Obama assails Ebola quarantines

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Tuesday forcefully rejected the idea of a quarantine for medical workers returning from Ebola-affected countries, arguing that such an approach would undermine the broader effort to eliminate the epidemic altogether.

Politicians in the United States, including the president, have come under increasing pressure to curtail the movements of medical personnel returning from Ebola-affected regions after Craig Spencer - a doctor who had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea - was diagnosed with the virus 10 days after he returned home to New York City.

While the president did not directly criticize New Jersey Gov. Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for imposing mandatory quarantines on health workers coming back from West Africa, he made clear that he thought those moves were a bad idea and were not based on the best medical information.

"We don't just react based on our fears. We react based on facts and judgment and making smart decisions," Obama said, after placing a call to members of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), which has been in West Africa since the first week of August.

The notably assertive presidential response came as the country enters the final campaign stretch before next week's midterm elections. While the president has sometimes refrained from taking on his critics, he took the unusual step of addressing the Ebola issue with reporters just before departing for a campaign event in Wisconsin.

Calling the DART team "the strategic and operational backbone of America's response" in the region, Obama said the effort was starting to have an impact, especially in Liberia.

"So we don't want to discourage our health-care workers from going to the front lines and dealing with this in an effective way," he said. "The point is this disease can be contained. It will be defeated."

On Wednesday, Obama will convene a meeting at the White House with doctors and public health workers who have either returned from treating Ebola patients in Africa or are on their way there. Obama said he convened the session not only to thank them "but to make sure that we're getting input from them, based on the science, based on the facts, based on experience, about how the battle to deal with Ebola is going and how our policies can support the incredible heroism that they are showing."

Obama's comments came as the second Dallas nurse infected with Ebola has been cured and appeared at a triumphant news conference Tuesday to mark her release from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

"I'm so grateful to be well. First and foremost, I want to thank God," said Amber Joy Vinson, 29, who became infected with the virus at a Dallas hospital while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died of Ebola on Oct. 8.