Why an Ebola travel ban is a bad idea

Key Takeaways

we're at a pretty dangerous moment in Thea outbreak not just because the outbreak itself is so bad though it really is it is really something worth worrying about but because it is getting us so afraid that we are beginning to consider doing things that are really stupid that would really make the outbreak worse one of those things is a travel band many on the right calling for an all out travel B and it comes from an understandable but really dangerous misconception about what about Ebola is dangerous to us the way to stop it the way that will work to stop it is not keeping people out of the us because we will never do that at a big enough scale and every time we've tried travel bands before and we have tried them a bunch of times before 22 years ago in a decision rooted in fear rather than fact the United States instituted a travel ban for people living with HIV AIDS all they do is delay the seeds the key to stopping Ebola in America is stopping it in West Africa and in order to do that you can't do things like a travel ban that make it harder for us to get doctors and IC resources there you can't do things that make people who have Ebola want to hide we shouldn't be freaking out about small isolated cases here we can stop those What We Can't Stop is a situation where Ebola gets to 100,000 or 5 million infections in Africa and Asia the scariest thing that I've heard about abala is it for every four cases we know about there are six in West Africa that we don't know about those cases are the Dangerous Ones anything that makes people more afraid to go to a hospital and say yeah I was with somebody with ebola and I'm feeling fluish that's really dangerous we need to create enough resources in West Africa to stop the outbreak we need to create a culture where people aren't afraid to go and get care and we need be putting our best minds and our energy and our policy into stopping Ebola there in order to keep it from ever becoming a threat here