We can look forward to weeks, maybe months, of this as long as the Obama administration refuses to halt flights from the Ebola-stricken countries.
Passenger with ‘symptoms of #Ebola‘ sends #Birmingham firefighters to airport in hazmat gear http://t.co/8iykFdervj
— AL.com (@aldotcom) October 9, 2014
The details:
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Birmingham firefighters in hazardous material protective gear have set up a command post after a passenger on-board a flight that arrived at the Shuttlesworth-International Airport showed “signs of symptoms of Ebola.”
Assistant Chief Tim Love said they have no indication the passenger has the disease but after a man died of the disease after flying into Dallas, the fire department wants to take no chances.
“We want to get ahead of this after what happened in Texas so we can do everything we can to protect people,” Love said.
The people do, but the federal government doesn’t.
It would be a trivial thing to halt flights outbound from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. How much is the enhanced screening going to cost? How much will panics like the one above cost? Does the government even have a plan in place to act when someone flying into the U.S. does show Ebola symptoms?
Ebola should not cause a panic. It’s difficult to contract. But the government’s ineptitude and its refusal to take reasonable action that the majority of Americans want is causing panics. We have no reason to feel confident that science and health are leading the response, and not politics.
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