
Why an Ebola Flight Ban Wouldn’t Work - aaronbrethorst
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-an-ebola-flight-ban-wouldnt-work/
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maxharris
What the article describes is not an Ebola flight ban.

A true Ebola flight ban would halt _all_ commercial air travel in and out of
the affected nations. If you wanted to get in or out of there, you'd have to
be authorized to board a US military flight.

A ban would not be hard to implement. Liberia only has 11 airports, and only
one (Roberts, in Monrovia) is an "international" airport.

Assuming that the safety and security of Americans is your primary
consideration (for non-American readers, replace "America" with the name of
your country), what's wrong with locking these places down completely? We
would not be restricting our ability to fly in food, medical teams, soldiers,
etc., as those things don't need to go over commercial flights anyway. Even if
commercial flights are slightly cheaper, why be penny-wise and pound-foolish,
given that the lives of many other people around the world (and eventually our
own) are at considerable risk if this outbreak is not controlled? If there
aren't enough military flights, why not simply order more planes into service?
It's not like we don't have enough planes, pilots or fuel to do that.

A lot of people in West Africa are facing starvation due to internal
restrictions on movement and economic activity. Why not make a trade with
these nations? America would give them food, medical assistance, and help with
security, if they agree to let America lock their airports and shorelines down
(the neighboring countries have the border crossings taken care of).

And aren't we doing most of these things anyway? Why not do this last thing (a
full flight ban) so that we're prepared for the worst, which looks like 10,000
new cases a week in less than two months?

~~~
JBiserkov
"Yes!" * 1000

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morkfromork
Flight ban might not be needed if they had a quarantine for some time so they
can evaluate travelers before allowing them to fly. It's not that complicated
and would not be expensive.

I keep seeing charts showing the number of cases spiking towards the end of
the year so this situation is not improving.

