Father, I pray for wisdom for all the leaders of the world. Show each of them your perfect will and watch over them to insure it’s accomplished.
If someone refuses to do your will, Father I ask they be removed from their position and be replaced by someone who will hear from You.
God, we place this upcoming election in your hands. May thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
For our nation and, indeed the world, needs you now – more than ever before.
While it seems an impossible task, we know you operate best in the “impossible”.
With God, All things are possible.
Amen and amen
The Obama administration has consistently demonstrated an inability to proactively think a policy through its unintended consequences. And any “common sense” option seems always to be circumvented for the purpose of protecting this president politically. The reaction to the Ebola outbreak has been no different.
Common sense dictates containing the Ebola virus at its source until it can be eradicated. But with an estimated 150 people traveling to the United States each day from West Africa, travel restrictions alone would be insufficient since there are no direct, non-stop commercial flights from countries hardest hit by the virus to any U.S. airport. All new visas to the U.S. for citizens of Ebola-stricken nations would need to be banned until the outbreak has been controlled period.
And as fear of an outbreak in the U.S. escalates, the idea of such a travel ban is gaining momentum among House and Senate Republicans.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, became the latest Republican lawmaker to announce plans to introduce a measure that would temporarily ban new visas for people from the countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The bill, which Rubio plans to introduce when the Senate returns after the Nov. 4 mid-term elections, would go into effect immediately and continue until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention certifies that the outbreak has been contained. It could also be expanded to any future countries experiencing an outbreak of the virus.
But at this point, these precautions are like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. The Obama administration has mishandled the Ebola situation from the very beginning.
The first Ebola patient, a teenage boy now known as “patient zero,” was identified in the West African country of Guinea way back in December 6, 2013. The boy died from the disease.
By March 24, 2014, authorities in Guinea reported 87 suspected cases of Ebola. Soon after, Liberia and Sierra Leone began reporting cases of the dreadful disease. By late September Ebola was reported as “out of control” in West Africa and “unprecedented” in its scope.
But even by Sept. 16, when Obama reassured Americans the chances of an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. were “extremely low,” he had incredulously failed to institute any travel restrictions from infected regions.
Finally, amid increasing pressure, President Obama instituted restrictions for travelers flying into the U.S. from the heavily impacted West African countries. Beginning last Wednesday passengers will be funneled through international airports in New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago and Newark, New Jersey. These five airports will reportedly have specialized Ebola screening steps.
In preparation, Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey announced last week a joint policy mandating a 21-day quarantine for anyone flying into their states after having contact with Ebola sufferers in West Africa.
But President Obama should have been more proactive in his approach to dealing with this deadly disease. His hesitation to act has needlessly placed Americans at risk. One can only pray this doesn’t end in catastrophe for Americans.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.
No doubt when President Obama told Mitt Romney during the first 2012 presidential debate that he “liked” the term “Obamacare,” he was confident the appellation would be revered as an historic accomplishment for his administration.
Certainly Democrats have been willing to spend your hard-earned tax money to preserve the president’s aspirations. Bloomberg Government reports the cost of HealthCare.gov has now exceeded the $2 billion mark, while the total cost of Obama’s health care reform is more than $73 billion.
But nowadays it’s difficult to find a Democrat who openly supports any of this president’s policies in their election campaigns, much less Obama’s signature health care legislation. But in a recent speech, President Obama assured Americans his policies were indeed on November’s ballot.
“I am not on the ballot this fall,” President Obama said. “But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”
Yes, there are people who now have healthcare who didn’t prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
But millions have been forced off their existing plan (despite Obama’s promise this would never happen, winning him the esteemed Politifact “Lie of the Year” Award) into health care exchanges where they’re experiencing less coverage, higher deductibles and fewer choices in providers.
In fact, if the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had scored the ACA correctly, it probably would never have passed! According to Forbes Magazine, 12.5 percent fewer people are uninsured by 2014, rather than the 37.3 percent projected by the CBO.
Additionally, of the millions with canceled coverage, 1 million remain uninsured. And Americans are experiencing far higher premiums than originally estimated while nearly $7,000 will be added in taxes/fees over a decade even for families in the lowest 20 percent of household income.
And all around the country businesses are preparing for the impact of the employer mandate under Obamacare. Understand, these companies will not simply absorb these additional costs. They’ll either cut expenses or raise prices.
Currently hundreds of employers are cutting back on employee’s hours to avoid paying for health care, forcing these individuals into purchasing coverage from an exchange or pay a fine.
And many people still don’t realize the IRS will be the enforcer for ensuring everyone meets their “shared responsibility payment” as decreed by the individual mandate of Obamacare. And Americans have already seen what IRS leadership is willing to do to propagate this president’s ultra-liberal agenda.
Now, there are points in the ACA which should remain, such as coverage for “pre-existing” conditions. But Democrats failed to engage in the necessary conversation about allowing the free market to work in the insurance industry by instituting healthy interstate competition and tort reform.
Instead, they went right for socialized medicine.
Simply put, Barack Obama and complicit Democrats passed legislation that forces Americans into purchasing a product, despite their wants or needs, so they can “redistribute” the assets as they deem “fair.” They’ve taken the “care” out of health care and made it health “control.”
So Democrats may want to run, but they cannot hide. They gave us Obamacare.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.
STATE DEPARTMENT DOCUMENT REVEALS PLANS
The State Department has quietly made plans to bring Ebola-infected doctors and medical aides to the U.S. for treatment, according to an internal department document that argued the only way to get other countries to send medical teams to West Africa is to promise that the U.S. will be the world’s medical backstop.
Some countries “are implicitly or explicitly waiting for medevac assurances” before they will agree to send their own medical teams to join U.S. and U.N. aid workers on the ground, the State Department argues in the undated four-page memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Times.
“The United States needs to show leadership and act as we are asking others to act by admitting certain non-citizens into the country for medical treatment for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) during the Ebola crisis,” says the four-page memo, which lists as its author Robert Sorenson, deputy director of the office of international health and biodefense.
More than 10,000 people have become infected with Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and the U.S. has taken a lead role in arguing that the outbreak must be stopped in West Africa. President Obama has committed thousands of U.S. troops and has deployed American medical personnel, but other countries have been slow to follow.
In the memo, officials say their preference is for patients go to Europe, but there are some cases in which the U.S. is “the logical treatment destination for non-citizens.”
The document has been shared with Congress, where lawmakers already are nervous about the administration’s handling of the Ebola outbreak. The memo even details the expected price per patient, with transportation costs at $200,000 and treatment at $300,000.
A State Department official signaled Tuesday evening that the discussions had been shelved.
“There is no policy of the U.S. government to allow entry of non-U.S. citizen Ebola-infected to the United States. There is no consideration in the State Department of changing that policy,” the official said.
Another official said the department is considering using American aircraft equipped to handle Ebola cases to transport noncitizens to other countries.
“We have discussed allowing other countries to use our medevac capabilities to evacuate their own citizens to their home countries or third-countries, subject to reimbursement and availability,” the second department official said.
The internal State Department memo is described as “sensitive but unclassified.” A tracking sheet attached to it says it was cleared by offices of the deputy secretary, the deputy secretary for management, the office of Central African affairs and the medical services office.
A call to the number listed for Mr. Sorenson wasn’t returned Tuesday.
Mr. Obama has been clear about his desire to recruit medical and aid workers to fight Ebola in Africa.
“We know that the best way to protect Americans ultimately is going to stop this outbreak at the source,” the president said at the White House on Tuesday, praising U.S. aid workers who are already involved in the effort. “No other nation is doing as much to make sure that we contain and ultimately eliminate this outbreak than America.”
About half of the more than 10,000 cases in West Africa have been fatal.
Four cases have been diagnosed in the U.S., and three of those were health care workers treating infected patients. Two of those, both nurses at a Dallas hospital, have been cured.
Several American aid workers who contracted the disease overseas were flown to the U.S. for treatment.
The United Nations and World Health Organization are also heavily involved in deploying to the affected region, but other countries have been slower to provide resources to fight Ebola in West Africa or to agree to treat workers who contract the disease.
The State Department memo says only Germany has agreed to take non-German citizens who contract Ebola.
European nations are closer to West Africa, making transport easier, the State Department memo said.
Officials said the U.S. is the right place to treat some cases, notably those in which non-Americans are contracted to work in West Africa for U.S.-based charities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“So far all of the Ebola medevacs brought back to U.S. hospitals have been U.S. citizens. But there are many non-citizens working for U.S. government agencies and organizations in the Ebola-affected countries of West Africa,” the memo says. “Many of them are citizens of countries lacking adequate medical care, and if they contracted Ebola in the course of their work they would need to be evacuated to medical facilities in the United States or Europe.”
The memo says the State Department has a contract with Phoenix Aviation, which maintains an airplane capable of transporting an Ebola patient. The U.S. can transport noncitizens and have other countries or organizations pay the cost.
The U.S. has helped transport three health care workers to Germany and one to France.
In the U.S., the department memo lists three hospitals — the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Emory University Hospital in Atlanta — that are willing to take Ebola patients.
According to the memo, Homeland Security Department officials would be required to waive legal restrictions to speed the transport of patients into the U.S. “A pre-established framework would be essential to guarantee that only authorized individuals would be considered for travel authorization and that all necessary vetting would occur,” the memo says.
A Homeland Security spokeswoman didn’t return emails seeking comment.
Judicial Watch, a conservative-leaning public interest watchdog, revealed the existence of a State Department plan this month. When The Times described the document to Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, he said it is evidence of why the administration balked at adopting a travel ban on those from affected countries.
“Under this theory, there could be people moving here now, transporting people here now, and it could be done with no warning,” Mr. Fitton said. “If our borders mean anything, it is the ability to make sure that dire threats to the public health are kept out.”
After those initial reports surfaced, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, sent a letter asking for answers. On Tuesday, he said the document The Times obtained “raises more concerns and questions than answers.”
“President Obama should be forthcoming with the American people about the scope of his plan to bring non-U.S. citizens infected with Ebola to the United States for treatment,” Mr. Goodlatte said in a statement.
WHAT IS OBAMA TRYING TO DO TO OUR NATION?
A top Republican congressman claims the Obama administration is exploring plans to bring non-U.S. citizens infected with Ebola to the United States for treatment.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News that his office has received “information from within the administration” that these plans are being developed. So far, only American Ebola patients have been brought back to the U.S. for treatment from the disease epicenter in West Africa.
Goodlatte warned that expanding that policy could put the country at more risk.
“Members of the media, my office have received confidential communications saying that those plans are being developed,” Goodlatte said Monday night.
“This is simply a matter of common sense that if you are concerned about this problem spreading — and this is a deadly disease that we’re even concerned about the great health care workers when they come back not spreading it — we certainly shouldn’t be bringing in the patients.”
The chairman wrote a letter last week to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry asking whether such plans exist, but he says he has not gotten a response.
The details are sketchy, if such a plan even exists.
A Goodlatte aide told FoxNews.com that “someone in one of the agencies” contacted their office with the tip — presumably, the plan would apply to non-U.S. residents. Who would pay for the transport and treatment is an open question.
In his letter last week, Goodlatte asked whether the administration is formulating such a plan, seeking details and communications among their employees.
The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch also reported, shortly before Goodlatte sent the letter, that the administration is “actively formulating” plans to bring Ebola patients into the U.S., with the specific goal of treating them “within the first days of diagnosis.”
Goodlatte earlier had pushed the president to consider using his authority to impose a temporary ban on non-U.S. citizen travel to the United States from the three African countries hardest-hit by Ebola.
“We think, again, that’s just plain common sense, a practical way to stop this disease from spreading,” he said.
The Obama administration has pushed back on those calls, saying the most effective approach is to stop Ebola at its source in West Africa.
The number of confirmed Ebola cases passed the 10,000 mark over the weekend, despite efforts to curb its spread.
And while the disease typically dies on surfaces within hours, research has discovered it can survive for more than seven weeks under certain conditions.
During tests, the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) found that the Zaire strain will live on samples stored on glass at low temperatures for as long as 50 days.
The tests were initially carried out by researchers from DSTL before the current outbreak, in 2010, but the strain investigated is one of five that is still infecting people globally.
The findings are also quoted in advice from the Public Agency of Health in Canada.
Ebola was discovered in 1976 and is a member of the Filoviridae family.
This family includes the Zaire ebolavirus (Zebov), which was first identified in 1976 and is the most virulent; Sudan ebolavirus, (Sebov); Tai Forest ebolavirus; Ebola-Reston (Rebov), and Bundibugyo ebolavirus (Bebov) – the most recent species, discovered in 2008.
For their 2010 paper, ‘The survival of filoviruses in liquids, on solid substrates and in a dynamic aerosol’, Sophie Smither and her colleagues tested two particular filoviruses on a variety of surfaces.
These were the Lake Victoria marburgvirus (Marv), and Zebov.
Each was placed into guinea pig tissue samples and tested for their ability to survive in different liquids, and on different surfaces at different temperatures, over a 50-day period.
When stored at 4° (39°F), by day 26, viruses from three of the samples were successfully extracted; Zebov on the glass sample, and Marv on both glass and plastic.
By day 50, the only sample from which the virus could be recovered was the Zebov from tissue on glass.
‘This study has demonstrated that filoviruses are able to survive and remain infectious, for extended periods when suspended within liquid and dried onto surfaces,’ explained the researchers.
‘Data from this study extend the knowledge on the survival of filoviruses under different conditions and provide a basis with which to inform risk assessments and manage exposure.’
The researchers do stress that these tests were carried out in a controlled lab environment, and not in the real world, but published their findings to highlight the survival rates.
Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its Ebola guidelines following the rise in infections.
Ebola (pictured) was discovered in 1976 and is a member of the Filoviridae family. This family includes the Zaire ebolavirus (Zebov), which was first identified in 1976 and is the most virulent; Sudan ebolavirus, (Sebov); Tai Forest ebolavirus; Ebola-Reston (Rebov), and Bundibugyo ebolavirus (Bebov)
The centre explained that Ebola is not spread through the air, water, or food and a person infected with Ebola can’t spread the disease until symptoms appear.
The time from exposure to when signs or symptoms of the disease appear, known as the incubation period, is two to 21 days, but the average time is eight to 10 days.
Ebola is spread through direct contact, through broken skin or through eyes, nose, or mouth, via blood and body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola, or objects, such as needles, that have been contaminated with the blood or body fluids of a person sick with Ebola.
Signs of Ebola include fever and symptoms like severe headache, muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, or unexplained bleeding or bruising.
Dr Tom Fletcher of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who has treated victims in Guinea and Sierra Leone, says: ‘The initial symptoms are quite non-specific and similar to a flu-like illness.
‘They include fever, headache and lethargy. This progresses to severe diarrhoea and vomiting.’
Officials have emphasised there is no risk of transmission from people who have been exposed to the virus, but are not yet showing symptoms.
But, specialists at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta found that the virus is present on a patient’s skin after symptoms develop, underlining how contagious the disease is once symptoms set in.
According to the CDC, the virus can survive for a few hours on dry surfaces like doorknobs and countertops and can survive for several days in puddles or other collections of body fluid.
However, bleach solutions, including household bleach, can kill it.
There is no FDA-approved vaccine available for Ebola, but experimental vaccines and treatments for Ebola are under development.
The CDC advises people wash their hands with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitiser, to protect themselves.
It warns to not touch the blood or body fluids, including urine, faeces, saliva, vomit, sweat, and semen of people who are sick.
Ebola was once thought to originated in gorillas, because human outbreaks began after people ate gorilla meat.
But scientists now believe that bats are the natural reservoir for the virus, and that apes and humans catch it from eating food that bats have drooled or defecated on, or by coming in contact with surfaces covered in infected bat droppings and then touching their eyes or mouths.
The current outbreak seems to have started in a village near Guéckédou, Guinea, where bat hunting is common, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Read more:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2809803/Ebola-surfaces-TWO-months-Tests-reveal-certain-strains-survive-weeks-stored-low-temperatures.html#ixzz3HP7Z5G4I
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Chris Christie was forced on Monday to allow a nurse being kept in a tent in a hospital parking lot to go home after intense White House pressure to relax a mandatory 21-day quarantine the New Jersey Governor had imposed at a state level.
The embarrassing turnaround came after Obama chaired a White House meeting on the rules and successfully lobbied Christie’s New York counterpart, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to relax their quarantine rules – even as Americans grow more concerned about the possibility of a pandemic emergency.
Cuomo gave in on behalf of New Yorkers. But as of Sunday Christie was still pushing for more aggressive measures to protect New Jerseyans, saying he had ‘no second thoughts’ about the policy.
Christie is a likely entrant into the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary, and the intergovernmental Ebola skirmishes will provide both major political parties with new ammunition.
Nurse Kaci Hickox tested negative for Ebola twice, but she had remained in a forced hospital quarantine as of Monday morning.
The two states each have one of the five airports where passengers who have spent time in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea are allowed to enter the United States.
Illinois, home to Chicago O’Hare International Airport, also has a similar quarantine order in place, in open defiance of the White House.
The Obama administration pushed back on Sunday, following the latest all-hands Ebola meeting in the White House.
‘We have also let these states know that we are working on new guidelines for returning healthcare workers that will protect the American people against imported cases, while, at the same time, enabling us to continue to tackle this epidemic in West Africa.’
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday on the CBS program ‘Face the Nation’ that state-level quarantines send a message to health care professionals that volunteering in the Ebola hot zone will present new levels of inconvenience when they return.
The New York Times first reported that aides to Obama were lobbying Christie and Cuomo to relax their new rules.
There has been sharp criticism of the guidelines after Hickox was forcibly quarantined in a New Jersey hospital isolation unit, even though she had displayed no symptoms and had tested negative for Ebola.
Under the new New York guidelines, medical professionals who have had contact with Ebola patients can now be quarantined at home instead and receive twice-daily monitoring, if they have no symptoms.
Family members will be allowed to stay, and friends may also visit with the approval of health officials.
Senior administration officials had called the initial decision on Friday by the governors to impose such rules ‘uncoordinated and hurried.’
Meanwhile, Hickox, the first nurse forcibly quarantined in New Jersey under the state’s new policy, said her isolation at a hospital was ‘inhumane,’ adding: ‘We have to be very careful about letting politicians make health decisions.’
Hickox is now suing and has now hired Norman Siegel, a high profile civil rights attorney, to challenge the order.
Christie on Sunday defended quarantining as necessary to protect the public and predicted it ‘will become a national policy sooner rather than later.’
‘The government’s job is to protect safety and health of our citizens,’ Christie said on Fox News Sunday. ‘I have no second thoughts about it.’
In a telephone interview with CNN, Kaci Hickox, the nurse quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, said the process of keeping her isolated is ‘inhumane’
Previously, Christie had characterized Hickox as ‘obviously ill.’
‘I’m sorry, but that’s just a completely unacceptable statement in my opinion,’ Hickox said Sunday during a phone interview with CNN. ‘For him—a politician who’s trusted and respected—to make a statement that’s categorically not true is just unacceptable and appalling.’
Cuomo also came under scrutiny over the weekend for criticizing Craig Spencer, a doctor who tested positive for Ebola on Thursday, for not obeying a 21-day voluntary quarantine. However, on Sunday, he called the health care workers ‘heroes’ and said his administration would encourage more medical workers to volunteer to fight Ebola.
Under the revised protocols Cuomo detailed on Sunday night, the state also will pay for any lost compensation if the quarantined workers are not paid by a volunteer organization.
‘My personal practice is to err on the side of caution,’ Cuomo said. ‘The old expression is, ‘Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”
‘We’re staying one step ahead,’ Cuomo said. ‘We’re doing everything possible. Some people say we’re being too cautious. I’ll take that criticism.’
For much of the weekend, the governors had been under fire from members of the medical community and the White House in what they saw as an overreaction.
‘The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers, so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go,’ said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci made the rounds on five major Sunday morning talk shows to argue that policy should be driven by science — and that science says people with the virus are not contagious until symptoms appear. And even then, infection requires direct contact with bodily fluids.
He said that close monitoring of medical workers for symptoms is sufficient, and warned that forcibly separating them from others, or quarantining them, for three weeks could cripple the fight against the outbreak in West Africa — an argument that humanitarian medical organizations have also made.
‘If we don’t have our people volunteering to go over there, then you’re going to have other countries that are not going to do it and then the epidemic will continue to roar,’ Fauci said.
The New York-area quarantine measures were announced after Spencer returned to New York City from treating Ebola victims in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital Center Thursday to be treated for Ebola. In the week after his return, he rode the subway, went bowling and ate at a restaurant.
Hospital officials said Sunday that Spencer was in serious but stable condition, was looking better than he did the day before, and tolerated a plasma treatment well.
Hickox, the quarantined nurse who just returned from Sierra Leone, said she had no symptoms at all and tested negative for Ebola in a preliminary evaluation.
‘It’s just a slippery slope, not a sound public health decision,’ she said of the quarantine policy. ‘I want to be treated with compassion and humanity, and don’t feel I’ve been treated that way.’
Hickox has access to a computer, her cellphone, magazines and newspapers and has been allowed to have takeout food, New Jersey Health Department officials said.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called Hickox a ‘returning hero’ and charged that she was ‘treated with disrespect,’ as if she done something wrong, when she was put into quarantine. He said that she was interrogated repeatedly and things were not explained well to her.
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is on a trip to West Africa, said returning U.S. health care workers should be ‘treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done.’
In other developments, President Barack Obama met Sunday with his Ebola response team, including ‘Ebola czar’ Ron Klain and other public health and national security officials.
According to a statement released by the White House, Obama said any measures concerning returning health care workers ‘should be crafted so as not to unnecessarily discourage those workers from serving.’
Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered twice-daily monitoring for 21 days of anyone returning from the Ebola-stricken areas.
The World Health Organization said more than 10,000 people have been infected with Ebola in the outbreak that came to light last March, and nearly half of them have died, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
New York City Council District 7 Community Liason Fidel Malena hands out flyers about Ebola risk near the apartment building of Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer in Harlem
Under Pressure, Cuomo Says Ebola Quarantines Can Be Spent at Home
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MICHAEL BARBAROOCT. 26, 2014
Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Sunday night that medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa but did not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.
Mr. Cuomo’s decision capped a frenzied weekend of behind-the-scenes pleas from administration officials, who urged him and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to reconsider the mandatory quarantine they had announced on Friday. Aides to President Obama also asked other governors and mayors to follow a policy based on science, seeking to stem a steady movement toward more stringent measures in recent days at the state level.
The announcement by Mr. Cuomo seemed intended to draw a sharp contrast — both in tone and in fact — to the policy’s implementation in New Jersey, where a nurse from Maine who arrived on Friday from Sierra Leone was swiftly quarantined in a tent set up inside a Newark hospital, with a portable toilet but with no shower.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, left, and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York on Sunday. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times
It was the second striking shift in Mr. Cuomo’s public posture on the Ebola crisis in 72 hours; after urging calm on Thursday night, then joining Mr. Christie to highlight the risks of lax policy on Friday, Mr. Cuomo on Sunday night appeared to try to dial back his rhetoric and stake out a middle ground.
He said his decision balanced public safety with the need to avoid deterring medical professionals from volunteering in West Africa. “My No. 1 job is to protect the people of New York, and this does that,” he said. Those quarantined at home will be visited twice a day by local authorities, he said. Family members will be allowed to stay, and friends may visit with the approval of health officials.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, sitting beside Mr. Cuomo at a news conference in Manhattan, nodded in approval, and praised the governor for developing a set of flexible quarantine guidelines that, the mayor said, would show proper respect to those required to abide by them.
After Mr. Cuomo’s announcement, Mr. Christie issued a statement saying that, under protocols announced on Wednesday, New Jersey residents not displaying symptoms would also be allowed to quarantine in their homes.
Until Sunday night, the quarantine orders by Mr. Christie, a Republican, and Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had drawn withering criticism from many medical experts, who said they would discourage aid workers from volunteering to help eradicate the disease at its source. By midday Sunday, Kaci Hickox, the nurse who became the first person isolated under the new protocols in New Jersey, emerged as the public face of the opposition, calling the treatment she received “inhumane” and disputing Mr. Christie’s assertion a day earlier that she was “obviously ill.”
“If he knew anything about Ebola he would know that asymptomatic people are not infectious,” Ms. Hickox told CNN.
Even some who acknowledged the states’ authority to enact the policy took issue with its implementation in New Jersey.
At Bellevue Hospital Center, staff members listened to Mr. de Blasio on Sunday. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
“We have to think how we treat the people who are doing this noble work,” Mr. de Blasio said. At a late afternoon news conference, he said Ms. Hickox’s treatment was “inappropriate,” adding: “We owe her better than that.”
Yet amid heightened public anxiety about the government’s handling of the crisis, state authorities have increasingly calculated that the mandatory quarantines will prove prescient. Since the governors’ announcement, Illinois and Florida have said they were instituting similar measures.
“I think this is a policy that will become a national policy sooner rather than later,” Mr. Christie said in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
The Cuomo and Christie administrations began seriously considering a quarantine on Tuesday, aides said, after federal officials decreed that travelers returning from countries affected by Ebola in West Africa could enter the United States only at five designated airports, including Kennedy and Newark Liberty International.
Mr. Christie had grown increasingly frustrated by mid-October, aides said, over the failure of medical professionals to properly isolate themselves on a voluntary basis after returning from West Africa.
He was startled to learn that Dr. Nancy Snyderman, an NBC News correspondent who had traveled to Liberia and whose cameraman had contracted Ebola, left her home in Princeton, N.J., on Oct. 9 to pick up food at a favorite local restaurant.
When a doctor, Craig Spencer, tested positive in New York City on Thursday, the two governors watched as city officials strained to trace his every movement — on the subway, at a bowling alley, at a meatball shop.
Kaci Hickox. Credit Kara Hickox
What appeared to be a triumph of meticulous forensic work by city health officials, in retracing Dr. Spencer’s every step late last week, looked like a potential nightmare to governors who suddenly contemplated having to repeat such an exercise over and over.
In a series of phone conversations starting on Thursday night, shortly after Dr. Spencer’s condition was diagnosed, and continuing Friday morning, Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo decided to impose the mandatory quarantines, officials said — essentially declaring that neither state trusted those potentially exposed to the deadly disease to wall themselves off from the rest of society.
Aides to Mr. Cuomo said the notion of a mandatory quarantine had always been considered, and that the plan had been quietly vetted by attorneys and public-health officials.
Neither governor notified the White House.
It did not take long for a test case to arrive at Newark. Ms. Hickox, who had treated Ebola patients in West Africa, landed at around 1 p.m. Friday, and immediately became ensnared in the new order.
In a way, the NBC episode worked to New Jersey’s benefit. Because of it, Mr. Christie and his aides had already developed a legal framework for mandatory quarantines, which they applied to Ms. Hickox.
The benefits, supporters said, were clear: soothing public concerns with more aggressive monitoring at the front end and sparing officials from exhaustive retracing after the fact.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Credit Mel Evans/Associated Press
For Mr. Cuomo, though, embracing the policy proved somewhat complicated. Earlier this month, he cast decisions on screening procedures as “a federal issue.” In a news conference on Thursday announcing that Dr. Spencer had tested positive for Ebola, Mr. Cuomo appeared beside Mr. de Blasio and health officials to urge calm. (The city said Sunday that Dr. Spencer “looks better than he looked yesterday.” He remained in serious but stable condition.)
By Friday, appearing with Mr. Christie, the tone had changed starkly.
The number of people infected in the outbreak of Ebola has risen above 10,000, with the mortality rate now approaching 50%.
The World Health Organization said on Saturday that the death toll had risen to 4,922 out of 10,141 known cases globally in eight countries as at 23 October. Those figures show about 200 new cases since the last report, four days ago.
The three worst-affected countries in west Africa – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – account for the vast majority of cases, with only 10 deaths and 27 cases recorded elsewhere, WHO said.
Of the eight districts of Liberia and Guinea that share a border with Ivory Coast, only two have yet to report confirmed or probable Ebola cases.
The overall figures include outbreaks in Nigeria, where there were 20 cases and eight deaths, and Senegal, where there was one case and no deaths, that the WHO has deemed to be over. It also included isolated cases in Spain, the US and a single case in Mali.
However, the totals are still likely to be an underestimate because many people in the worst-affected countries have been unable or too frightened to seek medical care. A shortage of labs capable of handling potentially infected blood samples has also made it difficult to track the outbreak.
The latest figures show no change in the total number of cases in Liberia, suggesting that they may not reflect the real situation.
A total of 450 healthcare workers are known to have been infected with Ebola: 80 in Guinea; 228 in Liberia; 11 in Nigeria; 127 in Sierra Leone; one in Spain; and three in the US. A total of 244 have died from the virus.
WHO said on Friday that Ebola vaccine trials will start in West Africa in December, a month earlier than planned, and hundreds of thousands of doses will be available by mid-2015.
Authorities in Mali have taken action to calm fears over Ebola as the disease claimed its first victim: a toddler who was contagious while travelling more than 1,000km on public buses with her grandmother before being treated.
The WHO is treating the situation in Mali as an emergency because the two-year-old girl was secreting bodily fluids during the journey, which began in Guinea and took about 24 hours. The virus is transmitted by contact with bodily fluids.
“Bleeding from the nose began while both were still in Guinea, meaning that the child was symptomatic during their travels through Mali … multiple opportunities for exposure occurred when the child was visibly symptomatic,” the WHO said.
The Malian authorities were attempting to trace all those who had contact with the girl and her grandmother, placing 43 people under observation.
Mali had long been considered highly vulnerable to Ebola, as it shares a border with Guinea.
The UN flew about one ton of medical supplies to Mali on Friday to help combat the outbreak. The cargo included hazard suits for health workers, surgical gloves and face-shields.
Meanwhile, anyone flying into New York and New Jersey after having contact with Ebola sufferers in West Africa will face mandatory 21-day quarantine, the governors of the two states said on Friday.
The first person to be isolated under the new policy has tested negative for the virus.
The woman, who has not been identified, had no symptoms when she arrived at Newark Liberty airport but developed a fever after being admitted to hospital, the state health department said.
Free State Patriot 