The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends one set of protocols for monitoring individuals at risk of spreading Ebola. Individual states are rushing to develop their own protocols that go beyond the CDC recommendations. The end result? A patchwork of 50 different sets of regulations requiring, in some cases, in-home quarantines and, in others, self-monitoring.
“This is the problem with states designing their own Ebola policies: We now have a patchwork of competing and sometimes contradictory regulations that at times even government officials have struggled to explain,” writes Josh Voorhees for Slate.
“The resulting mess could have disastrous effects both at home and abroad. It could convince American doctors not to volunteer in Sierra Leone, Guinea, or Liberia, where they are desperately needed. And it risks encouraging medical workers to evade hostile state governments, which could leave local health officials unprepared to act if the worst happens. As the editors of the usually reserved New England Journal of Medicine put it Monday: “[Christie and Cuomo’s] action is like driving a carpet tack with a sledgehammer: It gets the job done but overall is more destructive than beneficial.” Worse still, neither President Obama nor anyone else appears to have the power to pry that sledgehammer from the governors’ hands.”
Read the rest of Voorhees’ piece at Slate.com.