Uh, no.
Translation: The fucking doctors should not have said, in these exact words: “You are not contagious.”
Other than the whole “you need to be isolated from all other people” thing. That’s still a pretty big hint.
No, it doesn’t make Speaker look better (and he knows it…he admitted he shouldn’t have done what he did). It certainly makes the CDC look worse, though.
In the first link I provided above, Dr Gerberding testifes to Congress the opposite. If she lied in her testimony to Congress, she needs to be prosecuted fully. And at this point, if she’s lying before a Congressional hearing with Speaker on the phone there, I can’t imagine she doesn’t expect to get caught out at it.
“You are not contagious, but don’t travel.”
He traveled.
How is he the one in the right again?
If nothing else, I hope the CDC learns that they need a much clearer chain of command and response in a situation like this. Maybe this kind of episode was needed to expose the flaws in the system. If it can prevent a real outbreak of something horrible in the future, maybe we will all look back at the Speaker event as something that saved a lot of people. It seems that people at the CDC didn’t know what other people were doing and that caused a lot of confusion that could have been prevented with just some better communication.
Yeah, that’s become pretty clear. The Dr. Kim mentioned in that second link I posted needs to be fired posthaste.
Again: TB in any form is not something you fuck around with! By now, this should be obvious. If the type of TB had been identified and if treatment had been started and if the doctors had said it was okay to travel, that would be one thing. However, that is not what happened. Screw the contagious or not issue, TB can, and does, mutate readily, so just because one has a mild form today, doesn’t mean that it can’t suddenly turn worse tomorrow. At which point where do you want to be? In a foreign country where you don’t know where the best treatment centers are or in your home country where you know exactly where to go? The answer should be frickin’ obvious.
I saw the link, along with a more detailed story earlier today. They told him what his strain was, but outlined no plan for what would happen to him over the next few days. They admitted that they did nothing to provide him travel, and they have not commented on the fact that they neglected to answer his question re the degree to which he was contagious. They also offered no indication as to how long he would have to remain in Italy.
He admitted he wouldn’t have done it again, but I think he wouldn’t have needed to if the authorities hadn’t acted as if he were ET at Elliot’s house.
I see no reason to believe he fucked around with TB.
He was not going to become contagious overnight.
He’s making a lot of the recorded tape, but the transcripts clearly show that the exchange was not “Hey, I’m gonna fly to Europe, is that gonna be a problem?” “Nah, you’re not contagious.”
It was “Hey, do I have to stay in a hospital?” “Nah, you’re not contagious.”
That’s a VERY different thing.
Doctors give travel advice every day. They gave some to my pregnant wife last week. That’s all it was in this case (before he left Atlanta): advice.
In no part of the released transcript do they discuss travel plans.
He flew halfway around the world with it, when he didn’t know what strain he had. I’d call that “fucking around” with it.
So? Was he going to be gone overnight? No. And again, having to sort out treatment issues when you’re in a foreign country is not easy. Even common, everyday things like injuries can be diffuclt to be treated if you don’t know where to go and who to contact. Add in the possibility that you could have a form of a disease which you’ve been told that there’s only one treatment center on Earth that can treat it and you have someone who is profoundly stupid if they just jet off to the other side of the globe before it’s identified. Not because they might infect other people, but because it could kill them!
Let’s say that Speaker had some form of cancer and not TB. His doctors tell him that they can’t begin treatment until they get the results of his tests back and that there’s a possibility that his cancer could be a form that has to be treated within a certain point in time, or it will be fatal. For him to take off on his honeymoon without knowing what type of cancer he has would still be a damned stupid thing to do! He’d be putting his health at risk and were he to miss the treatment window for the fatal strain, his daughter would have to grow up without her father. If he really gave a shit about her, don’t you think that he’d want to stick close to medical personnel until the cancer was positively ID’d?
The CDC is essentially a Research and Educational Agency. It is not an enforcement agency and it certainly isn’t a travel agency. I’m certain some adaptation will occur as a result of this incident, but it may not all be for the better. On the positive side, there will probably be an “international containment” policy that maps out who to notify in case of a dangerously diseased patient on the lam. On the negative side, a patient with an exotic disease might not be permitted to leave his “mandatory” counseling session before signing a paper acknowledging that he was told not to travel and donning a GPS-embedded ankle bracelet.
My opinion of Speaker has to have improved since I now know that he didn’t lie about being told he wasn’t contagious. That said, his insistence that CDC was responsible to escort him home when he had defied blanket advice not to travel in the first place is. . .presumptuous. He handpicked which medical advice he wanted to follow and endangered innocent people. He’s not a candidate for canonization just yet.
Congratulations! (But I hope she’s not contagious. . .)
Let’s hope not. He moved out a couple months ago, and we barely even knew him, so I think we’re safe.
Thanks
and
I’m sorry, but I’ll have to continue to disagree with you. My opinion hasn’t changed much since my first post in this thread. I still think Mr. Speaker acted wrongly and that his conduct is unjustified.
[ul][li]Mr. Speaker keeps on insisting that he was told he wasn’t contagious. This was during the initial conversation before he left for Europe. The situation (i.e. the instructions from his medical advisors) changed when the CDC learned that he had a much worse condition for TB than was initially suspected.[/li][li]Mr. Speaker says that when he was told in Rome of his condition he decided to fly home because he wasn’t any more contagious then than he was before. How did he know that, when he was in Rome? Who told him? As I mentioned before, even if there was a very low risk before he left for Rome and the same very low risk while he was in Rome, the situations are not identical, since the disease that he was diagnosed with while in Rome is much worse than the disease he thought he had before he left.[/li][li]While in Rome, a CDC doctor told him (reuters.com) that he should cease flying on commercial carriers, and started discussing the need for isolation. The CDC didn’t want to fly him with a plane that didn’t have an isolation facility. In the hospital in Denver, they waited for a test result before allowing him to leave his room. Mr. Speaker seems pretty sure that he presented no risk, but the CDC and the doctors in Denver clearly thought that precautions were necessary.[/li][li]The CDC doctor says that Mr. Speaker asssured her (same cite as in previous point) that he would not travel. He then disappeared from his hotel. The fact that he lied to the CDC might have had something to do with their slow response.[/li][*]Mr. Speaker complains that the CDC didn’t want to fly him home for free. I don’t see why the CDC should be obligated to do that. Before he left, even though his doctors told him he wasn’t contagious, they also explicitly said that he should not get on a plane and go to Europe. He did anyway. He then bears some responsibility for getting himself back. He should have stayed in Rome and worked with the CDC and his family to arrange a return trip, or to get the necessary treatment in an Italian hospital.[/ul]
They might hold him as a result of paranoia. As a result of an “overabundance of caution”
And what would they be paranoid and cautious about? What were they worried was the danger Speaker represented?
Oh dear, no, you don’t need to worry about that. I was just making a (very old) joke about pregnancy being contagious. Which is funny, see, because it’s not. . .<trails off>
(Should have used a smiley)
Maybe I need to type this slowly for you. He . . . had . . . a . . . version . . . of . . . TB . . . that . . . is . . . drug . . . resistant.
Which … is … why … he … shouldn’t … have … gotten … on … commercial … airliners … once … he … learned … that.