Americans Have the Solution to the Ebola Threat – Democrats and White House ignore it

I spoke with a neighbor who recently returned from a vacation in Sicily. The topic of Ebola came up and she asked, “Why aren’t we keeping people in countries with Ebola from coming to America?” That is the question more and more Americans are asking. President Obama and Democrats are avoiding the answer and ignoring the concern.

Shawn Bevans from IJ Review in a column titled “Americans Believe They Have the Solution to U.S. Ebola Threat – But the White House Isn’t Doing It” reports, “In light of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have announced airport screening changes. Airline passengers arriving at 5 U.S. airports from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone would be subject to enhanced health screenings as part of an ongoing effort to help combat the prolific spread of the deadly virus.”

The five 5 airports are JFK, Dulles, O’Hare, Newark Liberty and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta. These airports account for 94% of the individuals who travel into the U.S. from the three West African countries.

In 2010 President Obama stopped more intense airport screening procedures, recommended by the CDC, for infectious diseases like Ebola. USA Today’s Alison Young in 2010 reported:

The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.

The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. They also would have expanded requirements for airlines to report ill passengers to the CDC and mandated that airlines collect and maintain contact information for fliers in case they later needed to be traced as part of an investigation into an outbreak.

Airline and civil liberties groups, which had opposed the rules, praised their withdrawal.

Bevans writes, “Not all Americans are convinced, however, that a screening procedure is enough to prevent those infected with Ebola from entering our country. According to an NBC News survey, 58% of Americans are in favor of an all-out travel ban on flights originating from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Only 20% opposed the idea.”

In an Orwellian response to the growing concern of Ebola coming to America and support for a travel ban, President Obama’s CDC Director, Dr. Tom Frieden stated:

“The problem with [travel bans] is that it makes it extremely difficult to respond to the outbreak. . . . If we make it harder to respond to the outbreak in West Africa, it will spread not only in those three countries but to other parts of Africa and will ultimately increase the risk here.”

Dr. Frieden, along with President Obama and Democrats, does not seem to understand that Americans do not care about Ebola spreading to other parts of Africa, they only care about preventing it from coming to the U.S. Americans believe what happens is Africa needs to stay in Africa.

Americans look in dismay, and growing anger, at the President’s reluctance to protect the lives of Americans from Ebola and other diseases coming across our Southern borders. Democrats are siding with their leader – much to the chagrin of Main Street America.