Don't Quarantine Me Bro! Obama Administration Pushes Back Against Mandatory Ebola Quarantines

Barack Obola's pushing back.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Christie Defends Mandatory Ebola Quarantine for Health-Care Workers: But Administration’s Fauci Says Quarantines Send Wrong Message":

The White House pushed back against the governors of New York, New Jersey, Illinois and other states that instituted procedures to forcibly quarantine medical workers returning from West Africa, deepening an emotional debate brought on by recent Ebola cases in the U.S.

A senior administration official said Sunday that new federal guidelines under development would protect Americans from imported cases of the disease but not interfere with the flow of U.S. health workers to and from West Africa to fight the epidemic there.

“We have let the governors of New York, New Jersey and other states know that we have concerns with the unintended consequences of [quarantine] policies not grounded in science may have on efforts to combat Ebola at its source,” the official said.

It wasn’t clear what action the Obama administration could take to end the quarantines.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie held firm on his decision to quarantine returning health-care workers. “I absolutely have no second thoughts about it,” he said on Fox News.

A nurse detained in New Jersey after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone retained lawyers to challenge her mandatory quarantine in a tent at a Newark hospital, where she said Sunday the conditions are “really inhumane.”

One of those lawyers, Norman Siegel, a prominent civil rights attorney, said the mandatory quarantine policy infringed on the constitutional rights of the worker, Kaci Hickox, a 33-year-old Doctors Without Borders nurse, raising “serious questions procedurally.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also criticized how Ms. Hickox was treated.

Whatever happened to federalism? You know, the laboratories of democracy? We might find out that New Jersey's doing the right thing, but then again, the Democrat-left isn't really about keeping people safe and healthy. They're all about creating more political conflicts and distractions.

But keep reading.