THE CABIN ANTHRAX, MURPHY, N.C. (CT&P) – In response to the near hysterical ravings of pundits on both Fox and CNN regarding the single confirmed Ebola case in the country, and the resulting abject panic shown by weaker-minded American citizens, the U.S. government will begin screening passengers arriving at five airports from West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak, the White House announced this afternoon.
Earnest wanted reporters to assure the traveling public that TSA personnel were already taking time out from feeling-up attractive female passengers to look for anyone bleeding from the nose, ears, or mouth.
The five airports – John F. Kennedy International in New York, Newark, Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta and Washington Dulles—account for 94 percent of the passengers arriving each day from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. And there are only about 150 such passengers each day at those airports, making it more feasible to screen people more intensively who come from or recently visited the affected countries.
The Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan, arrived from Brussels at Dulles before flying to Dallas/Fort Worth International.
“The vast majority of passengers from those countries would be subject to this additional layer of screening,” Earnest said.
TSA officers will undergo three weeks of intensive training so that they will be able to accurately take the temperature of every arriving passenger from the hot zone.
“That will counter and has countered the spread of Ebola,” he said, adding that pre-departure screening is only part of the process. Officials at U.S. airports have already been trying to spot travelers with potential Ebola symptoms.
Screening for fever will be conducted by Customs and Border Patrol, Coast Guard and personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Earnest said. And he said, the screening shouldn’t cause any “significant disruption to the broader traveling public.”
Earnest failed to say just why the hell Coast Guard personnel would be used in the airports, but experts assume that their success at keeping illegal drugs out of the country had something to do with it.
The White House Spokesman wasn’t sure if travelers with a fever would be put into quarantine. The Department of Homeland Security will provide more details on the new procedures later today.
A source close to the CDC who wished to remain anonymous assured Fox News pundit Eric Bolling that there was really nothing to worry about and any white person who contracted the disease would receive the best medical care money could buy.
“I’m really not sure what we are going to do with someone who has a fever,” said Earnest. “It really does not matter anyway, because you don’t have to have a fever to be harboring the deadly virus.”
Duncan apparently had no fever until a few days after he arrived in Dallas, so the precautions are obviously just an attempt by the Administration to show that it is doing something, however ineffective that something may be.
Earnest conceded that there’s no way to screen people who are infected before they show symptoms — which is the point at which they become contagious.
“What we’re trying to do is quickly isolate cases of individuals who are showing symptoms” and therefore could spread the disease. “You can’t get it through the air. It’s not like the flu or catching a cold… What we’re trying to do is safeguard the global transportation infrastructure at the same time we’re protecting the American public,” said Duncan, with smirk on his face.
“Look, the main thing we are trying to do here is look good and silence the idiots on CNN and Fox who have a ten-year-old’s grasp of science and public health issues,” said Duncan, who addressed the gathering of White House journalists while dressed in a lovely violet hazmat suit.
As Earnest left the podium he encouraged everyone attending the news conference to wash their hands at least 50 times per day and lock themselves inside their homes until the crisis in West Africa has passed, which should be sometime within the next two years.
The Cretonia Times-Picayune 