David Frum, senior editor of The Atlantic, declared that President Barack Obama is correctly “taking a risk with Americans” by not imposing a travel ban on countries with massive Ebola outbreaks because he believes such a ban would harm West Africa on Friday’s “Real Time” on HBO.
“One reason there is panic, and I think you put your finger on it a little bit ago, is the things that are being said to reassure people …so much of what is being said is clearly not true,” he argued.
Frum gave the lack of a travel ban as an example, stating, “The reason there is no travel ban is not because you can’t impose a travel ban and also have a waiver for healthcare workers, it’s not true that people under the travel ban will lie about where they’ve been, there are stamps on their passports, they can be traced.”
Instead, according to Frum “the reason there isn’t a travel ban, is because the president is making a correct judgment, the same one George Bush made about Avian Flu, that the small risk to America is balanced by the much greater risk of harm to West Africa that would be imposed by this travel ban.”
He concluded that the president “is taking a risk with Americans, and because he doesn’t want to say that, a lot of things are being said that are not true, and that I think is having a corrosive effect on public confidence.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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