What does the CDC’s theory of on Ebola have to do with logical thinking? When it comes down to protecting Americans from Ebola, it’s baffling what the CDC’s conception of “science” is. Under the new guidelines that the CDC has in place, “only those workers returning in the highest risk group for Ebola infection would require isolation.” According to Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, the banning of flights and quarantining of health workers is not scientific and would somehow enable the spread of the disease.
Frieden says that the highest risk group can be monitored from home and should be totally free to travel throughout the community. What the CDC’s guidelines seem to indicate is that returning health workers can voluntarily, monitoring themselves or choose to do nothing. Frieden and others have also argued that health workers would not be inclined to volunteer to work on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic if they expected to be quarantined when they returned. Of course health workers should expect to be quarantine when returning from an Ebola ravaged area because that would be a logical premise for containing the disease. It’s not about “quarantines making Ebola heroes into pariahs” it’s about precautions and odds. And the odds are, the more risks that are taken the more cases of infections. Now that’s science! Instead the CDC believes in some unknown and different type of science, which of course, turns out to be non-science. The CDC’s “science” is the science of no bans on air travel along with voluntarily monitoring. Now that doesn’t sound like science to me.
Today Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) also jumped on the bandwagon to slam N.J. Governor Chris Christie for initiating mandatory quarantines for health workers returning from West Africa. Warren suggested that Christie is being motivated by political aspirations although, she herself, was promoting her new book on CBS’s This Morning. She reiterated what the CDC and the White House has been spouting and referred to as “science” when it comes to Ebola spread. Warren argues that Christie should “show the science” of mandatory quarantines.
While Warren may be correct about political motivation on Christie’s part—it’s irrelevant because all the matters is the end result. And as Christie stated, his job is to protect the public. Still, the CDC continues to state that decisions not ban flights or quarantine health workers is somehow tied to science. The CDC and the White House keep referring to “science” but what science are they speaking of? Is this a mathematical science of the odds? How does allowing all flights with no quarantines really keep us safer? That’s not logic and it’s not science. On the contrary, it sounds like the science of how to SPREAD a disease to other shores? How is allowing more high risk groups entry, without restriction, scientific?
For some reason, it seems that there are many people who want to put the kibosh on the idea of quarantines, at any cost. I don’t want health workers to feel like “pariahs” either, but what’s most important is the containment of the disease, not the inconvenience of health workers who could possibly be carrying Ebola. If we had ZERO flights, then we would have (as close to) ZERO, of a chance for infections to spread as we could possibly get. So to Warren, the CDC and the White House I say, show me the science that calculates multiples’ of risky behavior as being safer than ZERO.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/28/elizabeth-warren-chris-christie_n_6062420.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/27/cdc-treating-ebola/18016189/
