POLL: How has Gov. Christie handled the Ebola crisis so far?

One odd thing to come out of the ongoing Ebola drama was a piece I heard this morning on our news report stating that we have no written policy on quarantine.

Barring anything that’s come from the CDC, we’ve been left to our own devices to come up with a policy on what to do with travelers and health care workers coming through Newark from West Africa.

The only policy thus far is the one laid down by Governor Christie stating that if you’re a symptomatic health care worker – you’d be hospitalized; and if asymptomatic, you’d be subject to home quarantine either here or in your home state.

Governor Christie had this to say about it:

“If they’re just a traveler they will get screened as normal and the CDC and the Department of Health will make decisions about what to do from there,” Christie said Monday. “If you are screened and you are asymptomatic, you can be allowed then to go to your home, travel to your home, whether it’s in New Jersey, New York or someplace else in the country and be quarantined for 21 days there. If you are symptomatic, you will be quarantined in a hospital in New Jersey until we can find out whether you have the virus or not.”

Sensible? I think so – again, in light of the fact that we’ve heard nothing from the newly appointed Ebola czar – a person whose name doesn’t even remotely ring familiar.

But we have heard from one Dr. Bruce Beutler, an American Nobel Prize winning medical doctor and researcher, who reviewed Christie’s new policy of mandatory quarantine for all health care workers exposed to Ebola, and declared: “I favor it

He went on to say that the Governor has it right but would be a bit more strict, saying, “I realize this would be inconvenient, but I don’t think it would prevent treating the disease.”

And now we learn that Maine, the state where Hickox lives, is prepared to enforce the voluntary quarantine on returning health care workers – much to her chagrin.

In an interview with Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos, she stated

"I remain really concerned by these mandatory quarantine policies for aid workers. I think we are just only adding to stigmatization that again is not based on science or evidence," she said. "And if these restrictions are not removed for me from the state of Maine by tomorrow morning, Thursday morning, I will go to court to retain my freedom."

I’ll bet any amount of money that’ll be one empty courtroom.

But in retrospect, she makes a good case for the Governor’s hard line on quarantining returning health care workers.

No one denies that she’s doing God’s work in caring for the victims of the disease. But in adopting the stance that she has, she could potentially be unwittingly creating more victims.

Would 3 weeks of quarantine have been all that inconvenient to bear for someone who was (and is) willing to put her life on the line? Especially for someone knowing full well how virulent the disease it.

Apparently she thinks she knows better; and continues to be a "cab a tuosto" (trans: hard headed) about it!

And how do you feel the Governor has handled the Ebola crisis so far?