From The Transom this a.m. THE PRO AND CON OF TRAVEL BANS: Everyone’s embracing the idea of a travel ban to deal with the Ebola outbreak. vlt.tc/1oci Two thirds of Americans favor it, and Democratic Senate candidates are touting the idea despite the opposition of the White House. And about that opposition: Jonathan Lasts basic theory is that the White Houses real reason for not embracing a travel ban is that it would cut against the administrations immigration policy rationale. vlt.tc/1ocj If we can stop people from Africa from coming, we can stop people from Central America. Closing the border for any reason undermines their position on traffic across the southern border. Maybe thats the case. This White House has always been one which solidly viewed every issue - even foreign policy and public health issues - through the lens of domestic political priorities. A travel ban is not a ridiculous idea, and it shouldnt be dismissed as such. But is a travel ban really necessary or desirable? Of course, the logistics and ramifications of the two cases have little to compare themselves. It is far more feasible to stop incoming travel from west Africa than from Central America. Because they cant leave politics behind, theyre seeing this through a nonexistent frame of racial politics, because only racists would stop potentially infected people from traveling. A travel ban is of debatable merit. Nigeria and Senegal have eradicated Ebola with strategies that included shutting down travel. vlt.tc/1ocl But there will be a domino effect if the United States takes this action: if we shut down travel, then Europe shuts them down, China shuts them down, and then you have a massive economic problem on top of the health risks. The problem is that there really is no way to enforce a 100% travel ban without enforcing a commercial ban as well – otherwise you still have human transit. Right now, people are staying where they are. Despite how terrible things are in Liberia and Guinea in particular, we have not seen mass flight from either country. The normal organic movement of goods and people (which isn’t all that significant to begin with) mostly continues. The average Liberian knows the Americans are there. It seems like things will be okay, so theyre staying in place. Now consider the psychology of this same average Liberian who awakes one day to the news that he’s living in a global-quarantine zone. What’s a good way to spur mass movements of people? Tell them they can’t go anywhere. People tend to get panicky when they hear that. Whoa, I’m in a global death trap! We’ve been left to die! I don’t feel taken care of any longer! What a travel ban may do is persuade a few hundred thousand west Africans that they need to GTFO, pronto. Where do they go? Abidjan is 200 miles away. Accra is 400 miles away. Lagos is 600 miles away. If they think theyre in a giant quarantine zone, they dont beeline for America, but they do whatever humans do when they think theyre locked in a dangerous area with a deadly plague. They move. Congratulations, now youre in circulation. That being said, the fears of Ebolas spread here are different than they are in Africa. There are no epidemiological implications - we dont live in a jungle or a tropical shantytown, after all, and were talking about a disease that is an unshielded strand of RNA - it is not airborne and cant survive sunlight. Once the disease burns out, unless we import African monkeys and take up eating bushmeat and sharing cups with the dead, theres no disease well and no animal to human vector. On the other hand, you could make the argument that the United States, what with its speed of travel and urbanized communities, is actually more conducive to Ebola’s spread than west Africa, which is dotted with small communities that die in place. If they travel at all, they don’t get far before the disease incubates. Americans, on the other hand, can easily fly with symptoms from Dallas to Cleveland and back. In our favor, we have sunlight, a non-tropical climate, sloppy RNA transmission, no indicium of airborne virulence, weak primary and secondary virulence, and a high burn rate in our favor. Acting against us: a government health arm with decades of dealing with this bug who have no idea how to deal with it now; a modern healthcare system with anough common sense to quarantine workers; and a bunch of people who were never taught how to use bleach. vlt.tc/1oa8 Oh, and lets not forget the geniuses at the Food and Drug Administration. vlt.tc/1ocn On this point, Yuval Levin notes: vlt.tc/1ocm This crucial process of learning lessons has been hampered so far by a peculiar attitude that often emerges in our politics in times of crisis and imbues our debates with the wrong approach to learning from failure. The attitude is premised on the bizarre assumption that large institutions are hyper-competent by default, so that when they fail we should seek for nefarious causes. We tend to believe modernity is proof against plague. But the fatal conceit of technocracy is the assumption that dynamic systems like human society are fundamentally controllable. Some people even take that to the next level of assuming that things which piggyback on these humans, like pathogens, are similarly controllable. Just roll out the next political operative – he did a heckuva job lobbying, after all. vlt.tc/1ock RELATED: Amy Otto: Ten ways the public sector is failing and the private sector is succeeding. vlt.tc/1od3 Ebola comes to America. vlt.tc/1obp Ebola “not a significant threat” in US, CDC chief says under GOP grilling. vlt.tc/1obu CDC director’s challenge: Deadly Ebola virus and outbreak of criticism. vlt.tc/1oc2 Mexico fails to grant access to cruise ship carrying Texas health worker. vlt.tc/1oc4 Ebola is “disaster of our generation” says aid agency. vlt.tc/1obi Countering the domestic Ebola threat. vlt.tc/1ob7
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 13:16:34 +0000
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