When public health leaders and government officials make the case against isolating more people returning from the Ebola hot zones in West Africa, or against imposing more travel restrictions from that region, time and again they cite science and experts. It isn’t working very well.

Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor quarantine in cases like that of Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was held against her will in a Newark hospital on the orders of one governor and has fended off the efforts of another governor to sharply restrict her movements. Some prominent conservative commentators dismiss the assurances of scientists, Obama administration officials and the news media as unreliable, elitist blather.

Sean Hannity said on his radio show, “I’m not covering what the Centers for Disease Control says — I don’t trust them.” On his show, Rush Limbaugh talked sarcastically about “how we just have to trust the scientists of the world.”

When a doctor in New York was found to have Ebola, Michelle Malkin said on Twitter, “Now we get to watch smug NYC journos who were lecturing everyone else not to freak out about Ebola ... freak out about Ebola.” And when Democrats said Republican budget cuts were to blame for the lack of Ebola preparedness, the blogger Eric Erickson dismissed the way health research dollars are spent.