The US has already built, long vetted and fully-staffed, various highly specialized treatment facilities — for just these sorts of outbreaks. We used them in the 2012-14 outbreak, for physicians and nurses who fell ill, while working for Doctors Without Borders in DRC, Uganda and Liberia.
But we all remember, from Trump 1.0, this guy is well-known as a largely-irrational germ-a-phobe. So he is “constructing” a holding pen, essentially, in Kenya. [We also know, however, after 13 outbreaks, globally — that the Ebola virus is very likely transmitted only by close contact with blood or bodily fluids, from an acutely suffering (or already dead) viral host.] Certainly, American diplomats and doctors deserve better — from the government, they serve — than this:
…The American Foreign Service Association on Wednesday urged the State Department to authorize the departure of U.S. diplomats and family members from Congo, Uganda and South Sudan because of Ebola concerns.
The union in a statement cited reports about the Kenya facility, calling it a “stark departure from how every previous administration has handled Ebola exposure.”
“Foreign Service employees are there because the U.S. government sent them. They are entitled to the same standard of care that has always applied, including the right to come home,” the union said….
Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for National and Global Health Law and a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, said it’s “unprecedented” to quarantine Americans overseas without bringing them home.
“I think it’s potentially a life sentence for Americans,” Gostin said.
He noted that during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, two nurses at a Texas hospital who became infected while treating a patient were transferred to other specialized facilities, including the National Institutes of Health….
Onward, resolutely just the same.
नमस्ते
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