OUR ANTI-HEALTH-AND-SAFETY PRESIDENT

Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, an instructor in clinical medicine at Columbia University and a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, returned to New York City Oct. 17 from Guinea, where he’d been treating Ebola patients.

He passed "enhanced screening" at Kennedy airport, but last Thursday (10/23), Dr. Spencer tested positive for Ebola.

Despite feeling "sluggish" on the previous Tuesday, the next day Dr. Spencer took two subway trains from Manhattan to a bowling alley in Brooklyn, then a taxi back home. In the six days prior to his diagnosis, Dr. Spencer made numerous other excursions around the city.

New Yorkers have nothing to worry about, New York City’s commissioner of health said at a news conference at Bellevue hospital a few hours after Dr. Spencer was put into isolation there.

"Ebola is very difficult to contract," said Dr. Mary Bassett. "Being on the same subway car or living near a person with Ebola does not in itself put someone at risk."

Dr. Bassett’s words would have been more reassuring if she hadn’t also described Dr. Spencer’s gallivanting about town as "self isolation" to "ensure safety."

And if the next day Dr. Nicole Lurie, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the Department of Health and Human Services, hadn’t acknowledged Ebola can be transmitted via perspiration. If moist and cool, the virus can survive on inert surfaces for up to seven weeks, tests indicate. I wouldn’t want to be the next person to sit on the seat on the subway where Dr. Spencer sat after jogging in Central Park.

When Anna Younker, who owns a bridal shop in Akron, realized Amber Vinson, a nurse who became infected with Ebola while treating Patient Zero in Dallas, had been a customer, she shut down her shop and went into voluntary quarantine.

Why didn’t Dr. Spencer minimize his contact with others until after the 21 day incubation period had passed? Why especially, on a day he was feeling "sluggish," did he ride subways, eat at restaurants, go bowling?

Perhaps he thought he was invincible, or felt entitled. Kaci Hickox, a nurse who worked with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone does.

What’s most alarming is that neither Dr. Spencer nor nurse Vinson – who took a commercial flight from Cleveland to Dallas despite having a fever — violated CDC protocols.

In response to Dr. Spencer’s negligence, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced Friday (10/24) health care workers returning from west Africa will be placed under mandatory quarantine.

Upon her arrival at Newark airport Friday night, Ms. Hickox was put in quarantine. She was displeased.

"My human rights have been violated and we must react in order to ensure that other health care workers do not endure such injustice," Ms. Hickox said in a statement Sunday (10/26).

U.S. soldiers returning from Liberia are being put in mandatory quarantine in Vicenza, Italy. In a "flash poll" conducted on Twitter for NBC’s Today show, 94 percent of respondents favored a mandatory quarantine.

A five year old boy who’d returned from Guinea with his family Saturday night was taken to Bellevue hospital Monday (10/27) by EMS workers wearing hazmat suits. He’d been vomiting, had a 103 degree fever.

Presumably the boy and his family – who are under quarantine in their apartment – also cleared "enhanced screening" at the airport.

Thanks to their strict border controls, Senegal and Nigeria are Ebola free. Given the now obvious inadequacy of airport screening, and the apparent unwillingness of health care professionals to minimize contacts during the incubation period, travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines are musts to prevent the spread of the disease here.

The Obama administration strenuously opposes both. If health care professionals are quarantined when they return home, they won’t volunteer to fight Ebola in Africa, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, argued during a full Ginsburg on the Sunday talk shows.

Dr. Fauci’s argument is illogical – the prospect of a grisly death won’t deter doctors and nurses from volunteering, but 21 days of isolation will – and makes clear protecting Americans isn’t his foremost priority.

Despite pressure from the administration, Gov. Christie will keep a mandatory quarantine. "The government’s job is to protect the safety and health of its citizens," he said.

I wish the president agreed.  But are there any examples elsewhere where he has clearly demonstrated his desire to Americans’ health and safety?

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Discuss this item on the forums. Click Here!