Government cannot use public fear as reason to deprive person of liberty. The rule of law stands precisely to prevent that injustice #Ebola
— @LGostin :
On Thursday, Judge LaVerdiere issued a one-day order imposing restrictions on [MSF nurse Kaci] Hickox while he weighed the arguments. But in his order Friday morning, the judge rejected quarantine and commended Ms. Hickox, saying, “We would not be here today unless Respondent generously, kindly and with compassion lent her skills to aid, comfort and care for individuals stricken with a terrible disease. We need to remember as we go through this matter that we owe her and all professionals who give of themselves in this way a debt of gratitude.”
He then cautioned Ms. Hickox not to allow her newfound freedom to spread alarm in the community.
“The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola,” the judge said. “The Court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational. However, whether that fear is rational or not, it is present and it is real. She should guide herself accordingly.”
He must have been referring to the Maine Governor. Oh, and Governor LePage? She's not contagious.
Definition of media fail: when you think writing "...the Maine nurse, who is not contagious" is somehow taking sides.
— @DemFromCT :
It is not necessary to quarantine people merely because they come from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, the United Nations Ebola coordinator said Friday.
"People do not need to be quarantined unless they have come into contact with people have Ebola or unless they have symptoms," said Dr. David Nabarro, U.N. system coordinator on Ebola.
Nabarro expressed cautious optimism about the apparent slowing of the rate of infection in Liberia, saying Friday the numbers "look quite exciting right now."
But Nabarro put two caveats on his statement, saying that authorities "do not always have timely production of full data," and warning that "reduction in the rate of increase does not mean that the outbreak is under control. .... The outbreak ends when the last case of Ebola has been treated."
Politics and policy below the fold.
Tara C. Smith:
We know, in theory, how to prevent and control infectious diseases. With Ebola, it is quite simple: Identify cases. Keep those who are sick away from those who are well to break the cycle of transmission. Watch those who were exposed to a sick person to make sure they don’t get sick. If they do, repeat the previous steps until there are no more sick patients to isolate and no more exposed individuals to monitor. It is almost achingly easy as a concept.
But human behavior throws a wrench into this. Humans are not Vulcans. We know that many people will not consider the good of the community when it conflicts with one’s own personal comfort. So people break quarantine, like the Nigerian diplomat who fled Lagos after developing symptoms of Ebola and exposed others in Port Harcourt. People chase away or even murder medical workers, fearful that they will take loved ones away, perhaps believing horrible rumors about the origin of the outbreak and ulterior motives of these workers. They may simply worry that they will never see their loved one again, who will die alongside strangers in a makeshift hospital rather than at home among those who adore them.
Good news from
NPR:
If you want the inside scoop about what's happening with the Ebola outbreak, then just hangout at the Mamba Point Hotel in Monrovia.
It's packed with scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, international reporters and a bunch of guys and gals in camouflage from the U.S. Army.
They all like to hang out at the bar during lunch time. That's where I met Joel Montgomery, a top epidemiologist at the CDC. We head off to a quiet side room, and he starts telling me about all of his trips to Monrovia.
"When I was here in August, not to sound like, making this too colorful but, I mean there were ... literally dead people on the streets," Montgomery says. "And the burial teams were picking up 50 to 60 bodies a day."
At that point, the country had been on a devastating path. Clinics were stretched way past capacity. And even getting an Ebola test could take days, or weeks if you lived in the jungle. Samples had to be sent by a series of canoes and motorcycles to the only lab in the country.
The epidemic was doubling every few weeks. Some computational biologists were predicting more than 20,000 cases by the end of October.
But officials are seeing a very different situation on the ground now. The country has had about 6,500 cases. New cases are on a decline, dropping off by about a 100 a week, on average, since early October.
And for politics,
Nate Cohn:
When is it a good idea to question the polls? When there are good reasons to believe that the polls are missing or screening out certain kinds of voters.
Research suggests that polls need to do the following things to produce a representative sample: call enough cellphones; sample voters with out-of-state area codes; weight to recent population parameters and hit your targets; weight by population density or appropriate geographic areas; conduct interviews in Spanish; call back nonrespondents over multiple nights of interviews. We could go on.
If you believe that these are best practices, then you should also believe that a majority of the polls out there have Republican-leaning samples, even after weighting, because many or most of the polls aren’t embracing some or all of these practices. Or put differently: If you think I’m unskewing the polls, then you must also believe that the top pollsters are unskewing as well.
Chris Mooney:
Why turning our clocks back Sunday makes no sense
But there's a problem with this (well-lit) picture. While we'll all surely appreciate the extra hour of sleep this Sunday morning, it is increasingly looking like Franklin's idea about saving energy was wrong. Genius though he was, he seems to have forgotten one thing: Moving around daylight hours doesn't only change how much people need to rely on artificial lighting, whether in the form of candles or modern halogens. It also changes the overall complexion of temperatures that we experience while we're awake. And in an age of heating and air conditioning, that may cause us to reach for the thermostat -- with big, probably negative nationwide impacts on energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and your wallet.
It should be noted, incidentally, that this view of Daylight Saving Time is not fully accepted. Indeed, some authorities still suggest that the massive scale shift in human behavior known as Daylight Savings Time may save energy, rather than waste it. But the contention has come under attack by researchers, and indeed, one of the most impressive studies out there calls it into serious question.
Richard L. Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick:
Judges themselves are becoming more brazen and political too. Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith L. French told a campaign crowd recently: “‘I am a Republican and you should vote for me. You’re going to hear from your elected officials, and I see a lot of them in the crowd. Let me tell you something: The Ohio Supreme Court is the backstop for all those other votes you are going to cast. Whatever the governor does, whatever your state representative, your state senator does, whatever they do, we are the ones that will decide whether it is constitutional; we decide whether it’s lawful. We decide what it means, and we decide how to implement it in a given case. So, forget all those other votes if you don’t keep the Ohio Supreme Court conservative.”