WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz called Tuesday for a ban on travelers from West African countries grappling with Ebola.
“Common sense dictates that we should impose a travel ban on commercial airline flights from nations afflicted by Ebola,” he said by phone from Texas.
“There’s no reason to allow ongoing commercial air traffic out of those countries.”
Public polls show broad support for barring the entry of travelers from those countries. But top public health experts argue that such a ban would hamper efforts to control the outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — making an international pandemic more likely.
“If we do things that unintentionally make it harder to get that response in, to get supplies in, that make it harder for those governments to manage ... it’s going to become much harder to stop the outbreak at the source,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday. “If that were to happen, it would spread for more months and potentially to other countries, and that would increase rather than decrease the risk to Americans.”
Cruz agreed that the United States should send medical teams and supplies. But he said military transports would suffice.
Who says we can’t send medical supplies there, if we forbid commercial fliqhts of passenqers from there? That’s just a stupid excuse to not protect this country.