While boarding an international flight, I’ve often eyed others wondering what type of infectious diseases they carried that could be passed on to me in the space of an 8-hour flight complete with recycled air. Paranoid? Absolutely. But you know the kind I’m talking about–the guy across the aisle hacking up a lung; the woman sneezing into her hand and touching everything; or the weird one who walks around the plane in his socks after four hours of flight like it’s his personal charter plane. (Dude, put  your shoes back on. That’s nasty.) Anyway, I say that to confess that I am the first person who thinks that people with anything contagious should not fly internationally–TB, lice, whooping cough, pink eye = don’t get on the plane. To rephrase, don’t get into a confined space with hundreds of others for hours at a time if what you have is able to contracted via air particles. But stopping flights isn’t going to help contain the situation.

Here’s my logic on why not to stop flights from West Africa into the US.

1) If one does it, everyone should do it. I applaud the Caribbean for stopping flights from those places. However, how is that going to stop John Bob from Liberia from coming into our country? Maybe on a direct flight it would. But Africa is pretty far away and there’s a good chance lots of passengers have to connect to get from Africa to America. Therefore, even though we stopped direct flights, we could still receive those same people from…oh, say… any other country in the world. If anything, stop direct flights into those countries until they contain it or we help it get contained.

2) The economy. Yeah, yeah I hear you. “Forget the economy if we all die.” You have a small point; however, if we don’t all die, we still need business travel and tourism.

3) More work for our military. So we stop flights and all the Americans that are over there get stuck over there until the military goes to get them. Their fault for going over there, you say? Not necessarily. Mission trips, business men, hunters, and vacationers would all be trapped with no way out. Talk about spreading panic. People forced to stay in a country against their will would cause nationwide panic for all their relatives or businesses or even children. Envision “last helicopter out of Vietnam” type panic.

4)  Testing is a better idea. As much of a nightmare as it would be, let’s test everyone coming in from those countries. I’m not talking about isolation periods. I’m saying run a test. Here’s a thought: run a test before people even get on the plane. People are just sitting there waiting for their plane at the gate anyway. Want to make it on the flight? Get there in time to test negative for anything contagious.

The topic is so controversial that I can foresee so many arguments, harsh words, and name-calling fights spilling over into the comment section from other vocal social media sites. So feel free to comment, but please do so respectfully or your comment will not be approved.