{"id":56122,"date":"2014-10-30T09:52:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T13:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=56122"},"modified":"2014-10-30T09:55:53","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T13:55:53","slug":"the-ebola-quarantines-and-the-great-military-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56122","title":{"rendered":"The Ebola quarantines and the great military divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross Posted from the paying-home.
\n\"BP1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I generally try to avoid any topic about the president, because damn near everyone out there either hates the man reflexively, or sort of worships him.\u00a0 And so the comments turn into a disaster, and I have to keep monitoring, because some people simply cannot confine their comments to the issue at hand.<\/p>\n

Today I am breaking that normal tradition because of all the answers to questions I\u2019ve seen over the years, the president\u2019s answer to an Ebola question the other day unquestionably strikes me as his worst.\u00a0 Some can argue the validity (politically or actually) of the \u201cyou didn\u2019t build that\u201d or the \u201cyou can keep your doctor\u201d but for just straight up oddity, I give you the quote below.<\/p>\n

But before we get to the quote, as a sort of framing of this, the backdrop is twofold.\u00a0 First, states are trying to quarantine doctors who treated Ebola patients.\u00a0 Some knucklehead decided that after treating victims in Africa, he\u2019d just lie to the authorities:<\/a><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s first Ebola patient<\/a> initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Craig Spencer<\/a> at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment \u2014 and didn\u2019t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling<\/a> until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I literally have no position whatsoever on quarantines.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if they are needed, constitutional, fascist or ridiculous.\u00a0 I\u2019m also not going to research it, because I suspect this topc de jure will be gone by the time I get back from my upcoming vacation.\u00a0 But, I also think that this guy, and the lady doctor in Maine (my home state) are being pretty selfish.\u00a0 You want me to be held aside, alone for 21 days?\u00a0 You\u2019ll bring me food, I\u2019ll have cable TV, and I can sleep as much as I want?\u00a0 Dude, sign me up.<\/p>\n

Second, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has decided to quarantine the troops<\/a> when they get back from West Africa:<\/p>\n

A 21-day quarantine for all military personnel serving in Ebola stricken areas of West Africa was approved by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The quarantine was pushed for by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hagel said.\u00a0 Initially the measure will apply to all personnel leaving the West Africa area. But Hagel said the policy will be reviewed within 45 days.<\/p>\n

The policy creates a separate set of rules for military members than what the White House has pushed for civilian health care workers. President Obama has argued that civilian volunteer health workers returning from aid trips to Africa should not be quarantined and the White House has urged states not to impose their own quarantine policies. Science, Obama has said, does not support the need for a quarantines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there\u2019s the meat and potatoes (an extra \u201ce\u201d for Dan Quayle) of it.\u00a0 Now the quote:<\/p>\n

Q\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Are you concerned, sir, that there might be some confusion between the quarantine rules used by the military and used by health care workers and by some states?<\/p>\n

THE PRESIDENT:\u00a0 Well, the military is a different situation, obviously, because they are, first of all, not treating patients. Second of all, they are not there voluntarily, it\u2019s part of their mission that’s been assigned to them by their commanders and ultimately by me, the Commander-in-Chief.\u00a0 So we don’t expect to have similar rules for our military as we do for civilians.\u00a0 They are already, by definition, if they’re in the military, under more circumscribed conditions.<\/p>\n

When we have volunteers who are taking time out from their families, from their loved ones and so forth, to go over there because they have a very particular expertise to tackle a very difficult job, we want to make sure that when they come back that we are prudent, that we are making sure that they are not at risk themselves or at risk of spreading the disease, but we don’t want to do things that aren\u2019t based on science and best practices.\u00a0 Because if we do, then we\u2019re just putting another barrier on somebody who\u2019s already doing really important work on our behalf. And that’s not something that I think any of us should want to see happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is so much in there it would take me a generation or two to unpack it all.\u00a0 The first sentence alone makes no sense logically. So the troops will not be treating patients, but they are going to be subject to more rigid restraints?\u00a0 That\u2019s like saying a motorcycle is more dangerous than a Big Wheel, which is why you should always wear a helmet while riding a Big Wheel.\u00a0\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n

The rest of the paragraph makes more sense I suppose.\u00a0 When you do join, you understand you have fewer rights.\u00a0 That much is obvious to anyone that has joined.\u00a0 But from a public health standpoint, it isn\u2019t even the slightest bit relevant.\u00a0 If this whole policy deals with the threat of Ebola to every day Americans, how does the circumscribed nature of military service add to the discussion?\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n

The first sentence of the second paragraph is so long I get lost reading it.\u00a0 Presumably it is referring to the health people (nurses and doctors) volunteering overseas.\u00a0 But again, how is this different than the people in the military?\u00a0 Military people (believe it or not) ALSO have families, also have loved ones, also have difficult jobs, and we should decide for them based on \u201cscience and best practices\u201d as opposed to the random selection by a magic 8-ball or a gorilla who can also pick Super Bowl winners.\u00a0 Again, it doesn\u2019t really differentiate which is what the question was about.\u00a0 So again, huh?<\/p>\n

The penultimate sentence though is the one that really (judging by my emails) has people angered.\u00a0 Again the specific question dealt with the differing ways we are dealing with civilians and military.\u00a0 So this sentence, \u201csomebody who\u2019s already doing really important work on our behalf\u201d directed ONLY at the doctors, to differentiate them from service-members seems at first blush to be a complete insult.\u00a0 It\u2019s really hard to interpret that sentence differently when given the context of the question.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know, maybe they were just free-wheeling an answer on the spot, and it was less that articulate.\u00a0 Lord knows I\u2019ve said some dumb things in responses to questions.\u00a0 (Just ask my wife.)\u00a0 But this whole thing just seems insulting to me, and I don\u2019t have a position on quarantines in general.\u00a0 But to differentiate between doctors who in their benevolence are dealing specifically with Ebola victims, from service-members who put their lives on the line, and then somehow create a policy that weighs safety with the value of the service, and deciding it favors doctors doesn\u2019t make sense to me.<\/p>\n

What do you guys think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross Posted from the paying-home. I generally try to avoid any topic about the president, because … The Ebola quarantines and the great military divide<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}