Ebola Quarantines and the Arrogance of Governor Chris Christie

by Nomad

Governors Christie and Cuomo's decision to implement a quarantine for all travellers for Ebola may be an idea that both will soon regret.
It opens a whole lot of questions about their quality of leadership and the ability to think rationally in a crisis. 

On Friday of last week, we witnessed Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York giving a press conference. They had come to announce that all travelers from the Ebola-stricken areas of West Africa would be put into a 21-day quarantine. All people entering the country through Newark Liberty and Kennedy International Airport would be affected by the ban. The decision had been made following the report of a Dr. Craig Spencer who was New York's first and only case of Ebola. 

The Decision to Quarantine

In some ways it was an astonishing bit of theatre.

Christie and Cuomo implied that the CDC had failed to protect the American people. In fact, he said that the measures were necessary because "the CDC keeps changing its mind." He offered no examples. 

Christie went on to imply that he, as a governor, knew more than nearly of all of the experts who have studied Ebola for years.  

From all reports, neither governor consulted medical experts or the White House before taking this step. These measures went far beyond what federal guidelines advised and what infectious disease experts have recommended.

Actually, the president had already issued its opinion that such a quarantine would most likely do more harm than good. In all three states, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, the governors have decided to, as Cuomo put it, "err on the side of caution."

So, to put their words into action, on Friday, Kaci Hickox, a nurse and epidemiologist for Doctors Without Borders, was detained at at Newark International Airport and was immediately forced into a mandatory quarantine. She had just returned from Sierra Leone, one of the three worst-hit countries,  yet showed absolutely no signs of an infection (the only time when the disease is contagious.)

The quarantine, which consisted on a unheated tent structure outside a university hospital in Newark, provided only the bare essentials, a port-a-potty, no shower. She has been also reportedly given only paper scrubs to wear. If Ms. Hickox was not sick when she arrived, she now has perhaps a better chance of catching a nasty flu.