Stopping the flights only worsens the risk if you keep health-care people from flying in and out. Limit the temporary quarantine to people are just traveling, on the assumption that they are trying to get out for a reason. We can stop the travel visas, and work with the airlines to screen the passengers according to whether they are health workers or not. That would not stop the flow but it would help.
This open-borders thing is more political than it is strategic in fighting the epidemic.
They can travel to the hot zone countries by military transport - if they are willing to go, and if anybody thinks it will still make a difference. Nobody should be coming out of the hot zone countries unless they can pass a 21 day quarantine.
Conventional health care measures have already basically failed. In my opinion, sending more people into the hot zones is unlikely to improve the situation. It is probably a suicide mission.
There is no way to screen Ebola victims that will keep them off of commercial flights. The worldwide network of airline passenger transport is just as effective a vector for spreading the Ebola as packing city residents into a crowded slum.
The only effective control for Ebola right now is to delay travel of people from the afflicted areas until the victims have all died.
Maybe if we are very lucky, the researchers will come up with an effective vaccine or serum treatment.
Worsens the risk? For who? Not for Americans. Are you from that region of the world? It doesn't 'worsen the risk for us' - stopping 'medical refugee' flights could save thousands of American lives. Our hospital systems are not set up for pandemics. You know that right?
What's the worst thing that could happen if flights out of African hot zones were stopped for 21 days... We'll know more then...
No one is talking about stopping medical supplies from going in ... or even flying them in. We're talking about stopping medical refugees from a hot zone from coming here and infecting American citizens.
Will this same 'anything goes' logic apply if one American city became infected to the point that one in five citizens might be carrying the virus? Would we just let everyone who can leave for other cities?
If not, why not?
Health care personnel can be ferried on military planes, under tight control. Why is that so hard for people to grasp?