Trump administration officials, confronted by overlapping outbreaks of Ebola and the hantavirus, have taken a more aggressive approach to locking down potentially exposed people than in past outbreaks, surprising many public health experts.
The instructions from President Trump’s top health appointees, some of whom were vocal opponents of Covid-era public health restrictions, go well beyond tactics that were used to successfully contain previous outbreaks of the diseases.
They include instructing more than a dozen people to remain in home confinement with twice-daily checks; quarantining 18 passengers from a hantavirus-infected cruise ship at a federal facility in Nebraska for 21 days; and keeping American doctors exposed to Ebola at foreign hospitals, rather than repatriating them to specially designed U.S. treatment centers.
Notice that these outbreaks began in very different populations. You could chalk up the fear of Ebola to racism and disgust at the Third World, but not hantavirus on a cruise ship.
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