Obama Seeks To Calm Ebola Panic: We Will Defeat It ‘Based On The Science’

President Barack Obama on Tuesday told Americans that the United States will defeat the Ebola virus and prevent an outbreak at home by acting “based on the science, based on the facts, based on the experience.”

“This disease can be contained. It will be defeated,” the president said in brief remarks at the White House, before a scheduled trip to Milwaukee.

He warned: “We don’t want to do things that aren’t based on science and best practices” or “we are actually endangering ourselves here at home.”

The comments came as politicians, mostly Republicans, push for policies such as a travel ban to the U.S. for citizens of the most affected African nations and mandatory home quarantine of people returning from the region.

These ideas contradict the recommendations of public health specialists, who say they would discourage health workers from traveling to the Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa to treat patients and help stop the virus there.

Obama repeatedly alluded to that tension.

“We’re going to have to stay vigilant here at home until we stop the epidemic at its source,” the president said. “We don’t want to discourage our health care workers from going to the front lines. … They are doing God’s work over there. And they’re doing that to keep us safe.”

Recently New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) ordered mandatory quarantine of workers coming back from the area, and have since faced White House pressure to dial it back.

“It’s important for the American people to remember that only two people so far have contracted Ebola on American soil,” he said, alluding to recently-cured nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, the latter of whom he said he spoke to by phone.