Majority of Americans Want to Halt Flights from Ebola-Stricken Countries

The secretary of Health and Human Services — the bureaucracy that brought you Obamacare — says that the known Ebola cases in the United States are probably not the only ones.

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Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell said that despite the best efforts of health officials, Americans have to prepare for the reality that there may be more cases of Ebola in the United States.

“We had one case and I think there may be other cases, and I think we have to recognize that as a nation,” Burwell said at a media breakfast hosted by the journal Health Affairs and held at the Washington, D.C. offices of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Burwell, who heads the agency that runs Obamacare, does not believe that halting flights from the three Ebola-stricken countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — is the way to stop the disease from spreading here.

According to a new poll, most Americans disagree.

A majority of Americans support banning all flights to the United States from countries experiencing an Ebola outbreak, an exclusive NBC News online survey reveals.

The survey, which was conducted by SurveyMonkey and then weighted for age, race, sex, education and region to match U.S. Census data, found that 58 percent of Americans want a ban on incoming flights from West African countries hardest hit by the virus, such as Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Twenty percent of respondents opposed a travel ban, and the rest said they didn’t know. The survey was conducted a day before the first person diagnosed with Ebola inside the U.S. died Wednesday.

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Just 150 people fly to the U.S. from the three countries on average each day. The enhanced screening at five airports that begins this weekend would see about 90% of that traffic, leaving 10% outside the checks. It would be trivial to halt flights from the three countries, while allowing American medical and military personnel who are traveling to help quell the outbreak to travel to and from those countries.

But the government that brought about Obamacare against the majority’s will refuses to halt flights — against the majority’s will.

On average, every Ebola patient infects two other people.

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