Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Sunday cast doubt on concerns that undocumented immigrants will cross the southern border into the United States with Ebola or that terrorists will use the disease as a weapon.
Lawmakers, candidates and pundits have expressed concern that the disease will enter the U.S. either from immigrants or due to terrorism, prompting “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace to ask Fauci about potential threats.
“What are the chances that illegal immigrants are going to come over our porous southern border with Ebola or that terrorists will purposely send someone here using Ebola as a bioterror weapon?” Wallace asked.
Fauci said that both scenarios were incredibly unlikely.
“I wouldn’t be worrying about illegal immigrants coming from southern borders when we have an issue right now with Ebola in West Africa. That’s a hypothetical that’s very far-fetched,” he told Wallace.
“As far as terrorism, nature right now Chris, is the worst bioterrorist. I’m worried more about the natural evolution in West Africa than I am about a terrorist,” Fauci continued.
Wallace then concedes that Ebola would not be the best weapon.
“I also suppose if you’re going to do a bioterror weapon, Ebola isn’t the most effective one,” he said.
“If I were a bioterrorist, that would not be my choice,” Fauci responded. “It would be inefficient. Nature does it much worse than a bioterrorist.”
If you’ve never had a right wing family member who forwards you ridiculous right wing emails, you may not know that right wingers obsess over hypothetical bioterrorism scenarios. For a while they were convinced that the gays were leaving HIV-infected needles in places where innocent people might reach without looking, such as the handle on a gas pump nozzle. (I’m not exactly sure how that would even work, but that’s beside the point.)
So it’s no surprise at all to see them flipping out about Ebola. Notice too that Wallace’s question refers to a porous southern border. It doesn’t matter what the response to the question is. The goal was to associate Mexicans with disease, as they do at Fox on a daily basis. Mission accomplished on that front.
Just so typical for Fox News to employ fear tactics for ratings and political purposes. Disgusting as usual for them.
One wonders if Mr. Fauci felt he needed a hazmat shower after leaving the building.
Not only that but the natural pre-existing ignorance and knuckledragging dumbassness of Republicans and conservatives in general.
Josh is dealing with some real doozies on his twitter feed the past 24hr. Highly entertaining. Luckily the Drudge/Fox morons will be having very little effect on the outcome in this case.
Why? Because we have real leadership and competence at the top, unlike the Reagan years when dumbfucks like Ronald Reagan failed to take immediate action and allowed HIV infection to spread rampantly for the first 10 years of the epidemic, and the Bush years when NONE of his administration was capable of dealing with any kind of emergency.
It seems they’re constantly trying to hammer together Rube Goldbergian scenarios you could collectively title “Liberals Will Literally Get You Killed!!!” If we were still talking here in the East about rabid raccoons, like we were 20 years ago, they’d throw that in the mix somehow I’m sure. It makes you wish common sense were more, you know, common.
ETA: New Fox Headline: “Top Disease Doc: Liberals Demand Protection for ‘Worst Bioterrorist’”