NIAID Director: ‘Doesn’t Make Any Sense’ To Seal Border as Ebola Precaution

‘You could paradoxically make things much worse’

HASSELBECK: "The top question in everyone’s mind is that given the fact that we are dealing with the cases as I just described of Ebola and potential infection moving forward, why not, just as a precaution ‘till we get things under control, seal off the border temporarily?"

FAUCI: "Well, from a public health standpoint, that really doesn’t make any sense. It’s understandable how people can figure that that might help. But when you completely seal off and don’t let planes in or out of the West African countries involved, then you could paradoxically make things much worse in the sense that you can’t get supplies in, you can’t get help in, you can’t get the kind of things in there that we need to contain the epidemic. And the best way to protect America is to suppress the epidemic in West Africa. And if we completely isolate them, don’t let anything in, don’t let anything out, we know from experience with public health that marginalizes them and you could have civil unrest, governments could fall, and then you wind up having spread of the virus to other countries in West Africa which would only compound the problem. So it’s understandable that thought, 'let’s just close them off.' But that just doesn’t work."

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