I think the little pissant should have to pay the CDC’s expenses for tracking down all the people he possibly exposed to TB.
I read it as 3 out of 10 live, 7 out of 10 die.
Fucker should be sterilized. They do that with a flame, don’t they?
From the Mayo Clinic by way of cnn.com
Good news for the folks on the planes; bad news for the new bride.
Hmm. Make him call off the honeymoon, and piss off my daughter, or let him go on the honeymoon and have him expose hundreds of people (including that self-same daughter) to a deadly virus.
Jeez, that is a tough choice, isn’t it?
Source: ABC News
I’m now undecided if No 2 is this guy or the FIL.
That very thought crossed my Evil Mind™.
If you had a hunchback, Count Blucher, I’d make you my Minion.
Have you a hunchback?
With luck, they will merely bring back sanitariums… IMO, they ought to.
His behavior begs the question: will he be compliant with the med regime? IOW, will he take his pills? He is “healthy” at the moment, and not showing symptoms (this TB showed up during an chest Xray for something else). The risk is there, but not as big as if he were actively coughing (by no means do I defend this guy), but what happens next?
Arrest? Tar and feathering? Do we have laws nowadays that cover this sort of thing? Typhoid Mary refused to believe she was sick or infectious and resented the interference in her life. Apparently so does this guy.
What I find nasty is his underhanded way of getting home. (it’s my understanding that he only found out about the EXD strain while in Italy). Sure, he has to get home, but he did it so sneakily.
I am not feeling much sympathy for the wife, either. She married a jerk–I doubt this is news to her.
Gosh, Wootenite, I don’t think there’s anything in my post that would lead you to believe I think it’s easy to force people to do anything.
But I do think we will see it get easier in the future, and we will have this guy to thank – that was my point.
And he didn’t give the CDC the slip; they knew his plans and did not feel they had adequate legal grounds under the PHSA to quarantine him until the drug-resistant nature of his TB strain was confirmed, which occurred after he left U.S. jurisdiction. You’re not the only one who listens to NPR, you know.
I just found out that this is a guy who lives in my Townhouse complex, about 100 feet away. News trucks have recently started to arrive, though I imagine they leave & come back when he comes home from Denver.
I’m really glad that I don’t know the guy very well right about now.
He ain’t gonna “be home from Denver” fpr quite some time, I do fear.
Tell us more.
Go chat em up.
RAUS!
He is the first person quarantined under the federal authority of the Public Health Service Act since about 1963 (can’t find the cite right now, but I think it was like '63). He was escorted to the hospital by U.S. Marshals and he will remain there until the quarantine order is lifted. To be fair, I don’t think there’s any reason he would not be compliant with treatment.
For XDR-TB (extremely or extensively drug resistant), 3 out of 10 cases result in a cure. If he cannot be cured, he may well be quarantined for the rest of his life as a public health hazard. There’s a guy in the Maricopa Jail in Arizona who has been under state quarantine for XDR-TB for almost a year now, and AFAICT they have zero intention of letting him out until he is cured or dies.
He ain’t coming home from Denver anytime soon.
Curse your speedy fingers.
I’m sure I’ll find out more in the next few days, but I doubt it will be anything on the inside track. The general consensus is that he is a very nice guy, but I really don’t know him.
Half of me is thinking “what an enormous dumb-fuck”, and the other part of me is thinking this guy panicked and headed for what he thought to be the best treatment in the world when he found out how serious it was.
I’d like to think I’d have never flown to Europe in the first place, but who knows what compels people to do the things they do. I imagine he kept hearing the fact that he was “not very contagious” and…
Oh, fuck it. I don’t know what he was thinking.
This makes his behaviour (not to mention the actions of his FIL and wife) all the more horrifying to me. To know that you are carrying around a strain that would condemn someone to lifelong quarantine and to then take SEVEN flights. How monstrously selfish do you have to be?
To be fair, he only knew he had that strain prior to a couple flights.
I am interested in hearing how he contracted this disease, if it is that hard to catch.
However, there have been a few recent cases where TB patients were locked up:
TB patient jailed after not following doctor’s orders (May 2, 2007)
Please don’t slam me, but I feel sorry for the guy. I don’t know what I would do if I found out that I had a rare, probably fatal, contagious disease. I especially don’t know what I would do if this revelation occurred when I was getting married, with international honeymoon plans.
Yeah, it’s mighty selfish of him to get on plane knowing that he’s a contagion, but maybe he was in denial. I think a decent person would have to be, to do what he did. I’m betting he thought to himself, “Hey, I look and feel fine. As long as I don’t cough (or I cough in my hankerchief), everything will be alright.” Or maybe the sane part of his brain kept waiting to get stopped by the authorities so that the responsibility would be out of his hands, and when authority didn’t step in, he figured it was alright to keep traveling.
I don’t know. I’m not trying to excuse him, but it’s hard for me not to be a little compassionate.
I put more blame on the folks that could have stopped him but didn’t. It’s their job to make the tough decisions and they didn’t. What’s the point of having a No Fly list if people can be passed through based on outward appearance? What kind of dumbasses do we have guarding the gates?