WASHINGTON — Fever checks at five U.S. airports won’t halt the spread of Ebola. But the new measures, targeting travelers from West Africa starting this weekend, did buy the Obama administration some breathing room as calls mounted for an outright travel ban.
That’s why Ebola control requires a balancing act, and sometimes, measures built mostly around reassurance. A travel ban wouldn’t halt the spread of Ebola, either.
The virus gives everyone the willies. It should.
But when an infected person is highly contagious, it’s obvious. That won’t be someone standing in line at an airport ready to embark on a 30-hour trip to the United States.
When a carrier has no symptoms, he’s not contagious. That’s good. But it also means there’s no way to detect the virus through fever screening or asking about recent exposure.
Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola in Dallas on Wednesday, proved that. He almost certainly would have made it through the newest line of defense.
But the key to extinguishing the epidemic at its source is to get foreign aid, doctors, supplies and education to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. That can’t be done if flights can’t get in and out of West Africa. That’s the educated judgment of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and every epidemiologist who’s talked about it.
A travel ban would let Ebola explode within the isolated countries. That would devastate trust in outside help and escalate the chances of a pandemic.
The domestic public health system needs public trust and political support to work, too.
With Ebola on American soil, the government had to do something to calm fears. Screening of inbound passengers from West Africa is something.
And the new measures, announced hours after Duncan died, are tailored to minimize disruption.
Only 150 passengers a day arrive from the three affected countries in West Africa, and 95 percent come through John F. Kennedy in New York, Newark, Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta and Washington Dulles, where Duncan arrived from Brussels.
Sen. John Cornyn and House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Austin, pushed Friday to add airports in Dallas and Houston.
The targeted screenings certainly fell short for those outright banging a drum for a full ban on travel from West Africa.
“The top concern of the U.S. government should be protecting the American people,” Sen. Ted Cruz told Fox News the night Duncan died. He noted that days earlier, he had demanded of the FAA “why they have not stopped commercial air travel from nations that are stricken with widespread outbreaks of Ebola.”
The same day, 27 U.S. House members wrote President Barack Obama urging him to ban travel, halt visas for residents and put anyone arriving from those countries into a 21-day quarantine — long enough to ensure they’re not carrying Ebola.
Three Texans signed the letter: Republican Reps. Kenny Marchant of Coppell, Roger Williams of Austin and Steve Stockman of Friendswood.
“Any step towards making sure Americans are protected from the spread of Ebola is a positive step,” said Williams. “We should take all precautions until we know that this can be contained and not spread any further.”
So is the new screening mainly for show, to calm fears?
People arriving from West Africa will have to provide contact information and say where they’ll be for the next 21 days.
Sylvia Burwell, secretary of Health and Human Services, called pre-flight screening the most critical part of the safety net. But people might well develop fevers in transit, she told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Confidence is an important thing,” she said. “I don’t think we’re making a claim that anything is 100 percent secure, but what’s most important is we know how to contain — and that is detection, contact tracing, isolation and treatment.”
If the virus spreads, more steps are sure to follow.
Follow Washington Bureau Chief Todd J. Gillman on Twitter at @toddgillman.
