Ask McFartnuggets: “Will A Mandatory Quarantine Really Dissuade Health Workers From Going To Africa?”

Is mandatory quarantine
really the answer?

Dear McFartnuggets: 

People be talking about how a mandatory 21 day quarantine for health workers returning from West Africa would dissuade American doctors from going over there to help. Are you serious? Are there really doctors out there who go “Hmm you know I wanna go over to West Africa into Ebola City and risk my life to spend weeks and months treating Ebola patients, but if I gotta stay at home for 21 days before I come back to make sure I don’t spread the virus to America then SCREW THAT!” To me that don’t seem right. Either you really care enough to go over there and help or you don’t. I don’t think taking a precaution to keep spreading the shit to America should stop you if you really want to help people so I don’t know why the fuck people talking about “A mandatory quarantine will dissuade health workers from going to West Africa.” People need to shut the hell up with that and put that mandatory quarantine in place! -- Abigail from Portland, Maine

Dear Abigail:

This whole issue boils down to trusting doctors. In fairness, we do trust doctors with a lot so why can’t we trust them to know when they’re posing a risk to other people? I suppose it all has to do with each individual doctor. Some doctors are smarter than others so I can understand the desire to impose a mandatory quarantine. When you’re dealing with a dangerous problem like Ebola, some smarter people have to suffer because of the dumber ones who go around bowling and riding subways when they come home from “Ebola City.” As for whether or not a mandatory quarantine would stop doctors from volunteering, I think it might. True, these doctors are taking weeks and months out of their normal schedules to treat Ebola so they must have a lot of free time, but 21 days at home by yourself can be daunting. To a hero who wants to be saving people and using their doctoring skills, 21 days doing nothing has to be torturous. So yeah I think it would stop some doctors, but it won’t stop all of them. Doctors ironically are like Ebola in that they can’t be stopped.

Fling your questions to PizzaTesticles@yahoo.com