I join Arianna Huffington in my admiration for the nurse Kaci Hickox who not only went to Sierra Leone and worked with Ebola patients -- but then returned to the U. S. and stood up to two governors who tried to quarantine her against medical/scientific advice about the risk of contagion from asymptomatic people.
Kaci Hickox is the hero we should be celebrating this week.
Gov. Chris Christie first ordered her confined to a tent within an unequipped hospital in Newark, NJ upon her arrival in the Newark airport. She called his bluff when she proved not to be symptomatic, and he let her leave the state.
Once in Maine, Gov. Paul LePage then ordered her confined to her home. She defied that order to go for a bike ride that, of course, endangered no one except possibly the dozens of media people falling over each other trying to interview her.
Gov. LePage sought a restraining order from the court to make her stay home -- and lost. Judge Charles LaVeridere very rationally sided with medical science.
It's not just these two governors. Lousiana lGov. Bobby Jindall is perhaps the next worst panderer; he supported the disinviting of health care workers who were to be speakers at this week's convention of a national infectious disease association conference in New Orleans. But New York, Georgia, Illinois, even California, and a host of other states also went the route of fear.
They chose to pander to that fear instead of taking the opportunity to educate the public.
All honors to Kaci Hickox, not only for standing up for the civil rights of all Ebola care providers but for using this as a teachable moment when the nation's spotlight was on her.
I nominate her and her fellow Ebola care workers for Time magazine's Person of the Year.
Ralph
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