by John Gibson
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Some people are telling us we should not be freaked out by the Ebola eruption. Our own Shepard Smith is just one. My friend Greg Gutfeld has said the same.
Both are friends, but sorry, they are wrong.
The headlines of the last 24 hours are shocking. Dallas nurse Amber Joy Vinson, who was just confirmed as contracting the Ebola virus, flew off to Cleveland to arrange her upcoming wedding. On her return flight she had a slightly elevated temperature, but after repeated calls to the CDC she was cleared to fly. Now that the airline is scrambling to contact 132 fellow passengers, which has caused a chain reaction of fear, caution or panic: two schools have been shut down in Ohio and Texas, and two students have been told (in Waco, Texas) to not come to school, and the flight crew has been put on paid leave, and one other person has put himself in voluntary isolation. After all that now the CDC is saying it was a mistake to tell Ms. Vinson she was cleared to fly, and the CDC is considering putting all the Dallas health care workers who worked with the late Thomas Duncan on a no-fly list.
Plus the U.S. Army is now telling U.S. military personnel who go to West Africa to set up field hospitals they will be put in 21 day quarantine upon their return.
So let me get this straight: the CDC says a travel ban on visitors from West Africa is unreasonable and counter productive, but we are putting Dallas nurses on a no-fly list and we're going to quarantine U.S. soldiers returning from West Africa?
This is at the heart of public panic: the CDC's actions make no sense and clearly something other than the best medical judgment is at work. People recognize contradictions in public policy just as easily as they recognize a looming danger from a disease that can quickly spiral out of control.
We started the Duncan episode with 48 people he might have had contact with in quarantine, we quickly added approximately seventy health care workers after nurse Nina Pham contracted the disease, and now that nurse Amber Joy Vinson took that Frontier Airlines flight, we've added another 132 on the watch list. That's almost 250 people under watch status and more to come because the Frontier airliner made five more flights before it was taken out of service for decontamination.
All this in the space of a week.
And people aren't supposed to panic? Hysteria is unreasonable?
Not to mention the fact that President Obama has now cancelled two days of fundraising to hold emergency meetings on Ebola? He didn't cancel a fundraiser for Benghazi, he didn't postpone a golf game after announcing the ISIS beheading of American James Foley. But now he's cancelled two days of fundraising? Obviously, he's feeling there is an emergency afoot.
The quickest way to begin to re-instill public confidence is to impose that long resisted travel ban for visitors from West Africa. The next step to help public confidence would be to name Ebola treatment hospitals as the places any new patient will go, and stop trying to convince the public of the fiction that any hospital anywhere can handle an Ebola case safely, without infecting even more health care workers. Emory in Atlanta and Nebraska Medical Center have state of the art isolation centers, Dallas Texas Health Presbyterian obviously does not.
And finally, medical professionals in white lab coats have got to stop going on television telling the public they knew how to stop Ebola. It doesn't help to see these arrogant and condescending assurances immediately countered by evidence that they are wrong.
And just by the way, even if it's unfair or wrong, Dr. Thomas Frieden of the CDC should resign. He has ruined his credibility with the CDC's missteps and his constant and repetetive assurances that we have Ebola in control when the news has made it crystal clear that we do not
Latest Show ($1.29) Gibson - 10-15-2014 - Complete Show
