There’s no reason to panic about Ebola, insist the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health officials. They’re advising to stay calm, even though the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died this week and the government is beefing up screening of travelers going in and out of the country’s busiest airports.
But several on the far right are taking the health scare to an extreme. From arguing that President Obama is welcoming Ebola to the United States, to suggesting patients with the disease should be executed — here’s a look at some of the fear-mongering and down-right absurd remarks the right has made in the wake of the outbreak.
Rush Limbaugh : Liberals wants Ebola in the U.S.
The conservative radio host argued this week that Obama believes Americans “deserve” to get the disease as payback for slavery. “Do not doubt me on this, folks. There are people in this country who believe this is ultimately traced back to us; because of our slavery, we kind of deserve a little bit of this. Make no mistake, this is the leftists’ politically correct thinking. The danger we have now is that we’ve elected people who think this.”
Phyllis Schlafly: Obama is welcoming Ebola into the U.S.
Yes, you read that right. The conservative activist told WolrdNetDaily that the president wants the virus to come to the U.S. so the country can become more like Africa. She argued, “Obama doesn’t want America to believe that we’re exceptional,” she said. “He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it too. That’s his attitude.” She also said, “Out of all the things he’s done, I think this thing of letting these diseased people into this country to infect our own people is just the most outrageous of all.”
Laura Ingraham: Obama’s “connection with Africa” resulted in him making bad decisions on Ebola
During her Oct. 1 show, the conservative radio host argued Obama’s failing to stop planes coming in from Sierra Leone has to do with his “familial connection with Africa. He has an enormous amount of, I think, you know, core ties to the African continent … It doesn’t make sense not to have stopped these flights coming in.”
Todd Kincannon: Ebola patients should be executed
The former director of the South Carolina Republican Party tweeted that “people with Ebola in the US need to be humanely put down immediately.” In another tweet, he added, “The protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate execution and sanitation of the whole area. That will save lives.”
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Seal the border!
The Fox News host this week argued that the United States should close the border to prevent an outbreak. “Why are we still letting people into the country who could have possibly been exposed [to Ebola]? Why not just shut down the flights and secure the borders?… Why not, just as a precaution until we get things under control, seal of the border temporarily?”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health — who was on the segment with Hasselbeck — quickly shot her theory down. Experts have insisted that such bans would be ineffective and even harmful.
“You could have civil unrest, governments could fall,” Fauci said. “And then you wind up having spread the virus to other countries in west Africa, which would only compound the problem.”
