Michael Gerson: Concerns About Ebola & Border Security 'Unnatural' & 'Malicious'

Michael Gerson: Concerns About Ebola & Border Security 'Unnatural' & 'Malicious'

It was only a matter of time before liberal Republicans like Michael Gerson joined liberals and the mainstream press to bash conservatives for being concerned about the Ebola outbreak. 

In a Washington Post column, Gerson writes that Ebola “infects” the media and blasts what he says is the “obsession” among Americans who are concerned about border security that he claims “is unnatural” and “manufactured for political reasons.” 

When liberals and the mainstream media start attacking conservatives, elite Republicans like Gerson, of course, have to let them know he is on their side against conservatives. To Gerson, it is “fantastical and malicious” to think Ebola could come to America because of its porous border. 

Don’t tell that to African nations that are feverishly trying to contain the outbreak after lax quarantine enforcement and porous borders reportedly caused the outbreak, which started in March, to spread. 

Gerson, the former George W. Bush adviser who thought “compassionate conservatism” could only be achieved with bigger government, notes that Ebola is not easily communicable because the spread among humans “requires direct contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood, or diarrheal feces.” But the “capable and trusted health-care institutions” in Africa that Gerson praises did not initially take the outbreak as seriously as they should have. 

Gerson also bashes Americans who had concerns about the CDC, saying it is “dangerous to do so.” He refuses to acknowledge that the American public had good reasons to be concerned about an agency that had “a pattern” of mishandling deadly pathogens like anthrax and the virus that causes “bird flu.” 

When the government was forthright about the number of people it had been testing for the virus at various hospitals, Americans had more reason to distrust elites like Gerson. Their concerns are not unfounded, as Gerson asserts. But perhaps Gerson’s dismissiveness is. 

On Sunday evening, Breitbart Texas published a leaked Customs and Border Protection (CBP) report that revealed that “at least 71 individuals from the three nations affected by the current Ebola outbreak have either turned themselves in or been caught attempting to illegally enter the U.S. by U.S. authorities between January 2014 and July 2014.” 

But Gerson thinks it is preposterous to raise “the prospect of Ebola-infected illegal immigrants crossing our porous southern border,” even though terrorism analysts and retired surgeons like Dr. Ben Carson have said terror groups have been looking to use Ebola as a bioterrorism weapon. 

The CDC has issued its highest alert for a horrific virus that Gerson said attacks “the body’s organs in the manner of a horror movie.” Health experts have said it is “inevitable” that Ebola, which has no cure and causes patients to bleed to death, would make it to the United States. But to Gerson, doing everything to delay that inevitability is irresponsible and malicious. 

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