Wrong again. His doctor was directly quoted in the press this morning. I’ve posted the quote twice in this thread.
He’s known since January he had some form of TB. How do you know that isn’t enough time for him to become infectious? 
:dubious:
So you disagree that the risk was minimal?
Given the fact that 70% of the people who contract the illness DIE from it? Yes!
ETA: The fact that the chance of a person getting it isn’t large doesn’t play into it. It is still a type of Russian Roulette, and therefore the risk is too great.
Maybe you don’t believe his doctor “said anything of the kind” but: 1) He says he has a tape of a conversation where they said he’s not a risk (it would be pretty easy to refute this if he can’t produce the tape), and 2) since he was diagnosed with XDR-TB, his doctors are saying that he has extremely low communicability.
Just because XDR-TB is more difficult to treat than regular TB, doesn’t mean it’s any more communicable than regular TB.
Quotes from his doctors (any emphasis added by me):
Low communicability does not mean NONE!
What do you propose to do with him, Zabali?
He is not going anywhere. He cannot infect anyone, or anyone else, if that is the case.
And we don’t have an “anyone,” yet.
By that reasoning, HIV+ people should be forbidden from working in food preparation. Because there is a small chance that their blood could get on somebody’s food, and get into somebody’s bloodstream via a cut in the person’s mouth.
Also, nobody should be allowed to fly a plane. Because there is a small chance that the plane will crash into somebody standing on the ground, which will result in near certain death for the person on the ground.
:rolleyes:
Of course not. But at what point do doctors decide that low communicability is low enough not to get too overly worried about it? TB has low communicability compared to other diseases. And in this case the patient has low communicability even for TB. He was advised that restrictions on travel were just “ass covering” measures and that he shouldn’t be at all concerned about his family catching it from him - even though they’re in close regular contact with him. I think he should have been more careful, but he was working with the information he had and he made a bad choice.
I note that I read several articles that said even if they could track down every passenger on the planes he was on, they’d only bother testing the ones were sitting directly adjacent to him. Even then, there’s only a very small chance they were infected.
I’m not saying every TB patient should be blase about their condition. Precautions should be taken, and this guy was a dumbass to do what he did. But over-the-top reactions like “he’s the biggest asshole ever!!!” don’t help anything.
People should be aware about the risks of air travel as a vector for disease, so when a more communicable epidemic comes along, we won’t have many, many people doing what this guy did. He’s lucky because although he travelled against advice, the risks were very small. Maybe when (not if) an easily-transmissible super-flu pandemic comes along, people will remember this story and take it to heart. I work for a local medical regulatory agency, and believe me they’re taking influenza pandemic planning very seriously.
I was told by the state health department that they would pursue me legally if I went out. YMMV. They may have been lying, but you know what? Except when I have evidence to direct me to the contrary, I follow my doctors’ advice, particularly when they assert that not doing so endangers other people.
That’s right. I, also, did what I was told. But not everybody is like that. I think if I ignored a doctor’s orders I wouldn’t be in any legal jeopardy until I ignored a judge.
Ok I haven’t read through all 7 pages of this post, but I just wanted to chime in that my husband is a lawyer that graduated from one of the best law schools in the U.S. Apparently doing personal injury law is the lowest rung on the “lawyer career scale” and usually reserved for people who went to Clown College Law School and couldn’t get a job anywhere else.
So yeah, just cause he is a lawyer doesn’t automatically mean he is responsible and smart…
Ok same disclaimer in my earlier post… I haven’t read all 8 pages yet so forgive me if this has been asked and answered.
Why do you do this? Do you save every recording then? You must have a whole room dedicated to all your recorded conversations…
My bold. And kudos to CLT
To the anger addicts:
and also 
Hope you enjoyed your adrenaline rush and that erotic surge of righteous indignation. :rolleyes:
I do it in case there’s a dispute later on about what was said. And I’m using the word “tape” in the same way that people use the word “dial” when they dial a phone number. There’s no actual tape or dial involved. I use a digital voice recorder so all the recordings can be easily uploaded to my hard drive and then saved or retrieved.
Computer memory has gotten very inexpensive.
I hope you stay around. You don’t have to become obsessive about posting like…uh…that guy over there but regular appearances are cheaper than hookers, blow and a car full of clowns.
Not true. UGA Law is most certainly not “clown college”, and PI is not reserved for people who could not get a job elsewhere. Ask your husband to explain Ad Hominem to you.
Hey, I appreciate that.
Thanks, Shirley.
I’d say you have convincingly proven to everyone that TB Guy is not, in fact, the biggest asshole ever.
The question remains, if he was so non-contagious, and such a low risk, why did the CDC take the drastic step of putting him on a no-fly list? No one has managed to answer that.
All the assurances from doctors that we see in the media are designed to make people feel better, now that the deed is done, imho.