October 26, 2014

Some words of caution this morning:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that as a physician and scientist, he would have recommended against a quarantine.

"The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go." he said.

He said active and direct monitoring can accomplish the same thing as a quarantine because people infected with Ebola do not become contagious until they start showing symptoms. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.

New York, New Jersey and Illinois imposed mandatory quarantines after Dr. Craig Spencer, a Doctors Without Borders physician who treated patients in Guinea, was diagnosed with Ebola last Thursday. The doctor, who is now in isolation at New York's Bellevue Hospital, had been on the subway, went bowling and to a park and restaurant before showing symptoms

Faucis also ripped Christie and Cuomo on this call:

"As a scientist and as a health person, if I were asked, I would not have recommended that," Fauci said Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week."

The policy, which was put into place by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, requires that any person returning to the US who has had contact with Ebola patients submit to a mandatory, 21-day quarantine. On Saturday, Illinois also imposed a mandatory quarantine for anyone passing through Chicago O'Hare Airport.

But the first quarantine case has so far been a disaster. Kaci Hickox, who was with the group Doctors Without Borders, said she was misdiagnosed with a fever upon her return to Newark Liberty International Airport. The group also said she was placed in a tent without heat and wearing uncomfortable paper scrubs.

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