The deadly politicization of Ebola.

• Position: Life in America

"The Ebola story gets stranger every day as Administration officials, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Pres. Barack Obama himself stretch logic and reason to the breaking point and beyond in an attempt to explain away their opposition to the basic epidemiological method of containment and quarantine," says nephrologist Richard Amerling, associate professor of clinical medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York.

"There is simply no dispute that Ebola needs to be contained in West Africa. This clearly means limiting travel from this region to the U.S. and requiring adequate quarantines when U.S. citizens return. Nigeria has done this and has successfully contained its outbreak. Australia became the first of the so-called developed nations to impose a travel ban.

"Instead," continues Amerling, "all the relevant U.S. officials are out reciting the party line of no travel bans or quarantines. Ron Klain, a political operative rather than a respected medical leader, is appointed 'Ebola Czar' in response to public uproar over the lackadaisical containment strategy of the Administration. This is politics, no matter how many times it is called 'the science.'

"When the President held a staged event with doctors and other volunteers returned from West Africa arranged behind him, he spoke as if some Americans might hold an animus towards these brave volunteers. When the governors of New York and New Jersey imposed their own quarantine requirements for returning medical workers, the White House and the CDC immediately censured them."

What is the political agenda here?, wonders Amerling. Holman Jenkins, writing in The Wall Street Journal, points out that Obama did not want to be attacked from his left as racist in not allowing Africans into the country just...