Joe Scarborough: Asking Questions About Ebola Is Not Stirring Panic

Questioning medical authorities about Ebola amid conflicting and changing information about the disease is not an effort to stir panic, talk show host Joe Scarborough told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"It seems to me . . . as this is spread, any time anybody has raised any questions, daring to question medical authorities, that somehow that equals stirring panic. It doesn't equal stirring panic," Scarborough said Wednesday.

Scarborough said he questioned weeks ago whether the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was "doing everything they could do" to halt the spread of Ebola. In addition, he said the World Health Organization stated six months ago that fears about the disease were "much ado about nothing," while they were now predicting "10,000 new cases a week by December if this isn't contained."

Scarborough, a former Republican Florida congressman, said people would "have to be able to ask tough questions," and that "sometimes fear is the appropriate response" when Americans were threatened.

"Now the Dallas hospital had admitted they screwed up. The CDC has admitted they screwed up. The World Health Organization has admitted they screwed up.

"We can no longer just sit back and smile and say, 'You know what? Let's just trust the authorities.' I never heard so many liberals saying, 'Hey, let's just trust authorities and not ask tough questions.' We need to ask tough questions," he said.

Scarborough said calls to restrict air travel to the United States from countries most affected by the disease did not imply Americans were xenophobic.

"Sixty-seven percent of Americans have a reason to ask why we haven't had tougher travel restrictions from the start from these countries, as if you are somehow xenophobic if you decide to do the same thing on a larger scale to protect Americans," he said.

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