Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, the Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman Center for Public Health, argued that if the Ebola virus “gets further out into Africa, we will not be able to control it because our borders are porous” on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.
When Lipkin was asked about banning flights from countries with large-scale outbreaks of the virus, he responded, “The fact is the best way for us to protect the American people is to keep that disease over there, and to get it under control. If it gets further out into Africa, we will not be able to control it, because our borders are porous.”
On the subject of flight restrictions, he did say that it would be “very, very difficult” because people come to the U.S. from Ebola-stricken countries indirectly.
Lipkin also said “it’s true that you can catch Ebola by touching things that people have touched, who have Ebola.”
He also responded to claims that the federal government wasn’t being fully transparent on how the freelance cameraman infected covering the Ebola outbreak contracted the disease by saying “you raise the issue about us not being transparent, in terms of what we are being told by the CDC or National Institutes of Health and others. I’m not certain that that’s true. I don’t know that they actually know more than they are telling us.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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