Podium For Panic

Nurse returning from Liberia, essentially kidnapped at the airport, but manages to get the story out. At that Dallas News link, readers pretty much want to burn her as a witch.

Along with the medically inappropriate actions against Kaci Hickox, there are more opportunities for politicians to grandstand—

...In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, issued a stern warning on Thursday to medical experts coming to an international conference on tropical diseases that they should stay away if they had been in Ebola-affected countries in the past 21 days, and that those who defied would be confined to their hotel rooms.
...

Dr. Alan J. Magill, the president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, said the move by Louisiana to block doctors who had treated Ebola patients from its conference this weekend would harm crucial sessions where scientists, doctors and administrators who had been in the region were going to teach others.

So far, 10 to 15 participants had scrapped their trips, he said.

"We are clearly going to lose some of our speakers who have had the most experience, and that would deprive the learning from going forward," said Dr. Magill, also the director for malaria at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Program.

Decision-making style here can only be a source of envy for our own aspiring dear leaders.

But, just in case there were any call for a little perspective, here's some from Charles Pierce—

As long as there have been human beings, there has been epidemic disease. As long as there has been epidemic disease, there has been panic. As long as there has been panic, there have been heroes who stand in the middle of it, heedless of the blind terror, and beat it back through the sheer force of their humanity.

And as long as there have been human beings, there have been human beings with power over other human beings. As long as there have been human beings with power over other human beings, there have been governments. And as long as there has been epidemic disease, and as long as there has been panic, there have been human beings who have the right combination of rancid ambition and foul cowardice who come into the government and seek advantage from the panic and, therefore, from the epidemic disease itself. There have always been human beings who are heroes in the face of epidemic disease. And there have always been slaves to their own worst instincts.

Which is where Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo come in, along with the right-wing noise machine fueling this panic, aided and abetted our craven media—

CNN can't help itself because it already has fired up the logo and the doomy music. Sorry, Malaysian Airlines 370. You're on your own now, wherever you are.

That's infinitely more profitable than promoting reality, which can be summarized—