The evidence on travel bans for diseases like Ebola is clear: they don't work

[kpete]

After HIV/AIDS was discovered in 1984, governments around the world imposed entry, stay and residence restrictions on people with the disease. As one 2008 study notes: “Sixty-six of the 186 countries in the world for which data are available currently have some form of restriction in place.” In the US, the ban — instituted by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 — was only lifted when Obama came into office. But HIV/AIDS managed to spread anyway, reaching pandemic proportions by the 1990s. This 1989 review of HIV/AIDS travel restrictions found they were “ineffective, impractical, costly, harmful, and may be discriminatory.” Prevention of HIV worked better than travel restriction, the authors concluded.


MORE:
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/18/6994413/research-travel-bans-ebola-virus-outbreak

[Turbineguy]

1. Which is probably why conservatives are in favor of it.

They tend towards things that don't work.

[pampango]

3. Plus the fact that a travel ban responds to fear which is what republicans use to make policy. n/t

[3rdwaydem]

2. The leaders of several African countries would disagree.

The claim that their implementation of a travel ban kept the disease from their respective countries.

[jeff47]

6. Their travel ban also prevented meteor strikes.

No meteors hit their countries while the travel ban was in effect, right? Therefore, the travel ban protected them from meteor strikes.

You can't conclude that the travel ban worked unless you can show that not having a travel ban would cause the disease to spread. Lots of African countries do not have a travel ban, and do not have cases of Ebola.

[Dirty Socialist]

4. Yet another DU exclusive

Thanks for the article. K & R.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. I don't know that that's a very strong argument against travel bans for Ebola

HIV/AIDS is not a disease like Ebola. HIV has a latency period of anywhere from six months to fifteen years (and some percentage of people with HIV never progress to AIDS). By the time AIDS started showing up in the USA, in 1979-1981? Those cases were people who'd been infected with the virus some years before (possibly more than ten years before; the earliest documented death from AIDS in the USA was in 1969). HIV was already very well-established in the USA before a travel ban was instituted. Ebola on the other hand has a relatively short incubation period of from three to six weeks.

[PADemD]

7. GUNTER Officials frightened of Ebola travel ban

In effect, Britain has a travel ban on people coming from the three West African countries with Ebola outbreaks – Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. British commercial and charter flights in and out have been suspended since August and will remain suspended until the end of March, at least.

Air France, Emirates Airlines and Korea Air have suspended all scheduled traffic in and out of West Africa, too, making it unnecessary for their national governments to impose complete “entry restrictions” on incoming passengers from the hot zone.

Of the 54 countries in Africa, 30 have barred entry by anyone from the three infected countries. The World Health Organization credits travel bans by Nigeria and Senegal for stopping the spread of the disease to those countries.

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/10/18/officials-too-pc-to-ban-travel