I hadn’t heard the bit about the quarantine. Some life, eh? Does he get conjugal visits from his new wife? How does he make a living?
I don’t have any sympathy for the guy and what he did, but I think none of us would look forward to a year in quarantine. Given that status, I am sure he will be compliant.
ETA:** monstro**–you have a point. We would all like to say that we would not do such and such, but until we are faced with X, how do we know for sure?
Didn’t the New Yorker or some mag do a piece on the other guy who is in quaratine? It’s ringing a dim bell over here. Ah-thanks, Squink!
So, what good are Do Not Fly lists, anyway? Makes you wonder.
What most pisses me is that he went to Italy, one of the world’s biggest airport crossroads. That exposes people from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and other points all over the world where there is no such thing as decent affordable healthcare to a fatal disease. I hope he rots in hell next to the flight-attendant who so expediated the global spread of AIDS (and continued to do so after he knew he was infected).
Damn, Jodi, I like your pitting but that’s jumping of the bridge just to spite your lover. It is BECAUSE we are entitled to our civil liberties that he was not entitled to endanger people with his disease. It is a coercion in both ways: first, it is a threat to the life and health of others; and second, it is deceitful not to inform others of a contagion that you know you have. Freedom means the absence of coercion. Taking away OUR liberties won’t hold HIM accountable for what he did, and it won’t make dealing with idiots like him any easier or better in the future. The only person who should be punished is he.
That’s what this reminds me of! Thanks–I thought there was some jerk who spread AIDS knowingly, back in the day, but I wasn’t sure if it was an urban myth.
I hadn’t thought of Italy that way, but now I am just sick. Let us hope that his low level of infectiousness makes this a near miss. (did anyone else hear that one doctor on NPR call it “infectivity”?).
The question is: what do we DO about cases like this? There have to be thousands of people like him walking around with STDs, HIV, TB etc and either don’t know it, know it and can’t get help or won’t get help and others who can’t or won’t stay on their med regimes.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Hell, I might very well be trying to call off the wedding, especially since this guy is obviously a self-centered prick of the 1st order.
I’m not talking about a broad society-wide removal of civil liberties. I’m talking about the likelihood of infringement upon the civil liberties of the NEXT guy. You think after this guy has exposed 100’s of people to XDR-TB, then next person in his shoes isn’t going to find his civil liberties just a wee bit more confined?
The CDC could have quarantined this guy earlier than they did. This is speculation on my part, but I suspect they didn’t quarantine him out of a combination of hope that he would do the right thing (not go; not expose others) and fear that he would take legal action if they did, since he’s a lawyer and they hadn’t confirmed the XDR nature of the TB yet. So they decided not to quarantine him, and look what he did.
I guaran-damn-tee you they will not make the same mistake again. So you can certainly talk about who should be punished in such a case (just him!), but that will not change the almost certainty that the next person will suffer for this idiot’s irresponsibility.
Or, in your Libertarian-speak, it is the fact of his deceit (which you deem a coercion) that will justify greater and speedier governmental coercion next time.
Not only that, how is his quarantine being paid for? Is it subsidized by taxes or is it insurance? I’d think it’s taxes, but I’m not sure how it’s handled.
I was sitting in a room with too many televisions yesterday so I didn’t hear much, but CNN sent a reporter outside TB Mary’s room for an interview. I could have sworn I heard him say something about his civil liberties and violation, but I can’t find a transcript. Did anyone else hear this or see the interview?
Well, the people he infected will be punished enough already. He should have to make them whole. They should not be allowed to fly now because they, too, would initiate force. And as for governmental force, it should never be coercive — only defensive and responsive. It should have stopped him from flying in the first place, but that’s not coercion; it is a forceful response to HIS coercion.
I can ALMOST see how to construe it as not a completely assholish action. Since he didn’t know that he had the resistent version, it sounds like testing was at a pretty rudimentary phase before he left - he may have assumed he had something much less serious. How much education was he given about the disease? It isn’t very contagious as noted, and he had this whole wedding planned and paid for, and all these people flying out for it, it would be a pretty drastic step to cancel it all over a mild recommendation not to fly.
Taking all those extra flights while IN Europe, however…
He was given plenty of education and strongly advised by the CDC not to travel, even before he was confirmed as having the more dangerous version of the disease. Your general points taken into consideration, of course.
This is also speculation on MY part, but my WAG is they really couldn’t have quarantined him earlier. Frankly, it’s not right to lock someone up because you fear they might be contagious. I think it is appropriate that someone not be involuntarily detained until tests results confirm a danger.
Under normal circumstances I would agree with you that this will not be allowed to repeat, that the hammer will come down on high risk carriers earlier. However, with the current clowns in the administration running around dismantling essential government agencies ability to respond, I’m sure it will happen again and again.
The CDC will rewrite its rules in light of the “new realities” :rolleyes: of the Patriot Act, and we will sweep up dozens or hundreds of potential infectees. Welcome to “Guantanamo ER”.
Is Italy really bigger in that way than most of the world’s other big, cosmopolitan cities? I can’t imagine there are many countries not served by New York, London, Paris or Tokyo.
(Not that Italy is a city. I assume Rome is the crossroads in question. The articles only mention Paris and Prague, so I can’t tell for sure what his Italian destination was.)
I’m afraid that with all of the hatred directed at “TB Andy,” one of the supreme dinguses of this story won’t get his fair share of ire. That’s right, I’m talking about the U.S. Border agent who LET THE GUY THROUGH.
That’s right, you fucking moron - you’re no doctor, so it’s really NOT YOUR PLACE to make a decicious because, “duhh, he SEEMED healthy, huh-huh!”