Republicans, Democrats — stop playing political games over my wife’s safety

By Eric Mandel

During my wife’s first trip to West Africa to assist in containing the Ebola epidemic, she used the same chair as a then-healthy doctor who died days later. The doctor also handed her a sheet of paper.

Her exposure was categorized as extremely low risk. I’d proposed two days before she left the US and knew there’d be some elements of peril in this particular undertaking. But when she told me the situation, all I wanted to do was cry — to yell at anyone who’d allowed my best friend, the most important person in my life, to be in such a precarious situation. Any risk whatsoever was too much.

This was early August 2014 — before Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with disease in Dallas or the Maine nurse filed a lawsuit after claiming she was illegally quarantined in New Jersey. Before the political outcry and devastation that the politicians threatened was heading swiftly toward the US.

My wife finished her three weeks abroad and came home. Thankfully, there was no fever, no vomiting. No muscle pains. Never even an alarm, as the 21-days of self-imposed pseudo-quarantine passed quietly and without incident. When she returned to West Africa three months later, everything had changed. And even to us, the policies seemed melodramatic. By sheer political will, the government was attempting to inconvenience the country’s hundreds of selfless doctors, nurses and medical personnel from returning to the continent if it meant a shred of danger to the homeland.

My wife returned for her third, and, hopefully, final time to the recovering continent last month. The epidemic has sufficiently tapered out in most of the effected countries, meaning she had been worrying more about bedbugs and the lack of hot water than the deadly virus. That is, until three new cases of the virus were found in Liberia, which was nearly four-months free of the outbreak. And the hostage crisis and massacre in nearby Mali.

So once again, my stomach is stricken with a terrible hollowness.

But, just as before, the American government is more worried about me, and earning my vote with finger-pointing and fear-tactics, than calling for resources or assistance to increase my wife’s safety.

Although the Ebola political panic passed back with the 2014 midterm’s, it’s returned with a slightly altered talking points just in time for the 2016 presidential Primaries.

Paul Ryan on Fox News, Oct. 20, 2014:

“I think we should use every reasonable precaution possible to get ahead of Ebola and I think that does include looking at things like travel restrictions, necessary quarantines so we use every possible precaution we can think of to make sure that we can contain the spread of this. Right now there’s a huge lack of confidence in the competence of our government and I think that’s in large part because of the president’s failed policies.”

Paul Ryan on “Hannity,” Nov. 19, 2015:

“I think (Obama) is playing politics, it is remarkably unpresidential. I don’t for the life of me understand this. He just said he was going to veto our bill putting pause to the refugee program, I can’t imagine why he would do that…We know ISIS wants to infiltrate the refugee program, that is clear, so we need to put a pause on this program, and have higher standard placed upon it, so we can verify on a person-by-person basis, every single refugee… If we can’t prove that, they can’t enter.”

Barack Obama, Oct. 18, 2014:

“What we’re seeing now is not an ‘outbreak’ or an ‘epidemic’ of Ebola in America. This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear.”

Barack Obama Nov. 17, 2015:

“We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic. We don’t make good decisions if it’s based on hysteria or an exaggeration of risks… I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for Isil [Isis] than some of the rhetoric that’s been coming out of here during the course of this debate.”

Why must this always be some damn political game of chicken? In both cases people’s lives really and truly are at stake. Not only my wife, but thousands of other Americans working and volunteering oversees. Meanwhile, I sit with the rest of our eager-for-a-controversy country pretending to be the victim of a problem we don’t have.

I can’t speak to whether there are “gaps” in America’s refugee program, as some officials have said, and maybe a “pause” is warranted. Then again, some element of risk always part of the process when it comes to doing the right thing, and anyone who says otherwise is positioning for political-points. It’s a debate worth having, but the Right vs. Left chess match must stop, because I also know there are Syrians who can’t hold out for a stalemate.

My wife and I saw a stream of just a small percentage of refugees this summer on our honeymoon in Turkey. Walking through Istanbul’s Taksim Square, we watched a young Syrian mother curled beside her children in the center of the trembling streets; a girl no more than 5 or 6 laying face down, hands in a prayer position — a clear plastic bowl beside her with a few scattered coins inside. Another mother sat next to her hopefully sleeping child swathed by a blanket on the chaotic streets in a way that made it hard to know for sure if he or she was dead or alive.

Maybe these refugees were all faking it. Maybe they were terrorists in disguise. I certainly can’t say for sure. And, through my fears and longing to again yell at whoever it was that put these people in such a precarious situation, I did nothing to help. Absolutely nothing. I wish I’d done at least something; at most a lot more. I feel like I failed as an American, like I failed my wife, as she still now continues to put herself in a precarious situation to assist others. And I hope the people of this country will realize that we fail, too, if we continue these fruitless political fights. Even if the regret doesn’t show its face until after the latest ballots are cast.

* My wife’s name has been purposefully omitted for her safety. Dates will remain vague for that same reason.