Statistician Nate Silver, formerly of NYT and now associated with ESPN, writes the FiveThirtyEight blog and likes data-based answers to questions. For that matter, so do I. Here he attempts to support the idea of not banning flights from Africa.
Silver's main point is that there are few direct flights from Western Africa and many to Western Europe. Thus it is likely that anyone wanting to fly here will change planes in Paris, London, Frankfurt or somewhere similar.
Flights from West Africa aren't the main issue, people from its countries are. It would dramatically reduce our exposure to ban entry to persons carrying passports from any country in Africa with reported Ebola cases. It wouldn't hurt to start examining passports of others, including flight crews, seeking U.S. entry to see if they've recently been in the affected area.
I've seen articles which allege that at least 100 persons a week are coming to the U.S. from countries where Ebola is active. Simply put, such individuals shouldn't be admitted until Ebola is under control.
