What do you libertarians think about trying to contain an epidemic like the current ebola outbreak? Who quarantines them? Who pays for it? Who enforces it? What if they don't want to be quarantined? Can you deny liberty without due process? Are travel bans constitutional?
I'm not a libertarian but I think private entities are more nimble and able to possibly find coming up with treatments and vaccines that are both effective and safe. As only governments can deny liberty, they should be the ones to force to quarantine and house the infected. I don't think a travel ban is warranted in the case of ebola since it is not a highly infectios disease. Travel bans could be necessary with more infectious diseases, like if ebola goes airbone. These things absolutely have to be clearly defined to avoid overreaction.
How many cases do we need to decide we under reacted? I think back to the last century when my father came to this country, he spent 3 weeks in Ellis Island to insure he was free of infections. You would have thought it was three years listing to him tell the tale back in the day but I am pretty sure it was only three weeks. He wasn't even coming from an infected area. Not quite sure what the hell says we have to let everyone in unrestricted from anywhere regardless of the diseases they may have been exposed to?? Seem rather stupid putting the US population at risk for Liberal correctness. It think they probably were a more correct a 100 years ago. Let's see, that was the time of the first liberal democrat president, Woodrow Wilson.
Government quarantine for the infected. Restrict travel to and from Ebola striken areas even for humanitarian aid. It's a public health issue. isolate it aggressively.
That sounds like a "big government" solution. And besides it might not evern work. Ebola is only "moderately sensitive to radiation" http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php
Sailors and soldiers have transplanted more communicable diseases around the globe than any immigration check point has missed for thousands of years. If you screen Ellis Island style these days, you'd have to screen outgoing as well as incoming. I believe the infected regions should be strictly quarantined but you're fooling yourself if you think any organization can catch viruses or incubated infectious diseases without missing many. Surround victims and quarantine is about the only choice. It's dangerous when a hospital is the battle ground
Don't allow people from West Africa to enter the country. Place everyone else that returns from there in Quarantine for the appropriate period. This include anyone coming from anywhere that has been in west Africa within the last 6 weeks. Including Healthcare workers and military.
Ebola is a national threat, the state and federal governments should treat it accordingly. I have no problem with government spending as long as it's spent wisely and stopping a deadly virus is money well spent.
I think all these points raise more questions than answers. At what point does a disease or illness become a national threat? The flu is more contagious and kills more than ebola has, yet we don't regularly quarantine people with the flu. Are Libertarians OK with denying liberty without due process in order to stop an outbreak? I know I wouldn't be OK with someone forcing me to spend 3 weeks in quarantine just because I visited a different part of the world. Also, fear could drive people to lie about possible exposure negating quarantine process altogether. If I was infected with a deadly disease I sure as hell wouldn't want to spend my remaining days locked up in a hospital surrounded by people clumsily poking at me with bio-suits.
What exactly is the government doing about Ebola that the private sector isn't? Paul Allen has pledged at least $100M to fight Ebola. He's not the government. I think that when a $billionaire gives back to society like this, it's highly commendable. The CDC and NIH are adopting rules they learned from private sector organizations like Doctors Without Borders, not vice versa. Libertarianism is not anarchy, but rather a legal philosophy. The gist is "individual liberty up to the point where someone else is being harmed." In the case of Ebola or other highly infectious and lethal diseases, it is someone else being harmed. The state governments probably should have the ability to quarantine people - it's not the same thing as incarceration. The government should also cover the patients' costs if they are mandating quarantine and they lose time at work, etc. Before you have the government step in, you better have good reason that the private sector cannot deal with it better. And it can.
Exactly. The governments only role in this effort should be the enforcement of travel restrictions, enforcement of quarantine and support the cost of quarantine. I suppose you could add, encourage private enterprise to take up the battle. Perhaps a tax incentive. The government should leave policies of fairness and equity to god.
Until very recently most of the funding for R&D for Ebola treatments was coming from government (thanks Cheney!). A company just couldn't sell enough of the cure to be profitable, especially to poor African countries.
How much funding? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/ebola-vaccine-race-is-on Last week Johnson & Johnson also announced it was investing $200m in developing a two-step Ebola vaccine together with Denmark-based biotechnology company Bavarian Nordic.
