In the debate over travel bans to West Africa, one fact seems to be missing. Travel restrictions are not travel bans.
It is highly desirable that aid workers, health care workers, government officials, and business people be able to travel back and forth between West Africa and the rest of the world. That doesn't mean additional steps can't be taken to prevent the importation of the disease into the United States.
For starters, we don't need to allow people with West African passports into the United States on tourist visas if there is any chance their travel has originated from West Africa. No American needs to travel to West Africa merely to see the sights. They can wait to see Disneyworld and we can wait to tour Monroevia.
Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who brought Ebola to the United States, arrived on a tourist visa. He had told his friends that his intention was to illegally overstay his visa and work in the U.S. He was willing to take this chance because Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress refuse to protect our nation's borders or enforce our immigration laws. A restriction on tourist travel or a reputation for enforcement of immigration laws would have kept Duncan -- and Ebola -- out of the country.
Most Ebola cases will manifest themselves within 21 days of exposure, although the World Health Organization and other researchers say the virus can have a longer incubation period. Obviously a quarantine period either before or after a flight greatly reduces the risk of exposing the general public to Ebola.
For example, if Thomas Duncan had been required to undergo a five-day quarantine in Liberia prior to boarding his flight to the United States he wouldn't have been allowed to do so, as by the fifth day he would have been showing symptoms of the virus. Any quarantine period is better than none at all.
West Africans could be quarantined in their home countries prior to boarding their flights; their governments are very cooperative. Americans could be allowed to return home and serve their quarantine in the United States. The quarantine period should be based on the likelihood of exposure, with everyone having a minimum quarantine period of four or five days; those with likely exposure would have a full 21-day quarantine.
A few days in a hotel sipping Mai Tais by a hotel swimming pool doesn't seem too much of a burden on those wishing to travel from West Africa to the United States. It won't hamper relief efforts.
Travel restrictions and travel bans will not eliminate the risk of ebola cases arising in the heartland. If the contagion continues to grow at its current pace we will have cases which crop up here at home. Obama and the Democrats in Congress take the view that since travel restrictions won't stop all cases of Ebola we should just throw open the borders and take no precautions whatsoever. This is insanity! The fewer domestic cases we have to deal with, the better.
Reasonable travel restrictions harm no one. A ban on tourist travel is a ban on those up to no good in the first place. A reasonable quarantine policy won't eliminate risk, but it will greatly reduce it, and that should be our goal.
We don't need to ban West Africa travel. We do need to restrict and regulate it.
More Mustard Seeds
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Ole Miss alumnus Wayne Madsen appears better informed on Ebola. So to is Dr. Francis Boyle.
As John Oliver recently discovered, PressTV is THE source for truth and transparency in worldly journalism.
Before reading Dr. Boyle's Ebola comment, scroll down to check out his international credentials as a leader in writing the protocols for the banning of bio-warfare research.
We have met the enemy...and he is US~ POGO abridged
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40012.htm
A sidenote on investigative journalist Wayne Madsen. I tried to ignore his sniping at neo-Confederates, which led me to not renewing a subscription to his Wayne Madsen Reports, but I do value his investigative reporting, albeit not always verifable.
I had came across Wayne Madsen's name duoing C-SPAN's telecasting of the Hill&Knowlton/ Tom Lantos Human Rights Caucus Kuwaiti Baby Incubator Hoax, which became the cause celebre for Congress' authorization of GHW Bush's terror bombing of Baghdad in 1991. Wayne Madsen exposed Lantos' HRC and claimed then that the story was a hoax, which it proved to be AFTER the ending of the terror bombing. He also claims that C-SPAN's Brian Lamb was a willing accomplice in presenting this hoax as fact to its gullible viewers. He also revealed that Lamb was a longtime Pentagon pimp serving in its public relations section.
Years later I came across Madsen's book, Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa , 1993-1999 which covered the Clinton administration's role in Central Africa and their connections to the mining industry. The book is out of print. Madsen was in present in Central Africa during Tutsi-Hutu genocide and has some intersting comments on who was really responsible for that blood-letting.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/genocide-and-covert-operations-in-africa-1993-1999/495
"...The whole reason actually when I was investigating the plane crash in Rwanda several years ago, which led to me writing a book, one of the reasons I really stuck with the story and expanded it was when I found out that American Mineral Fields, a company, AMF, was so involved in the first invasion of then Zaire. When I found out that its international headquarters was located in Hope, Arkansas, I have to say it got my curiosity somewhat.
Now, I have never been to Hope, Arkansas, but I was very curious why would an international mining company locate its headquarters there. I soon found out why. Without getting into all the involvement of people in the Clinton Administration with that type of business, I would just say that I think the Bush Administration may be as close to the oil part of that god as the Clinton Administration was with the diamond part...." Wayne Madsen
Makes one wonder what role Mississippi's own FreePort MacMoran CEO Richard Adkersen's PMC has in all the covert operations now taking place in the DRC? MSU has named its accounting school for Mr. Anderksen, too.
Btw, Adkerson's PMC was Blackwater, which was contracted to haul Adkerson's gold loot out of New Orleans and to Phoenix during the Katrina flooding. Freeport MacMoran Corporate headquarters is now in Phoenix.
I wish that you would re-consider adding Professor MacDonald's blog, The Occidental Observer to your blog list. It'll surely be the cue to bring out the hyper-ventilators at Tom's place. Think "hollering fire in a crowded theater." Checkout The American Mercury link at TOO on the Leo Frank case which Freeland, not Anderson,once referred to as a case of "Blood Libel."
One other suggestion:Replace the Jerusalem Post with Haaretz.
Since TBA is "into" the homosexual marriage shtick, maybe Anderson can account for the ambiguity of who one can marry in Der Judenstaat:The Guide to Legal Marriage in Der Judenstaat..
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/shavuot/.premium-1.596576#!
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