FruminousBandersnatch wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People saying the American public is uneducated etc etc. No idea if it's true but even if it is, it doesn't matter. We live in a democracy (OK, fine, technically a constitutional republic but for the purposes of this discussion, the difference is not relevant). Unless what the public wants infringes on a constitutional right, what public wants should trump, whether that decision is based on awesome reasoning or blind panic. And as far as I know, the right of individuals who are neither American citizens nor permanent residents to come to the US any time they want is not a constitutional right.
In fact, unlike members of the EU countries, they have to get a visa to come here - there is no automatic entry right and visa can be denied for whatever reason and good luck appealing.
So if the majority of Americans really do want travel bans (if the poll is accurate), guess what - I think travel bans should be put in place, provided there are special provisions to deal with US citizens and permanent residents who obviously have a different degree of constitutional protection than a Liberian national who wants to come here on a tourist visa.
Actually, the distinction between a pure democracy and a constitutional republic are very relevant for the purposes of this discussion. The Constitution and our system of governance is set up in many ways precisely because those who wrote the Constitution recognized that the will of the people is not always correct. The checks and balances in our system serve as checks on the various branches of government, but also serve as a check on ill-considered actions by the majority of the population.
People are really bad at evaluating risk. When the media is constantly screaming about EBOLA! it causes people to disproportionately weight the risk of the disease in relation to other risks. Those who want travel bans are thinking one thing - keep people with ebola away. Which a reasonable desire. The question is whether those people are accurately evaluating the costs necessary to implement a travel ban. It sounds like a really easy thing - no one from the three infected countries gets to fly out.
So how do you do it?
Do you completely shut down all outgoing flights from those countries? That would devastate their economies at a time when they need the most help, and it would push people to use simply go to the closest airport in a neighboring country via rail/car or to use smaller, private planes via less regulated airfields. It would be virtually impossible, not to mention prohibitively expensive to attempt to seal the borders of those countries.
Do you quarantine people for the 21 day incubation period before you allow them to fly? How do you keep them isolated for those 21 days? That's a tremendous cost and the facilities don't currently exist for housing and feeding such a population.
Do you test them for ebola? According to this article (
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/06/how-do-doctors-test-for-ebola/):
A number of tests can be used to diagnose Ebola within a few days of the onset of symptoms, which can detect the virus's genetic material or the presence of antibodies against the pathogen.
The most accurate of these is likely the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, a technique that looks for genetic material from the virus and creates enough copies of it that it can be detected, Hirsch said. "PCR is a really definitive test," Hirsch said. It can pick up very small amounts of the virus.
However, this test can be negative during the first three days an infected person has symptoms, said Dr. Sandro Cinti, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Michigan Hospital System/Ann Arbor VA Health System.
"Somebody could be in the hospital for three to five days before a diagnosis [of Ebola] is confirmed," Cinti told Live Science. "The important thing is keeping the patient isolated until you can get to a diagnosis." Meanwhile, doctors will be running tests to rule out other diseases, such as malaria, which can be detected more quickly than Ebola, he said.
So the test doesn't help until they have symptoms, and even then it takes 3-5 days.
So, if someone comes to the airport with symptoms, you could isolate them for 3-5 days. But, again, you have the quarantine issue.
None of this helps if the person is asymptomatic when they arrive at the airport. Even if you ask someone if they've been exposed, they could lie, as the Texas victim supposedly did.
On top of that, even if you try to impose a quarantine at the airports in the affected countries, the police/army forces in those countries are not known for their scrupulous observance of legal and ethical rules.
When you put all this together, travel bans are unlikely to be successful.
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