Australia & Ebola: Discriminatory Or Sensible?

[ChillDoubt]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29809863

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison told parliament: "The government's systems and processes are working to protect Australians."
-------------
Hear, hear! Hopefully someday soon we'll have a government that takes the same attitude with the British people.
So are the Aussies right or wrong?

[jim360]

It's not really either. There's no real justification for a travel ban, still, because it's been shown in Nigeria and Senegal that the disease can be contained if it spreads to other countries (incidentally, where were the posts about that piece of good news?). On the other hand I can see that governments in other countries may feel under some pressure to be seen to take action to protect their citizens, and doing so is not really discriminatory to other nations (or at least, it is but not in a bad way).

It largely depends what other action Australia takes to combat the disease. A major worry should be that various nations close their borders and think this is somehow all the action they need to take: "If it doesn't come here it's not our problem". The slow response to the crisis as it grew early on shows the danger of this, for example.

If the Australian government also takes action to combat the disease in Sierra Leone at the same time as denying travel from that country, then there's less of a problem. If, on the other hand, it does nothing else, then this is a bad attitude to take and deserves to be condemned.

[Prudie]

It doesn't deserve to be condemned at all. If you've ever seen the Border Force type programmes on Australia and New Zealand they are always amazingly strict about protecting their islands from all sorts of incomings such as food, seeds etc etc. They are doing it for the good of their people and it's shame UK is too magnanimous to take a leaf out of their book.

[Sqad]

This is quarantine........barrier quarantine.....the scientists tell us that it is unnecessary and will not help containing the virus.

But....the virus isn"t being contained.

The last paragraph of Jim's post sums it up perfectly.

[slaney]

"The virus isn't being contained" - it certainly isn't being contained in Africa, but in the cases in Europe and the US it has, in spite of some failure in strict barrier nursing in Spain and Texas.

We have already here some screening at airports, although this is more of an attempt to make people feel more secure, rather than an effective process to pick up Ebola.

The best way to keep us safe is, as Jim says is to get on top of the disease in Africa. It's disappointing that only now, months after we first discussed it here, are anything like enough resources being put into affected countries.

As regards Australia, it would be good if their government would put as much into that vital help as other countries. I can't see them on the list ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-crisis-how-much-are-different-countries-donating-to-fight-the-outbreak-and-is-it-enough-9806212.html

[slaney]

A link to an article by Rod Liddle in The Spectator last week..
http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/rod-liddle/9342242/panic-about-ebola-in-africa-not-here/

[jim360]

There's just not enough of a threat to outside countries. We have seen as I've said that we can stop the disease from taking hold -- in Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and even the USA it's not spreading -- so that there is no realistic threat of the sort of doomsday scenario this is designed to stop. And in the meantime, perhaps the complaint from Sierra Leone could be based on its having 6 million people, of with less than 0.1% have contracted the disease (and almost half of those are dead already). A blanket ban on the other 99.96% coming into the country is, frankly, an over-reaction.

I don't think the ban should be condemned in and of itself -- but as everyone else here is saying it's got to be coupled to something useful. The threat to the Australian people is minimal. The threat to the Africans is real. To deal with the first and assuming that's enough is shameful, and we should hope that Australia and other nations step up to deal with this rather than just closing their borders and washing their hands of the matter. That is what I condemn.