The latter. He’s not so infectious that he has to stay in quarantine, but he’s not so non-infectious that he can go wherever he wants at will.
My completely non-medical opinion is that a larger proportion of airborne disease infections will be transmitted by air exchange rather than kissing. I base this contention on the fact that people breathe more frequently than they kiss, and they exchange air with more partners than those with whom they exchange saliva.
Also, it appears that the volatilization of the bacteria in the lungs occurs during coughing. An infected person and his audience are far more likely to breathe following a coughing fit (I hope) than make out.
I am not saying that transmission via spit-swap is impossible, but I suspect that it doesn’t account for the majority of TB infections, smear positive OR negative.
The patient is still infectious because his lungs are still infected. He is smear negative, which means that he is not highly infectious, but he is infectious.
Thanks. Yours ain’t so bad yourself!
(almost afraid to ask)
Is smear negative a form of active TB then, or another name for latent TB? I am guessing it is still considered active TB, but maybe one the body has control of, for now? I was of the understanding that latent TB was not contagous at all.
17% is pretty low, but not what I would consider perfectly safe to be in an airplane with.
Speaker has active TB. His lungs are infected and he is capable of transmitting the disease.
His smear test was negative because there were not enough bacteria in his mucus to be identified under a microscope. My (again completely non-medical) guess is that he is in the early stages of active infection and his lungs haven’t kicked into full-gear production just yet. He’s making some bacteria to share, just not a lot.
You are correct that latent TB is not contagious.
The 17% cited by the CDC is a little confusing: it’s not the infectivity level of a person who tests smear negative. What the CDC means is that of 100 people infected with TB (recorded in medical literature), 17 were infected by a person with active TB who tested smear negative.
It’s probably much harder to assign an infectivity to an individual like Speaker. It would depend on how much bacteria he was producing and hacking up (which we know now is fairly low), how physically close he was to the other people and for how long, and the rate of air exchange in the location at which contact occurred. This is why the CDC is trying to notify the people who were close to him on the long (>8 hour) plane flights.
On the bright side, a reasonable incubation period may provide science with some additional data points on Speaker’s individual infectivity. Well, I hope not, actually.
Uh, I have to disagree with you there. What the heck is a “Capatalist”? :rolleyes:
Its a reference to a TV show.
They misspelled “capitalist” on News Radio?
I thought that was part of the whole mistranslation from Japanese bit. Maybe I totally misremembered that, but if Mr. Rolleyes wants to believe I don’t know how to correctly spell “capitalist”, then I’m not going to piss on his parade.
I just watched the show, and not only was Capitalist never misspelled, it was never spelled at all.
Not sure what I’m thinking about.
That’s a perilous observation to make around here, bud! 
The Department of Homeland security says that he was put on a “no-fly” list two hours before his plane landed in Montreal. So when he boarded the plane hours earlier, he was not on a “no-fly” list.
Just a question: then why did he fly to Canada first? Especially since he professed aim was to end up in Denver. I mean, were there no planes flying into the United States that day?
Not sure, may be he thought he was on a do not fly list. Or maybe he was worried about flying direct from Italy to the U.S. because he was afraid authorities would stop him and he’d be stuck in Italy (where he assumed he would die since it appears he thought that unless he got to Denver, he was dead.)
I sort of agree with the line of reasoning that, no, I don’t think he thought he was “immediate danger” I think he was afraid of “missing his window” and being quarantined in Italy, so he went to the Czech Republic and booked a flight to Montreal.
I do genuinely believe the DHS when they say he wasn’t on a no-fly list when he boarded the plane in the Czech Republic, because why would they admit something like that if it wasn’t true?
I think Speaker acted in a stupid manner but I also think it’s very likely he was not properly informed what his situation was by health officials.
The guy did not go to Europe knowing he had XDR-TB. He went to Europe thinking he had regular tuberculosis and that he wasn’t really infectious. Should he have avoided air travel even with regular tuberculosis? I believe so, but I believe that it’s entirely possible to misunderstand what health officials tell you if they’re telling you that you’re not highly contagious or if they’re telling you on a taped conversation that this is mere “ass-covering.”
Basically I think Speaker is a normal person, who probably thought he had a fairly nasty, but highly treatable disease (as normal TB is), and that it was not contagious enough to worry about.
I view him about the same as I view someone who drives after having a few beers, someone who may not even be “over” the legal limit, but who is very close to it. It’s bad behavior, it’s not really smart, it’s wrong, but at the same time I can understand how he rationalized that he wasn’t really much of a danger to anyone.
It seems to me Zabali_Clawbane is really looking for reasons to call this guy an asshat, I’m not sure what his personal vindictiveness is about towards this guy.
Again, just an observation, but it might mean Speaker and the CDC knew they had requested he be put on the no-fly list, but the DHS time reference may be to when someone actually got around to adding his name.
Of all the people in this topic who have expressed their outrage at Speaker’s actions, you pick me. (Not the OP, not anyone else, me.) And, you don’t even get my gender correct. There is a reason (though little good it did) I have my location field reading “Female in Kansas”.
Just wanted to combine my two previous posts to say:
I don’t think DHS is lying. The time they say Speaker was added to the no-fly could very well be accurate. But . . .
If Speaker truly did not know he could not fly into the United States and, if he wasn’t on the list until after he took off, the airline did not know. He didn’t look sick (see border guards statement, after he landed in Canada), so why would he be stopped by anyone at all?
Even he was stopped by Customs and detained after landing, whatever arrangements he said he asked for while he was still in Europe to get to Denver could still have been made.
So we’re back to the question (at least I am), if he didn’t know and really wasn’t added to the list until after he actually took off, why did he think there would be problem?
I think the CDC told him that they would be requesting he be put on the list while he was still in Italy, he decided to evade them and fly to Canada, and his name didn’t actually appear on the list until the time DHS said it did – after he took off.
Well, I don’t think it’s out of line to call Speaker an asshat. It’s not my term of choice, but it seems to suit him pretty well.
Here’s how I understand it:
Speaker met with the Fulton County Department of Health on May 10 before traveling to Europe and before he or they knew that he had XDR TB. His father taped the conversation but did not notify the participants. Speaker claims he was told that he was “not a risk.” Fulton County Officials counter that they told him he was putting other people at risk.
Speaker left the country on May 12, two days earlier than his scheduled departure date.
On May 24 the CDC reached Speaker in Rome, informed him of his XDR TB, and told him not to fly on any commercial aircraft.
The same day Speaker left his hotel and flew commercially to Prague, then Montreal.
Cite (javascript pop-up)
Speaker says that he feared that if he didn’t get to Denver he would die. He said that before he had left on his trip it was made clear to him that his only treatment option was in Denver.
Let me sum up. Speaker knew that he was traveling against the advice of the Fulton County Department of Health and knew there was a possibility that he would require treatment in Denver. He had his Dad record the pre-travel conversation with the Board but neglected to notify the other participants. (I find this suggestive.) Following the conversation, he hopped town two days early and put an ocean between himself and Denver. When notified that he had a particularly dangerous form of the disease and that he should ABSOLUTELY NOT board a commercial airliner he. . .immediately boarded a commercial airliner. Then hopped a much longer flight to Montreal. His excuse: “I needed to get to Denver.”
Of the many conflicting versions of the story we’ve heard, there is no version in which Speaker behaved admirably. If we take him at his word that he naively believed the white-coated men when they (allegedly) told him that he wasn’t contagious, then why did he not also naively believe them when they told him ‘Stay in Rome and whatever you do, don’t get on a commercial airliner’? He’s either ignorant and yet inconsistent OR he is cowardly and disingenuous OR he is malicious and evil. And either way, he’s very, very whiney.
Has he earned a statue between Pol Pot and Josef Stalin in the Museum of the Demented and Unquestionably Evil? Probably not. I vote for a commemorative gorse bush in the Museum’s Tangential Butterfly Garden, between Ted Kennedy and Paris Hilton. If it turns out he’s infected a couple of innocent bystanders, I’ll throw in an inscribed plaque.
I think you’re right. From this article,
Umm, here’s a direct quote from one of your cites:
Talk about suggestive!! And here’s so more from your cite:
Seems to me that the confidentiality argument is a complete sham. Because Speaker has clearly waived any confidentiality rights in that meeting by publicly challenging Fulton County to answer his question. Anyway, if the meeting was so confidential, why are county officials publicly stating that Speaker was advised not to travel? Gimme a break.
Looks to me like the Fulton County officials are full of shit and know it.
Speaker is a lawyer, he knows very well when the term “advise” is used in instances like this, it is a more subtle way of saying “don’t do it”.