Louisiana says thanks, but no thanks to Ebola researchers

[ashling]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/29/1338105/-Louisiana-says-thanks-but-no-thanks-to-Ebola-nbsp-researchers?detail=facebook#

Stupid Ebola politicization in public officials isn't limited just to New Jersey. No, Gov. Bobby Jindal's Louisiana has to get in on the action, and to potentially even more destructive ends than Chris Christie's targeting of healthcare workers fighting the disease. Jindal one ups him by targeting disease researchers.
The state sent a letter yesterday to members of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which is holding its annual conference in New Orleans next week. If they've recently been to any of the West African countries where the virus has infected more than 13,000 people, they shouldn't attend the meeting.
"We do hope that you will consider a future visit to New Orleans, when we can welcome you appropriately," said Kathy Klieber, Louisiana’s Secretary of Health & Hospitals and Kevin Davis, director of the Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness, in the letter.

Because, you know, what's a smarter thing to do when there's an infectious disease epidemic in a remote part of the world than to prevent the researchers of that disease to come together to discuss their findings and collaborate on a way to fight it? I mean, what's the point of figuring out how to fight Ebola where it is, in Africa, when we're here in the US?

[spanone]

1. and they keep electing this dipshit, dumbass yahoo

[HereSince1628]

2. Remember the APA article by Jost et al? Conservatives favor the simple

and they are highly motivated toward conservative thinking by existential (life vs death) threats

Because Ebola kills half of the people who get it, for conservatives it well meets the criteria of existential threat.

In risk management, a step near the top of the decision tree is "has the threatening event happened?"

If the risk event hasn't happened then the decisions to be made are about prevention and later planning and preparing a response for when the event happens.

This becomes a perfect storm for simple minded conservative thinking about what is seen as an existential threat.

An outbreak of Ebola has not happened in the US. So the steps to be taken are preventative. Ebola outbreaks can't happen in a geographic area, say New Orleans or Louisiana, if the virus is kept out. Simple. So policy response is aimed at keeping it out. Banning travel for people who have been -near- Ebola in Africa is seen as the simple tool to keep the virus out.

The travel ban is unnecessary, but the logic really does work well within a conservatively motivated train of thought.