This clip confirms the extent to which condescension on the left has replaced efforts to convince those skeptical of the medical community’s assessment of Ebola’s communicability of their error.

In an appearance on CNN on Thursday, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) sought to assure the viewing audience that everyone (including, presumably, the Democratic governors of California, New Hampshire, and New York) is overreacting to the threat of Ebola.

When probed by anchor Carol Costello as to why the president’s freshly appointed “Ebola Czar,” Ron Klain, has not come out publicly and assured the nation that there is no medical need to impose a quarantine on health care workers returning from Africa, Cohen embodied the uncritical deference to the White House characteristic of those scoffing at quarantine proponents when he insisted that he was “sure there’s a good reason” for Klain’s silence.

Cohen proceeded to go off on an ill-advised rant and equated the 80 percent who support isolating those returning from Ebola-affected regions of Africa to those denying the existence of climate change. But for someone as assured of his own in his own deliberative abilities as Cohen appears to be, he certainly did not convince his audience of this supposed aptitude when he compared the quarantining of Kaci Hickox to the Terri Schiavo case.

“I think this is strictly driven by politics, and I think we’ll look upon it one day like Terri Schiavo,” the Democratic congressman insisted.

Where to begin?

Townhall’s Christine Rousselle may have countered Cohen’s assertion most succinctly…

@NoahCRothman yeah except Kaci Hickox isn't being starved to death against her will so her boyfriend can avoid a divorce suit so…

— X-Tine Boooo-sselle (@crousselle) October 30, 2014

…but her point deserves some elaboration.

The belief that the Schiavo case was, as Cohen suggests, all about politics is perverse. Those who believe that it was wrong for the state of Florida to approve Schiavo’s husband’s request that this woman, who was impaired and unable to breathe or eat on her own but was also responsive to stimuli, should have been taken off a feeding tube and allowed to die did not hold that position because of their politics. To reduce their belief in the immorality of her death at the hands of the state to mere partisanship is offensive on a variety of levels.

Secondly, Cohen’s suggestion that Hickox is a victim of demagogical politicians ignores how much Hickox herself has sought the spotlight. It is this nurse who is seeking to make a national scandal of her circumstances. It is Hickox who threatened to sue the state of New Jersey over her quarantining, and it is Hickox who defied a voluntary request by Maine officials to remain in isolation in her home. It is Hickox who has decided that she is a martyr and, unlike the other health care workers who were subject to internment and shouldered that burden stoically in observance of public concerns, has opted to make a spectacle of herself.

You can be sympathetic to Hickox’s plight and still believe the course she has taken is a selfish one. You can disagree with those who believed Terri Schiavo’s rights as a human being were violated by the state and also not denigrate their concerns as purely political. Cohen, apparently, can do neither.

How childish.