The decision by officials to bring an Ebola Patient to Omaha, Nebraska looks to be a bad decision all the way around. According to the New York Times:

 “A North Carolina-based charity said … that a missionary who was infected with Ebola in Liberia was being flown to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.”

It is a bad policy decision. If your policy is to keep Omaha free of Ebola, then why bring Ebola to Omaha?

It is a bad medical decision. Doctors are to first do no harm. Because they are not sure about the line of transmission in this case, and there is a risk the virus will escape, there is the possibility of great harm done to the Omaha community. Doctor Bruce Johnson seems to have contracted the disease while delivering babies, yet how could that be if we are to believe the experts?

It is a bad public health decision. The Omaha public was never consulted about the impact of this decision on the community. There was never any time given for community notification or to get community input on bringing a patient with a deadly viral infection to Nebraska.

It is a bad ethical decision. Bring an Ebola patient to Omaha may be doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Beyond all the bad decisions to bring an Ebola patient to Omaha, there has to be some politics behind it. It looks like the same crappy, liberal politics that tells us over and over again, “Don’t worry, we know better.”

It would be interesting to know what role the US State Department played in bringing the Ebola patient to Omaha. We hear that his transfer out of Africa was done at the request of government officials.

Since when does the State Department make decisions about public health? Remember, this is the same State Department who brought us the Incident at Benghazi two years ago.

Bringing an Ebola patient to Omaha is simply medical hubris. Nebraska spent a lot of money on an infectious disease center and they want to test it.

The ordinary people of Omaha be damned. The two doctors who run the show in Omaha want to make a name for themselves. Maybe they’ll discover a vaccine, but in the meantime, they’ll risk the lives and health of the good citizens of Omaha. Everything the doctors are doing for Bruce Johnson could have been done in Liberia.

Will Ebola become the new AIDS with the same regrettable accompanying stigma? Lets hope our patient is cured. But then what? Will you attend a cocktail party where the host introduces a man who was cured from Ebola? None of this transfer of an Ebola patient has been thought through.

The doctors who made the decision to bring an Ebola patient weren’t thinking of the old lady who barely makes it up the hill to shop for groceries at Wholner’s.

They weren’t thinking of the student who has only a dollar in his pocket, not even enough to buy a Coke between classes, at Metro Community College.

They weren’t thinking of the young woman who drops her kids off at Little Hands Daycare so she can work to help pay the mortgage on a home in Dundee. No. They were thinking of their reputation as medical super-stars.

If things go bad, the doctors can fly away and get another position. They can bury their mistakes. When things go bad because Nebraska politicians made a mistake about Ebola, the ordinary people of Omaha will have to suffer and die.

Politicians and physicians heal thyselves.