The White House is ever-so-slightly pushing back against the mandatory 21-day quarantines that three governors have imposed on healthcare workers returning from heroic volunteering with groups fighting the West African Ebola Epidemic.  It comes as a nurse unfairly detained by New Jersey’s conservative governor plans to sue her way out.

“The policy is overly broad when applied to her,” said prominent civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who has been retained by Kaci Hickox.  She has not shown any symptoms of Ebola since returning from West Africa through Newark’s Liberty Airport last week, and two tests for the virus have come back negative.

But despite those facts and under the orders of Governor Chris Christie, a Republican with presidential ambitions, Hickox has been forced into a tent on the grounds outside a hospital.  There is no shower or bathing facilities.  There is a portable toilet in the tent with her.  For the first day, no meals were provided, and she was given a protein bar from a vending machine when she complained.

Hickox said her conditions were “inhumane,” adding, “We have to be very careful about letting politicians make health decisions.”

Chris Christie is counting on riding the uninformed rabble who’ve licked up the American corporate media’s spillage (much of the worst nonsense appearing on Murdoch’s Fox News) predicting an Ebola apocalypse – never mind that two weeks ago, the same garbage mouths were predicting everyone would be killed by Islamic State.  Christie predicted other states would adopt his unscientific policy.

“I don’t believe when you’re dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system,” said Christie, who is expected to run for the Republican nomination for president in 2016.  “I absolutely have no second thoughts about it.”

But the medical professionals and scientists who actually do fight Ebola say this is a crap policy.

“The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers, so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Not all public servants are behind mandatory detention for healthcare workers.

“This hero, coming back from the front having done the right thing, was treated with disrespect,” said New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio of Kaci Hickox.  “We owe her better than that.”

The Obama administration is working behind the scenes to get the governors of New Jersey, New York State, and Illinois to rescind the mandatory quarantine. 

“We have let the governors of New York, New Jersey, and other states know that we have concerns with the unintended consequences of policies not grounded in science may have on efforts to combat Ebola at its source in West Africa,” said a senior White House official.  “We have also let these states know that we are working on new guidelines for returning health care workers that will protect the American people against imported cases, while, at the same time, enabling us to continue to tackle this epidemic in West Africa.”

Late Sunday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo relented a bit under pressure from the White House an fellow Democrats, saying that people quarantined in New York who do not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.