American Health Care Workers Dishonored Their Profession During Ebola Crisis

Those who continue to defend quarantine-breaking health practitioners like Dr. Nancy Snyderman of NBC or Nurse Kaci Hickox miss the point. James Massey of Texas Woman's University eloquently described the real danger to us all:  

It's a question of leadership vs convenience. People look to healthcare providers for guidance when there is a risk that serious. If there had been an actual outbreak stateside, people would need to obey quarantine, right? Well, if you have selfish people like Snyderman blowing off quarantine the uniformed would have a much greater chance of blowing it off too.

What if Ebola had in fact landed on American shores. 



 Our medical professionals, returning from Ebola-ridden areas,  are proclaiming that quarantines either should not be applied to them or are secretly going out, refusing to be inconvenienced for three weeks.  These people are our role models.  How likely is it that members of the general public with no medical understanding of the disease's transmission will accept voluntary quarantining even if they were at high risk?  These doctors and nurses should have led the way; showed the public that quarantines "don't hurt," rather than fuss and squeal like spoiled brats, whether or not they believed themselves to have been exposed to the virus.

This particular crisis has exposed a gaping hole in our American health care system, apart from the financial one that I'm hoping Obamacare may be able to address.  It is the god and goddess-complex of too many of the health care practitioners on display during the Ebola crisis.  While doctors and nurses in Africa were sacrificing their lives to stem the tide of this deadly epidemic, American health care workers exposed to the virus were taking jets back and forth across the country, going on cruises, and even taking subway trips around Manhattan, and this was the behavior of a doctor who did indeed end up with Ebola.  One particularly defiant nurse was making media appearances denouncing a century of epidemiological practice on the value of quarantines in containing epidemics.

America continues to have the best health care system in the world.  But the self-absorption and arrogance on display during this crisis, may have been more than coincidental and it does not augur well for the future.  Humility goes a long way in persuading nature to open her secrets.