To call CDC Director’s Thomas Frieden’s performance in front of today’s hearing of [mc_name name=’Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’U000031′ ]’s House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations disastrous would be like saying the Titanic had a leak. It was epic in its incompetence,

One of the most hotly debated topics was that of a travel ban. Since the first patient presented at a Dallas hospital suffering from Ebola symptoms, a disease he acquired while in Liberia, the obvious question has been why do we allow travel to the US, especially air travel, from any nation with an active Ebola epidemic when we have the mechanisms to prevent that from happening. We can’t. Because racism.

So no effort was spent to trace the unfortunate Mr. Duncan’s fellow passengers but now we are running down those who flew with the second Dallas nurse to develop Ebola.

In today’s hearing the subject came up. Frieden’s response makes you think that he’d never considered the possibility… or that he thought the panel was composed of idiots and Democrat shills.

“Right now we know who’s coming in. If we try to eliminate travel, the possibility that some will travel over land, will come from other places…will mean that we won’t be able to do multiple things,” he said, explaining that temperature checks and interviews conducted at airports provide valuable safeguards to public health.

This is gibberish.

Granted some number of people will be able to effect an illegal entry to the United States within the 21-day incubation period of the disease. The salient fact is that most, probably 99.99999% will not be able to do that. Frieden also implies that the CDC is worried that Mexico would allow entry to people from countries with Ebola outbreaks and allow them to enter the United States on foot. I doubt that is the case but it makes one helluva case for building a border wall. Such a wall may not stop healthy Mexicans or Central Americans but it would be an effective barrier to someone bleeding from their eyeballs.

Temperature checks at airports are a bogus countermeasure designed to give the traveling public confidence. Anyone who has ever had a child knows how to reduce a fever (answer: Motrin).

What Frieden doesn’t mention the fact that to someone in West Africa who has been exposed to Ebola (and has the financial means) travel to the US provides a life line. In Liberia, Ebola patients are left to die on the street. In the US the efforts of the entire US government are devoted to saving your life. The sham countermeasures that Frieden’s CDC has implemented increase the likelihood that we will attract people who know they have Ebola and are knowingly evading travel restrictions trying to save their lives.

Frieden has had the benefit of the doubt long enough. It is clear he is either an idiot or a mere puppet dancing to the tune of White House policy advisors.