I hope New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is into continuing education. Because, just yesterday, he got a lesson in political sandbagging from his next-door neighbor, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
-On Friday, Governors Christie and Cuomo issued a joint statement that all doctors/other health care professionals who treated ebola patients in West Africa, and anyone else who was in direct contact with someone infected with ebola, would, upon arriving in New York or New Jersey, be quarantined for 21 days.
-Over the weekend, President Obama – who insists that flights between the most affected countries (yes, I know there are no direct flights, we\’re talking about connections here) continue unabated – made it known that he was “furious” over this decision. His reasons? According to an unnamed administration official, “We have let the governors of New York, New Jersey, and others states know that we have concerns with the unintended consequences that policies not grounded in science may have on efforts to combat Ebola at its source in West Africa.”
“Not grounded in science”? A virus that may not show symptoms for weeks after exposure to it? Huh?
-Then, after one of the quarantined health care workers whined about how unfair this was and hired a lawyer to force New Jersey to unquarantine her….Governor Cuomo caved like a sand castle at high tide.
On Sunday, he reversed field and announced that the “quarantine” was okay to be in-home rather than at an isolated facility – with each “quarantined” person monitored twice a day. But family members could stay in the house and the “quarantined” person could receive guests – which means that, realistically, there would be no quarantine at all.
Governor Cuomo did not explain what would happen if the person being “quarantined” turned out to have the ebola virus. Maybe everyone his/her family and friends came in contact would be similarly “quarantined”; who knows?
By contrast, New Jersey Governor Christie – correctly – did not change his policy. At least not yet. So now he\’s the terrible ogre who is forcing the salt of the earth – people who travel to destitute countries and provide medical services – to be imprisoned for weeks at a time.
A classic sandbagging.
Please be assured that I do not root for anyone to contract ebola. But, fascinatingly, the single most compelling way to show that Governor Christie is doing the right thing is for one or more of the quarantined people to be diagnosed with this horrible, usually-fatal virus.
If it happens, though, I am put in the position of rooting for it to be someone under New Jersey quarantine, because then it will not have the chance to be passed along to family and friends.
This is what happens when politics mixes with medical treatment and plain common sense. It is also another lesson for Governor Christie (and the rest of us) about how dangerous that mixture can be to the general public.
