ve ever been on a Carnival cruise line and seen a virus spread on a Carnival cruise line, imagine what it’d be like on our military ships,” Paul said.
Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Friday on CNN that restricting travel to slow the spread of Ebola to the U.S. would “backfire.”
“Even if we tried to close the border, it wouldn’t work,” Frieden said. “People have a right to return. People transiting through could come in. And it would backfire, because by isolating these countries, it’ll make it harder to help them, it will spread more there and we’d be more likely to be exposed here.”
Paul, an ophthalmologist by trade, is trying to present himself as a qualified medical expert who knows more about the problem than the government health officials dealing with communicable disease management. He has managed to convince himself that the military personnel that Obama is sending to West Africa to provide logistical support in managing the epidemic will be bringing the disease back to America.
The reality is that the most effective thing that the US and Europe can do to prevent a global epidemic is to put resources in the few West African countries where the disease has reached epidemic proportions. That is where the greatest impact can be made. So far US health authorities have screened about 100 people who have arrived in the US with symptoms that might be suggestive of ebola. To date there has been only one case that turned to actually be ebola. That is not an epidemic.
I am personally very grateful that Sen. Paul is not in charge and I hope that he never will be.