Complaining about inhumane or illegal treatment is not “whining”.
Also, apparently we consult different news sources because on more than one being cold was mentioned.
Aside from that - I’m sorry, sleeping in a paper gown in an unheated tent in a parking lot in New Jersy this time of year is cold. Unless you’ve live on the equator all your life and therefore have no experience with temperate climates you shouldn’t need that explained to you.
A judge has now officially ruled that Hickox does not need to be locked up or confined, which implies the original involuntary restraint in said tent was completely unnecessary.
But hey, keep trying to maintain that protesting the violation of human and civil rights is “whining”.
Going to court to maintain your right to NOT be locked up against your will is hardly “self-serving bullshit”. There is no medical or scientific reason for her to be confined in either her home OR a tent in a New Jersey parking lot. Thank Og the judge is capable of reason as so many other people seem unable to use it.
New Jersey’s “update” was based on fear and politics, not medicine and science, and therefore should be trashed for something more rational.
Yes, largely because of the shit-storm of hysteria induced by the media trying to sell fear and cornflakes.
By the way - everyone of those people is healthy and without Ebola. Gee, I guess the nurse wasn’t infectious after all.
And some of them are giving in to irrational fear and hysteria.
I believe that people showing no symptoms can be monitored, perhaps with a combination of self-monitoring and doctor-assisted monitoring. (For example, self monitor for two days, check in with a doctor each third day. This gets you some third-party verification that monitoring is being done, without putting a particularly large burden on anyone.) As they are not yet infectious (or even known to be infected) there is no reason to quarantine them.
Of course, once a person is known to be infected, then they need to be kept isolated until no longer infectious.
I think Hickox’s complaints come off as a little self-righteous and shrill to my ears. The state does have a fundamental right to protect public health and quarantines are a valid method… but we come back to my opening provision:* if medically reasonable*. The medical science doesn’t make it necessary to quarantine her if she can be properly monitored, and therefore I agree with her to the extent that she should not have been quarantined in that manner at that time.
The NJ update was again updated and Hickox was allowed to travel to Maine. This whole media-induced debacle is still a work in progress.
One Maine judge rules in favor of a quarantine and another Maine judge rules that the state can’t quarantine. :smack: I wonder if these judges were presented with the same evidence and arguments?
If the state’s version of events is to be believed then someone who 1)was in close contact with known Ebola patients and 2)who is within the incubation period of the disease and 3)who arrived from a region where Ebola is being transmitted and 4)who had a fever, was being quarantined.
Obviously nurse Hickox disputes point #4, but I believe the other points are not in dispute. Other health care workers in West Africa have been sickened and and may have acquired such infection outside the clinic setting.
It is well documented that there is substantial variation in temperature in Ebola patients. They do not always have an elevated fever that stays high.
A quarantine is holding a person for evaluation. If proven infectious then that person may be placed in isolation.
Holding a patient who does meet points #1-4 above until it can be ascertained whether the person has the disease is, IMHO, not unwarranted. In the case of Ebola other symptoms would soon be expected if a patient truly has a fever caused by the disease. But they do need to hold such person in reasonable conditions.
Those other three points do not justify involuntary quarantine. The “fever” Hickox had at the airport was detected with an instrument of limited liability (which is why she requested a re-test with a more reliable oral thermometer, which did not occur until after she was put into isolation) and did not reach the 100.4 F threshold recommended by the CDC and was entirely consistent with the “fever” that high emotion (such as being held involuntarily) can cause.
If she had actually been sick she would have had an ACTUAL temperature when retested with a reliable instrument and maintained a fever. Which she did not. Which means she was never sick and never should have been confined against her will.
The conditions under which she was kept in New Jersey were just salt in the wound.
Incorrect. She was put directly into isolation before any medical person could perform an actual evaluation. It was politically and fear motivated.
How does a state health official in charge of public health matters determine if a patient “maintained a fever” if there are not multiple readings over time? They could just send them on their way and ask them to call if they feel ill. But public health officials have to judge potential risk to the public in such circumstances.
And given that Ebola patients can have temperature swings between feverish and below normal, how would they know that the initial reading is faulty if not for multiple readings over time? Hickox stated that she intended not to comply with state officials. Why would the public health official then believe that she would comply with self-monitoring?
I’m surprised that all of the people who contracted it in Africa were brought back here, and not taken to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, or a similar facility in Antwerp.
I love it that the those who complain that the new Ebola Czar has no scientific/medical expertise turn around reject advice on quarantines from those who do have the expertise.
