So, there may have been a reason they were concerned about how contagious Speaker was, and thus how much danger he represented to others?
A reason who was concerned? As I said, I don’t know whether any Italian authorities – doctors or not – ever even developed an opinion on the issue.
Anyway, your questions are becoming repetitive. Please try to get to your point. Thank you.
Okay.
The point is that doctors don’t recommend quarantine unless they think you present a danger (or potential danger) to others. The simple fact that a quarantine is ordered implies “we think you may be contagious.”
The CDC told Speaker they wanted him to go into quarantine, and you make the argument that Speaker was afraid to go to the Italian medical authorities because they might also quarantine him.
Therefore, any argument that Speaker didn’t know he might be contagious at that point so he could fly home, or that he didn’t know why the doctors were now telling him he needed to go into quarantine and that wasn’t good enough and so he could ignore it and fly home, is a false argument.
He knew he was potentially contagious as soon as they told him they wanted to quarantine him, and he knew that his type of TB was 70% fatal. And he flew home anyway.
Nothing revealed in the press so far has changed any of that. Period.
Remove the extra parenthesis at the end of the link.
http://www.in.gov/isdh/dataandstats/epidem/2003/may/tb.pdf (PDF file)
Infectiousness of Tuberculosis / Paul Britton, R.N., M.S. / ISDH TB Control Program
There is this chart:
What’s the name of the doctor who ordered Speaker quarantined while he was in Italy? And what is the substance of his order? And please provide a cite. Thank you.
Also, did any information come out that altered the degree to which Speaker was contagious? If so, what was it? And what was he told? And please provide cites. Thank you.
**Arnold Winkelreid ** beat me to it (thanks!). The percentage you quote is off … it’s 4.9 percent, not 49 percent. But yes, that’s what the data indicates – Speaker, by flying commercially, imposed almost a five percent chance of death on the people around him in the airplane.
Honestly, I’m having a hard time understanding that chart.
But your interpretation would seem to imply that Speaker could expect to infect about 7% of the people he came into contact with, even before he left the US.
Right?
If that’s true, then yes he’s an asshole. But I don’t buy it. If Speaker and those similarly situated were infecting 7% of people he came into contact with, then we would all have drug resistant TB by now.
Okay.
““On both May 22nd and 23rd, HHS/CDC spoke with the patient in Rome, Italy, and informed him of his XDR TB diagnosis; explained the severity of the disease; instructed him to terminate all travel and to cease use of commercial air carriers; and initiated conversations about the need for isolation, treatment and travel alternatives,” Gerberding said in written testimony.”
Did you just miss all the above, where “we want you quarantined” automatically has with it “because you may be contagious”? The degree doesn’t matter…it was enough to warrant a call for isolation.
Do you know where Speaker is, right at this moment, after all this time has passed and all those declarations about being smear-negative? He’s in quarantine!
Look, I can’t provide any better cites than I have. If you don’t want to believe them, that’s your choice, but that Web site seems pretty definitive in terms of research.
TB is pretty widespread; according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, each year, 8 million people worldwide develop active TB and nearly 2 million die. There were 14,000+ cases in the U.S. in 2005, and between 10 million to 15 million people in the U.S. have latent TB. Cite: The page you’re looking for isn’t available | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
I’m having a hard time understanding what the Fulton County medical people were apparently telling Speaker before he left, myself. Everything I’ve seen indicates someone with TB is contagious – the only modifier is HOW contagious.
One thing that jumps out at me from reviewing your posts in this thread is your repeated insistence that others provide cites for their positions while you freely speculate as to what was or wasn’t done and what you do or do not “buy” and what you do and do not “doubt,” with nary a cite to be seen.
That, plus the inherent idiocy of your contention that if risk cannot be specifically quantified, then risk does not exist.
Also (and this is not just you): I’m pretty surprised at the number of people who want to use the eventuality of his being noncontagious (which let’s just assume for now) to defend the decisions he made when he did not know – could not have known – he was noncontagious. It’s like defending a guy playing Russian roulette while pointing the gun at other people, so long as no one actually got shot.
AFAIC, the CDC and doctors could today say, “Oopsie! Turns out he just had the common cold! Our bad!” and that would in no way excuse, explain, or defend the actions he took with the information he had at the time.
And, just to go waaay back to what I said in the beginning, about Speaker’s irresponsible actions negatively impacting the way the next person is treated, this is from the CDC:
From here (emphasis added).
Yeah, the way the Congressional hearings on this seem to be shaking out, it’s apparent to me that the next guy who finds himself in this situation is gonna get a lot more draconian response.
Most people are going by the fact that he was repeatedly told by doctors that he was non-contagious. After arriving in Italy, I have seen no evidence that anyone told him his level of contagiousness had changed, only that they wanted him to turn himself in b/c the disease was a more serious strain.
People don’t get told to go into quarantine because their diseases are worse. They get told to go into quarantine because their diseases are more contagious.
I understand that you believe such, but it is quite possible for people to be unnecessarily placed in quarantine. If I’m Speaker, I am seriously questioning (based on the last of assistance & information) what the CDC’s motivation is.
People aren’t quarantined for the common cold or chickenpox, which are both quite communicable.
Disease severity and infectivity determine whether a disease warrants quarantine. There are plenty of diseases more contagious than TB, but they don’t land you in isolation.
Since they had no evidence that he was more contagious, I’ll go ahead and say you’re wrong.
So what? So what if he was only told he had a more serious strain? By the time he was in Italy, he was told NOT TO FLY. Rather than do as he was told, he fled the country, made arrangements to fly from another country and into Canada, because he knew he was not supposed to fly. He knew he was on the no-fly list. Did he think they put him on that list just to make his life harder, 'cause they hated him? Or maybe – and this might be crazy talk – they put him on the list because they considered him a very serious public health risk, if not due to level of contagiousness, then due to level of drug resistance of the strain he has.
The CDC says “do not fly,” you DON’T FUCKING FLY. End of story. If you have managed to strand your ass in a foreign country because you didn’t wait to find out the details of your diagnosis – knowing there was at least the possiblility that it is XDR-TB – then you stay in that country until things can be worked out, but you DON’T FUCKING FLY. Because the freaking CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL told you not to. I
Personally, I don’t give a shit what the Fulton County Health Department told him before he left for Europe, though I do find it interesting he moved his trip up two days after meeting with them. There’s enough “he said/she said” in those communications to cast doubt on what he actually knew, as opposed to should have suspected. But I continue to find his actions once he received his diagnosis to be indefensible. They were in direct contravention of the CDC’s directions.
They were also in flagrant disregard to the public health risk, which is measured not just in quantity (how many will be sickened?) but also in quality (how sick will the sickened become?) IOW, “What are the chances I will make other people sick?” is not the only relevant inquiry. The other relevant inquiry is, “In the unlikely event I do make someone else sick, what are the chances they will be very sick or even die?” EITHER presents a public health risk. And the determination as to whether that public health risk was acceptable or not was not his decision to make. So you can argue all day long about what the risk was or wasn’t, high or low, negigible, even non-existent – that was not his decision to make. And he KNEW that, because he knew he was on the no-fly list.
This post doesn’t make any sense at all to me. It carries more than a whiff of conspiracy theory nutter-ism, so I’d appreciate it if you’d clarify what you mean.