Saturday, October 25, 2014

Two States Mandate Quarantine For Returning Ebola Medics

by JASmius



On the one hand: Yay for the States!  Doing the things Barack Hussein Obama will not do.  Although I have to wonder how long it will be before Eric "The Red" Holder, as a parting middle finger, sues New York and New Jersey to block their quarantines an Supremacy Clause grounds, or perhaps as a "civil rights" violation.

On the other hand.....only two?:

New York and New Jersey will automatically quarantine all medical workers returning from Ebola-hit West African countries, and the U.S. government is considering the same step after a doctor who treated patients in Guinea came back infected, officials said on Friday.

The U.S. government is "considering" a mandatory, preemptive quarantine to keep (any more) ebola from entering the country?  They're "considering" it?!

Actually, that would be progress - if it were true, which I don't believe for a, well, New York minute.

The steps announced by the two states, which go beyond the current restrictions being imposed by the U.S. government on travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, came as medical detectives tried to retrace the steps of the infected physician, Dr. Craig Spencer.

Ah, yes, the magical mystery tour that would have Sherlock Holmes hurling blood, just as we discussed the other day.  And, behold, the blind-guide ideological scales fall from Andy Cuomo's eyes.  Although I tend to think that Governor Christie was going to order a quarantine anyway, and Governor Cuomo didn't want to be upstaged by "the State to take her to kiss her where it smells".

"Increasing the screening process is necessary. I think it reduces the risk to New Yorkers and the residents of New Jersey," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Very good, Governor.  We'll make a responsible leader and decent human being with a functioning brain out of you yet.  Although that will require you to switch parties at some point, so you have been warned.

Cuomo, who appeared with the governor of neighboring New Jersey, Chris Christie, at a news conference, had earlier in the day sought to reassure New Yorkers that Ebola's threat was limited the day after Spencer tested positive for the virus.

And, strangely enough, they couldn't do that until they instituted a mandatory preemptive quarantine for personnel returning from West Africa.  Imagine that.  Now all Governors Cuomo and Christie have to do is extend the quarantine to incoming personnel from the other forty-eight States that don't have quarantines, and the job of reassurance will be complete.

And no, I'm not kidding.

In Washington, President Barack Obama also sought to reassure a worried public with an Oval Office hug of Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who was declared Ebola-free on Friday after catching the virus from a Liberian patient who died.

Which doesn't reassure crap, because Nurse Pham had already been cured.  Let him go around hugging people that have been exposed to ebola but are not yet manifesting any symptoms - i.e. precisely the people that should be quarantined - and then I'll start taking his new-found groping habit seriously.

Cuomo said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had agreed that individual States have the right to exceed federal requirements.

Dumbfounding, isn't it?  Guess you don't get your "gold watch" after all, Eric.

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