5a83 Gerber: America does the right thing bringing ebola victims home | Opinion - Columns | Times Free Press
Gerber: America does the right thing bringing ebola victims home

Gerber: America does the right thing bringing ebola victims home

August 10th, 2014 by Alison Gerber in Opinion Columns




Why bring one of the world's most deadly viruses across American borders, people asked.

Donald Trump jumped in. "KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!" he tweeted. CNN reported that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received hate emails and phone calls.


"Why bring it here? ... [Brantly] knowingly went there to help and contracted the disease so why not let him stay where he is and treat him there?"

"Close all borders."

"What if Ebola just wipes us out?"

"This is a great opportunity to have an outbreak here in the states."

"This decision is crazy and very dangerous ... If this genie is released from its bottle and unleashed here [in] Georgia there is no turning back!"


"People opposed to bringing those 2 back to the states are uneducated idiots. Point blank," one social media poster declared.

Susan Mitchell Grant, Emory Healthcare's chief nurse, wrote in a Washington Post column that fears about bringing the patients to Atlanta are unfounded and based on a lack of knowledge about Ebola and the treatment of it.

"Most importantly, we are caring for these patients because it is the right thing to do," she wrote.

For the record, Ebola is spread when an infected person's body fluids come in contact with another person's mucous membranes, such as the sinuses. While a Canadian researcher said in 2012 that he thought the virus had spread from infected pigs to healthy primates through the air in a research lab, other scientists say the study wasn't conclusive because virus-laden drops of water could have splashed from the pig pen to the monkey cages when the pig enclosure was washed.




Brantly and Writebol took on a task most of us don't want: treating patients who have a highly contagious, incurable disease. In the process, they contracted an illness that CDC Director Thomas Frieden called a "tragic, painful, dreadful, merciless virus."

Why wouldn't we want to bring them home and treat them with the best care possible?

Returning the nurse and doctor to Emory underscored to me what makes America great; the fact that we're free to debate that decisions makes America even greater.

