The government’s top infectious diseases expert warned Sunday that inappropriate efforts to combat the spread of Ebola could have unintended consequences that make Americans less safe.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that mandatory quarantines of health workers returning from Africa could discourage them from volunteering in the first place.
Doctors and nurses returning from aid trips to Ebloa-stricken West Africa “need to be treated in a way that doesn’t disincentivize them from going there,” Fauci said.
“They are helping America by going over there,” Fauci added.
Fauci explained that he was “trying hard to get people to understand why the scientific data is what should be driving our policy,” and not unwarranted fears about how the virus could be transmitted without exchange of bodily fluids with a symptomatic carrier.
That includes state governors who have imposed a mandatory quarantine on returning workers, according to Fauci.
“What you need to do with a travel ban — you gotta look at what the possible negative consequences are,” Fauci explained. Instead, he proposed, aid workers who may have been exposed to Ebola should be treated in a “stratified way,” with non-symptomatic people being monitored and those showing symptoms quarantined.
Despite his warning that a misinformed reaction to Ebola could have unintended consequences, Fauci clarified that the “first principle is to protect the American people.”
