"You could hug me. You could shake my hand. I would not give you Ebola... I’m not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it’s not science-based... I’m fighting for something much more than myself. There are so many aid workers coming back and it scares me to think of how they are going to be treated, how they are going to feel."
October 30, 2014
"Nurse Kaci Hickox left her Maine home Thursday morning for a bicycle ride with her boyfriend as police could only watch."
"'It's a beautiful day for a bike ride,' the defiant nurse cheered to assembled reporters as she and Theodore Wilbur wheeled off."
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196 comments:
Ugh.
How they are going to be treated? I suppose one could argue that if we quarantine someone, they ought to be given a room at the Ritz, otherwise they aren't treated well enough.
But how they are going to feel?
Sorry, you're feelings come second to our safety.
Excellent. Right before the mid-terms,a liberal yelling "fuck you" to Americans.
Rove couldn't have come up with better than this.
If she does come down with ebola - and I hope she doesn't - then every single person she has exposed should sue her sorry ass into financial oblivion.
"Let them eat cake" at it's finest.
I want to see one of those Elite Media members shake her hand and show the rest of us just how silly we're being.
Science? Oh, please. We've entered Baal territory again with these people.
I am not so mean as to wish Ebola on anyone, even one as obnoxious as this, however I would not be so cavalier about tempting fate if I were her.
tim in Vermont wrote;
"Excellent. Right before the mid-terms,a liberal yelling "fuck you" to Americans.
Rove couldn't have come up with better than this."
Actually, a better script would have her getting sick on Sunday and confirming she has Ebola on Monday.
Quite a number of news people hanging outside her house. Just don't let her sneeze on you, I guess.
How many kids are going to trick or treat at her house tomorrow?
I would like to declare a war on this woman.
I don't understand how ridiculous this woman is acting. "I don't have any symptoms." Yes, that's what the Dallas nurse was told too, before she got on a plane...
We have yet to find out if there are any consequences to that bad decision. If by this time next month, no one else on that plane contracts ebola, then I bet everyone will be a lot more lenient about quarantines. But until then, try and be a little more courteous and cautious.
I think we can all agree that the emotional health of returning nurses and doctors is far more important than the fact that they possibly have contracted an incredibly virulent disease.
We'll see what side of her mouth she's talking out of after she's behind bars for a few months.
Trek bike?
If it's not "science-based," then screw you.
Yes, that's right, nurse, science has proven that it's impossible, 100% impossible, to catch Ebola from a barely symptomatic person.
Like so many liberals, she hurls out "science-based" as a trump card against what she believes to be the small-minded, fear-based crowd of the non-elite people she just doesn't like.
The reality is that "science" can answer a lot of specific questions, but it can't actually decide what level of risk is appropriately borne, and by whom. "Science" can tell us that there is a very small likelihood of this nurse infecting someone else before she becomes sick enough to be diagnosed with Ebola, based on what we know about the disease today, in the current form of the virus. But even leaving aside whether the virus might mutate or have previously unknown properties, it can't tell us whether the rather small likelihood of her infecting somebody while biking around the countryside is worth the risk to the innocent people she may expose to the virus.
Real scientists don't (or shouldn't, at any rate) speak in such absolute terms. Science is a process, and the first thing it should make you do is be amazed at how much we still just don't know.
Scientific knowledge comes from observation and experience. We have not conducted any observations or experiments on the transmission of Ebola in a first world country with the type of social interactions we have here in the United States. So while we can extrapolate a few likelihoods based on observations in Africa about how the disease behaves, we can't at all be certain about them.
What an arrogant, egotistical woman she is.
I do wonder if she's collaborating with the Obama administration.
You know who is freaking out about these quarantine dodgers? Women! Live by emotional voters, die by emotional voters Democrats.
Shanna said...
"I am not so mean as to wish Ebola on anyone, even one as obnoxious as this, however I would not be so cavalier about tempting fate if I were her."
I am that mean. However, to prevent her from infecting others, I hope she gets hit by a car on her bike ride.
For the reasons already stated, the Obama administration might want to be a little more careful of being splattered by the secretions while she's milking her 15 minutes of fame.
C-word.
Special snowflake c-word.
Legion on the Left.
All I know is that the Democrats position would be a lot stronger on ebola had they gotten it right from the beginning.
Since they didn't, it is clear there is either stuff not known, or they are not competent.
Let's let a couple months play out before deciding what we do and don't know about this strain of ebola. Meanwhile, on the list of world historical events, bringing new pathogens into new areas have to be among the top.
It's right there in the (D) version of the Bill of Rights.
Theirs is just one amendment, which says "You have the right not to be offended. This right may be infringed upon if you are not a member of a predefined victim class."
"SomeoneHasToSayIt"
Apparently not.
Look, if she's an RN or an RN-BSN, she's had at most six credit hours of microbiology, a survey course of chemistry (inorganic and organic) in two semesters, and never actually touched a cadaver for study of human anatomy and physiology.
Work experience counts, but a scientist she is not.
"I think we can all agree that the emotional health of returning nurses and doctors is far more important than the fact that they possibly have contracted an incredibly virulent disease." Outstanding. You win the internets for today, Amichel.
Are her supporters so sure that she doesn't have it and can't give it to anyone that they can really cheer this on? I'm all for soberly weighing what needs to be done here, but we're talking about some pretty high stakes if these people are wrong.
Fame whores live all over the place.
I also like that so many people are saying "she's a nurse, she knows what she's doing" and at the same time will easily blow off any experienced physician like Bill Frist or Rand Paul when they offer a medical opinion relating to any political issue.
Clearly, we've sorted ourselves into tribes, and Moynihan was wrong--everyone has decided they are entitled to their own facts.
"Fame whores live all over the place."
That they do--I used to live in Maine, and while it's a beautiful state with some terrific people, they have their share of stupid up there.
"You could hug me. You could shake my hand. " How about a kick in the ass. And I'd like to shake you alright, you snotty selfish shit!
I'll bet she likes to yell FIRE in a crowded theater.
Did Kaci and her boyfriend have sex yet?
Inquiring minds want to know.
My God, for a bunch of people who are usually suspect of authority, you are sure shitting yourselves over a rational response to this ridiculous quarantine issue.
You simply can't get Ebola from asymptomatic people. Want proof? How about this, of all the people who had contact with Thomas Duncan, only those two nurses caught Ebola (because of improper PPE protocols).
Anyone want to take a bet on how many people on that plane the nurse flew on come down with Ebola? End of the incubation period is Saturday. I bet zero is the number.
And I bet there are no cases in New York from exposure to that doctor either.
You are all a bunch of scared, paranoid idiots.
Someone else mentioned it here yesterday, but no less a crazy liberal state as my own, California, just announced quarantine orders for health workers returning here from the afflicted countries.
I'm not hearing much complaining about that, but of course, everyone is hung over after last night's World Series win.
Did Kaci and her boyfriend have sex yet?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Ha ha. Yes, I'd like to know how much faith the bf has put into "Science."
She's a piece of work, our Kaci is.
I mean, even if she doesn't come down with Ebola (and I hope she doesn't) she's not setting a good example for others. She talks about all the other Good Samaritans coming back? Assuming Our Kaci did everything by the book AND has been luckier than the Ebola Doc currently at Bellvue, some percentage of those other Samaritans will either not have been as rigorous, or not been as lucky, or both.
If all of them act like entitled assholes we could end up with a serious situation.
At least she's wearing her bike helmet.
Where are the leper colonies when you need them?
It will be hard for the state to find experts supporting quarantine. I predict she wins in court.
Freder, at this point, it is irrelevant if "the science is settled," or not.
She is making a total ass of herself and doing great damage to her professional colleagues.
"You simply can't get Ebola from asymptomatic people. Want proof? How about this, of all the people who had contact with Thomas Duncan, only those two nurses caught Ebola (because of improper PPE protocols)."
-- Anecdotes aren't proof. The simple fact is that a quarantine is a perfectly rational thing to require of people exposed to certain things. She should have been treated nicer, and the odds are that she is not infected. Furthermore, odds are, that if she IS infected, she won't spread the disease to random passer-bys. But, we still should at least debate whether or not it is wise to have people take precautions about certain risks, especially since we don't know nearly as much about Ebola as you pretend we do.
"You are all a bunch of scared, paranoid idiots."
-- The only one who seems to be emotional about the issue is you. No one is paranoid that we're all going to catch it and die because someone was a little selfish. The problem is that we've seen exactly how fragile our defenses against Ebola are, and we're trying to find ways to plug those holes. A quarantine is rational, works and is not an undue hardship on people who knowingly take risks.
Clutch your pearls elsewhere.
Science, you guys. Super serious science.
AND Freder shows up to reinforce yet again the notion that the thing most important to the Modern Liberal is being intellectually superior to the yokels.
Freder, in this case I certainly hope you're right. For what it's worth, from the epidemiology one can glean from the news reports this version of Ebola is an odd duck. Duncan most definitely was contagious outside of the hospital (he barfed outside his apartment complex) but the only people he passed the virus to were nurses in the hospital. (Even if they weren't following Level 4 precautions, they've still been more cognizant and presumably careful than the people Duncan was rooming with.)
Same with the nurse in Spain. She caught from a patient in the hospital and I presume hasn't passed it on.
Having said all that, we're talking about a total of five cases that I know of outside of equatorial Africa. That's not a whole lot of data to work with. When Ebola crossed into Nigeria (in a patient who was trying to get to the United States, by the way) Nigeria got control of it by instituting a rigorous quarantine regimine.
Freder, if you're right, happy happy joy joy. If you aren't you're pushing an attitude that could have really dangerous consequences.
Also: A lot of doctors ARE catching Ebola, even with proper use of PPE. We're not sure why yet; we're not even 100% positive that failure to use the PPE properly is what exposed those two nurses [it took, what, a week for one to remember, "Hey, maybe I touched my face with a glove hand that might have, I think, had stuff on it?"]
For people who constantly shout about things being known and final and true, there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of assumptions being considered truth.
Freder: Let's accept for now that it is 100% impossible to catch Ebola from an asymptomatic person. Personally, I suspect the number is more like 99.9% unlikely to catch it from an infected person showing ZERO symptoms, but for the sake of argument, I'll give you 100%.
But we've already seen that people with both exposure and actual symptoms of the disease have also decided they are safe to travel. Heck, the CDC authorized the first nurse to catch it to travel even when she had a fever, because it was only a little fever.
So suppose she starts off on her motorbike jaunt feeling just fine, but then starts feeling sluggish, with maybe a hint of fever, about an hour into the ride. Is she bringing along a hazmat suit so she can self-quarantine at that point?
Odds of infecting someone are, in my view, fairly low until you reach the puking and diarrhea phase, but they are certainly not non-existent. The CDC's own guidance tells us that.
Low risk is not no risk. Right now, she has some risk of having the disease, and some risk of transmitting it to others (and, for the record, we don't have to just take her word for it that she is completely asymptomatic; the medical workers have lied about that already). She is deciding for herself that it's ok for her to expose others to some risk of catching the disease.
Good. Finally someone with a policy. The policy is "my certainty is your risk."
"Excellent. Right before the mid-terms,a liberal yelling "fuck you" to Americans."
Could be a libertarian, ya' know.
So, we should just take her word for it that she's not infected. Trust her. Medical professionals never lie.
Science!
Also does anyone else enjoy the irony of Left-ish self-styled Progressives choosing this particular topic to finally care about individual rights? What happened to the good of the people/community, making individual freedom subject to the good of the group, etc? When we're talking about free speech rights, 2nd Amendment rights, that kind of thing, then it's perfectly ok to restrict my freedom to prevent any possible harm to others. But this lady, who could pose a direct physical threat to a wide swath of the population...yeah, let's cheer her "screw you" mentality. Is public health a public good (in terms of vaccination, quarantine, etc)? Oh well, why would anyone expect intellectual consistency.
Fritz: I think the odds are goof that she's an administration stalking horse. She works for the CDC, and her lawyer is a White House regular. CDC has no authority to treat patients in Africa and no program to do so, so she may have had no patient contact at all -- her work specialty seems to be records-related: tracking epidemics via their medical paper trail. That would explain why she feels so confident that couldn't possibly be an exposure risk, but being just a government paper-shuffler would sort of detract from the "hero-nurse" persona she and the administration have been aiming for.
Nothing says "health care professional" like this self-indulgent, self-righteous whiner.
Freder: "You are all a bunch of scared, paranoid idiots."
Well, that was persuasive. I'm certainly not scared. Most people think I am not an idiot. Paranoia is harder to self diagnose.
But how hard would it be for her to comply with a self-quarantine when we are in the early stages of trying to understand something new? The scientific statements you present as certainty are believed by many "experts." There is a reasonable possibility that you, she and the "experts" are wrong. Maybe not a likelihood but a reasonable possibility.
Why take the risk? (Remember the precautionary principle lefties so love in certain contexts.)
Suppose odds she would infect someone else in rural Maine is 0.0001%, and if she did the odds that person would be cured is 80%.
We are talking about government locking up someone who has not committed any crime. What is the standard of proof -- she gets locked up regardless of how small the risk? As long as it is any number above 0.0%? A dangerous precedent entering flu season.
Brando:
"Are her supporters so sure that she doesn't have it and can't give it to anyone that they can really cheer this on?"
There's a flip side to that.
When she doesn't come down with it - and I'd bet a lot that she won't - she, and the president, and people like Freder here, are going to feel very satisfied that they were exactly right, and that quarantining an individual potentially exposed to a viral hemorrhagic fever, without medical proof that he or she is going to be ill, is irrational and unjust.
Will someone get Ebola from her behavior? I bet not. Could this whole outbreak burn out in the next few months without any more Thomas Duncans, or any others infected like Nurse Pham or Nurse Vinson? Sure; fingers crossed!
But if so, we will learn exactly the wrong lessons, and people will die from them in future outbreaks. Kaci Hickox doesn't recognize or doesn't give a damn that it's not all about her.
David: "Paranoia is harder to self diagnose."
Yes, and of course: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you!
steve uhr:
"We are talking about government locking up someone who has not committed any crime."
I just don't get this mindset. I don't get hers. I've written here before that if I'd been over there, I'd be demanding that those who sent me there provide me some way to isolate myself until I'm damn sure I'm not infected.
You ask, "she gets locked up regardless of how small the risk? As long as it is any number above 0.0%?" What if I come at this from another direction: It's three weeks. Roughly 0.07% of her probable lifetime, weighed against the chance, however remote, of transmitting a VHF. How small does the isolation period have to be before she says, OK, that's not so much to ask even if I think it's unnecessary? Any time at all?
In the event Kaci infected anyone on her jaunts, and that person were to sue, wouldn't the local government be liable---not her---for endangering the public safety?
Uhr, meet Typhoid Mary
Reading some CDC website yesterday, may be misremembering the numbers but, three U.S. health care professionals treated ebola patients and got the disease, but 16 did not treat ebola patients and got the disease.
Why are we calling them "ebola victims"? Is this new? Do we have "flu victims"?
First you have to have intimate contact with bodily fluids at a high viral loading, then maybe be in the vicinity of a sneeze.
Is this a political entity or a disease?
Equating quarantine with jail ("locking up") is intellectual dishonesty.
"Why are we calling them "ebola victims"? Is this new? Do we have "flu victims"?"
-- People have been victims of cancer for at least a decade and a half.
If nurse Hickox can defy a quarantine order on the grounds she is claiming, so can I.
When this whole thing started, I copied and pasted everything I could find and emailed to every single person I could think of. Warned friends and family pretty much every day, Expected the whole Duncan apartment complex to be dead by now. Fact is, 1 guy dead.
I ain't gonna lie like some of you guys, I want more dead people, preferably in D.C or New York.
Without a substantial body count, I feel I may have over-reacted.
JPS -- so you would feel different if she only had one year to live? What if she had one year to live and the quarantine period was four months? I just think an absolute zero standard is unreasonable. I would feel different if it was easy to transmit but it isn't.
Unknown, this is the problem with soft sciences.
When you see a rock fall on a stick, and you see the stick break, then you conclude, "I think that stick broke because the rock fell on it."
When you don't know how to keep ebola from traveling from one person to another, and you're a medical professional, you say "oh, it only travels this way, not that way, only this way, not that way". It works better with music.
"I would feel different if it was easy to transmit but it isn't."
-- We're not 100% certain that sneezes/casual contact won't spread the disease.
Also, let's say someone gets vomiting sick, say, on the Metro or at a restaurant, and someone jumps in to help. That person is now potentially infected all because someone who thought they'd be fine a few more days guessed wrong.
Quarantines are a rational response; the disease may not be that dangerous. But, we saw how just one case paralyzed the CDC and the hospitals, how poorly managed it was, and how weak our infrastructure is in responding to it.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
steve uhr:
"JPS -- so you would feel different if she only had one year to live? What if she had one year to live and the quarantine period was four months?"
I think you get my point, and I get that you disagree. We could keep on seeing and raising each others' hypotheticals, but [cue Hans Gruber voice] I'm afraid work must intrude.
As for this one: If she had only one year to live and the quarantine period was four months, my guess is that someone else would have been sent to West Africa in her place.
Bicycling around rural Maine is a whole different deal than riding a NYC subway in terms of risk to others.
Defiance of the quarantine puts officials to a quandary. To arrest her would put the arresting official at risk of catching ebola.
The boyfriend has voluntarily exposed himself to Kaci and she let him. Say what you want, but that counts for something.
I am not certain she was a high risk worker in Africa. It all looks so political and staged.
Left Bank - I said it before: did they have sex?
The boyfriend has got to be just a tad bit nervous about the whole thing.
BTW, she looks like Debbie Wasserman Shultz's younger sister.
She's a CDC Epidemiological Officer meaning that she was in West Africa studying how people get exposed and get sick and so she is the one writing the book for the CDC on what to do.
And her take seems to be that you won't get Ebola if, like her, you don't treat patients, and so it is OK to send the military. And furthermore, health professionals won't go to Africa if they are restricted when they come back. The CDC position is that we should fight Ebola in West Africa and so health professionals who are willing to go are needed and get whatever it takes to get them to go. And that means that they get to come to the US to be treated whether or not they are citizens (to be announced after the election) and the US citizens get to roam the streets without a quarantine when they come back (This nurse is setting the precedents for that right now.)
So when you know who this CDC epidemiologist is you can see that this is all a Show and Tell by the CDC.
Here's what I object to. There are only a few beds in the US which can safely treat Ebola - see Texas Presbyterian debacle- and if these beds are taken up by foreign health care workers and if Americans get infected by returning health care workers who don't want to be quarantined then citizens who get Ebola won't get treated. How is that fair? And, by the way, why doesn't the CDC train people in the other countries on how to treat Ebola?
David said..."Could be a libertarian, ya' know."
I guess you don't know many libertarians, eh?
For me, the question is:
If someone has Ebola, at what point between clearly asymptomatic and clearly symptomatic do they become contagious?
I love hearing these #WARONWOMEN types who are pushing bogus campus rape statistics now telling everybody to calm down.
This is a serious risk. People would be calmer if we had a POTUS who considered himself "chief executive" of the country, and not a bigger scale community organizer who sees lying as just one more technique to enable the left's will to power.
Shorter left: Shut up rubes and hicks, even though we hate you, vote for us!
Whatever happened to medical ships? It seems contrary to the best practices of risk management and common ethical standards to intentionally introduce an active or biological vector into a healthy population.
Perhaps it's not just the policies of CDC that require a review, but also Doctors without Borders. This issue more and more resembles Benghazi, or the illegal alien transfer from Mexico followed by a dispersal throughout the American population. Hopefully, the consequences will not be equally extreme.
Joe,
Clearly that question may not be asked because SCIENCE!
we will learn exactly the wrong lessons
I think the scariest thing about learning how completely unwilling we seem to be to do basic things, like quarantines, and how incompetent the CDC has been is that this is not the only thing out there. There are other diseases as bad as ebola or worse, that may end up being airborne and if we futz around like this with one of those people are going to die en masse. And we can't always predict from day one what is going to be bad.
Look at HIV. Look at the 1918 flu. How do you predict what's going to go wild? I dont' think you can. People thought the current epidemic in Africa would burn itself out quickly like all the previous ones but it hasn't and now it's on track to kill a lot of people. It has infected thousands, it may infect half a million people before its over.
How do you stop these types of epidemics? Well, we know the answers to this from hard won previous experience but it requires us to make quick choices and be competent and tell people like Nurse Kaci to stuff it.
Maine Gov. now just wants her to take a blood test. So require those who have no symptoms to come in and get tested daily. Everyone should be happy. No prisons necessary.
A quarantine has to be 40 days.
20 days is a vagintine. Women should like it.
"No prisons necessary."
Quarantine isn't prison.
"A quarantine has to be 40 days."
Not any more, just like decimate no longer means what it should mean.
I work with a librul young woman who said this nurse is plainly arrogant and selfish.
Any polls showing whether liberals or conservatives more supportive of quarantines? I would think the nanny state would be more in favor.
Mark said...
"Duncan most definitely was contagious outside of the hospital (he barfed outside his apartment complex) but the only people he passed the virus to were nurses in the hospital."
Full Moon said...
"When this whole thing started, I copied and pasted everything I could find and emailed to every single person I could think of. Warned friends and family pretty much every day, Expected the whole Duncan apartment complex to be dead by now. Fact is, 1 guy dead."
I am wondering: Has anyone seen or heard from the people Duncan lived with for several days after first exhibiting symptoms of the Ebola from which he died? We heard plenty from them when Duncan was first admitting into the hospital... but anything from them after the end of their quarantine? Did they contract Ebola from the now dead Duncan and the government possibly is hiding it? Or have government officials paid these people to stay silent...
Futhermore, I am also considering this a possibility:
JHapp said...
"I am not certain she was a high risk worker in Africa. It all looks so political and staged."
Meanwhile, kids being paralyzed by "unknown cause".
Conservatives have this belief that one of the few legitimate purposes of government is to protect the population from external threats.
Odd as that may seem!
Hey, Nurse Kaci, this is how it should be done -- statement by the California doctor who's quarantined himself for 21 days:
“I’m California’s most experienced Ebola physician. I won’t take a single chance. My wife is away, my dog is away — there’s no downside to a little personal convenience, 3 weeks will pass."
Maine Gov. now just wants her to take a blood test. So require those who have no symptoms to come in and get tested daily. Everyone should be happy. No prisons necessary.
Because I have little doubt she'll do that more than a day or two.
When I heard she was from Maine, I immediately knew she wouldn’t follow any stinkin quarantine. Mainers are a different breed. It’s mostly a poor state, with a fair amount of old money “summer home” people sprinkled in. Nice people on the whole, but they actually think Maine is somehow the center of the universe. They think along the lines that “well Rachel Carson had a summer home in Maine; therefor Maine is the genesis of the entire environmental movement”. You get the idea.
if you like your ebola you can keep your ebola
She doesn't show symptoms right now, but that doesn't mean that she won't develop them during the 21-day incubation period. If I was the boyfriend, I wouldn't be tapping that until after the 21 days passes.
These people volunteer to take 6 months, a year, or whatever it is, off to work with ebola in Africa under very primitive conditions, besides the danger, but resolutely refuse to include a 3 week quarantine period in their own homes when they return? Because this is absolutely inhumane treatment and violates their civil rights?
“I’m California’s most experienced Ebola physician. I won’t take a single chance. My wife is away, my dog is away — there’s no downside to a little personal convenience, 3 weeks will pass."
This is how people who actually care about other people, and have any knowledge of the disease, should be acting. Earlier on, doctors coming back were doing the same thing. God bless.
Because this is absolutely inhumane treatment
How hard is it to hang out around the house for a few weeks? Netflix was practically invented for just such an occasion. Maybe she should watch the walking dead.
I would be less annoyed at this nurse for biking through rural maine, because I doubt she will infect anyone that way, if she wasn't being such an utter snot about it.
To the derpy-doo liberal asshats who feel like they've got something to gloat over because conservatives want quarantines, let me make it perfectly clear:
Small government I may support, but having accepted the concept of the nation-state, I recognize that that means a government of some centralized capacity.
So here are the base standards of a legitimate government.
- Territorial integrity and externally recognized sovereignty. Fantastic work on this one, fellas.
- Ensuring the survival of the population. This primarily involves 1) keeping murderous hordes out and 2) plague prevention. THAT IS LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE, in a way that social redistribution of a particular good - medical services - is not. Plague prevention fits the nice definition of public goods in the face of unrestricted freeloaders, just like national defense.
So there you go, a government has to have a stable geographical territory with a defined and continuing-to-exist population. I would add as a primary function of government the facilitation of trade and commerce within its borders by establishing a uniform standard of weights, measures, and coin... but frankly, that's the sort of luxury governments that have a solid handle on the first two items can afford to worry about. We haven't proven ourselves capable of such refinement quite yet.
Why does this break on political lines? I find that bizarre.
Why does this break on political lines? I find that bizarre.
I would say it's because it's an election year, but politics seems to have infested literally every subject there is.
Clyde said:
"She doesn't show symptoms right now, but that doesn't mean that she won't develop them during the 21-day incubation period. If I was the boyfriend, I wouldn't be tapping that until after the 21 days passes."
You say 21 days for an incubation period but the WHO suggests 42 days for quarantine. Funny how the 21 days became settled science.
Conspiracy update: Still no photos of Thomas Duncan's fiancé or her children.
Conspiracy update II: Newspapers no longer filled with vomit stories. Call Sharyl Attkinson for a possible explanation.
steve uhr said...
Any polls showing whether liberals or conservatives more supportive of quarantines? I would think the nanny state would be more in favor.
10/30/14, 2:12 PM
So at what point in being sick with a VHF would you agree it is OK for the state to take action? After the person is dead in the street?
The point is, she does NOT know if she is infected or not. She believes she is not and she is very likely correct. That is no excuse for acting like an asshat and a self-centered little twit. How Fing difficult is 3 weeks at home? What, no Internet in Maine? No cable or radio? She volunteered to go into a sick place. I do not believe it is unreasonable to expect her to be subject to some scrutiny upon her return.
As others have pointed out. She and all the rest are likely free and clear and no one else will get sick AND that will cause all of the "pajama" people to crow at how smart they where and that everyone else made too big a deal out of this. We are lucking out this time but what about next when those in power say "no big deal, we have been through this before" and it really is a big deal? How many people have to get sick and how many people actually have to die for a 21 day quarantine to be acceptable for people that voluntarily go into harms way?
What does the EPA say? They demand 0 risk for pollutants, even if that last 0.001% costs a trillion bucks and saves one life over twenty years. Even one life is too many, we're told. How is this different?
Todd -- They should be monitored and tested and at the first sign of illness should be quarantined. I don't think that is an extreme position.
Christy said:
What does the EPA say? They demand 0 risk for pollutants, even if that last 0.001% costs a trillion bucks and saves one life over twenty years. Even one life is too many, we're told. How is this different?
Most environmental regs. use a cost-benefit analysis. If the law was any risk from pollutants is too much the economy would have shut down long ago.
steve uhr said...
Todd -- They should be monitored and tested and at the first sign of illness should be quarantined. I don't think that is an extreme position.
10/30/14, 3:19 PM
I am sure you don't as they don't live in your building.
No other restrictions? So until the test results come back, they are free to man the kissing booth at the county fair?
Most environmental regs. use a cost-benefit analysis.
No they don't. Nice try though.
WHO suggests 42 days for quarantine
I don't believe this is the case, the 42 days is twice the quarantine - it is when they will declare a country officially 'ebola free' or something.
The longest I've heard of an incubation period is 25 days, although I haven't looked closely at it. (and then there were some points about the virus living longer in breast milk, semen, etc)
Rusty -- The regs that don't use a cost benefit analysis should. I'm being consistent.
Todd- Test results come back in three hours. They could take test before bed and get results first thing AM. And agree not to kiss strangers in the interim.
I'm surprised that most of you are perfectly okay giving the government, whom we all trust so much, total power to impose a quarantine whenever they want even if they can find no expert to support their position.
One thing for sure, Kaci Hickox has not had a positive effect on the mental health of her community. Doesn't that count for something? Shouldn't she help lower the anxiety?
While the real risk is to health care workers taking care of Ebola patients in the US, the Precautionary principle used so frequently with Nuclear power or GMO's doesn't count here, if you're a Democrat.
As to political distinctions: dems are generally more forgiving of a dem administration, so any incompetence can be explained away ("quarantine NOT needed").
You could assume the converse (reps protecting their own) but reps know a "war" when they see it. Ebola is one.
steve uhr said...
Rusty -- The regs that don't use a cost benefit analysis should. I'm being consistent.
Todd- Test results come back in three hours. They could take test before bed and get results first thing AM. And agree not to kiss strangers in the interim.
The false-negative rate for the test is quite high early on even if infected. The most it could tell you is that you are not particularly infectious at that time.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/28/359567808/blood-test-for-ebola-doesnt-catch-infection-early
steve uhr: Any polls showing whether liberals or conservatives more supportive of quarantines? I would think the nanny state would be more in favor.
Oh sweet freakin' Jesus. Anybody, liberal or conservative, who is "supportive" or non-supportive of disease control quarantines, as a function of their political ideology, is a fucking idiot.
Let's rephrase your question: "Any polls showing whether liberals or conservatives are more likely to be the kind of fucking idiots who think that quarantines are primarily about civil rights and discrimination and insulting the honor of brave medical workers?
Btw, steve, as others have pointed out, not even quite extreme libertarians believe that there are no legitimate functions of government. Excuse my French, but sometimes I'm just amazed by the amount of stupid that some people can pack into two little sentences. It's a real talent.
steve uhr said...
Rusty -- The regs that don't use a cost benefit analysis should. I'm being consistent.
Todd- Test results come back in three hours. They could take test before bed and get results first thing AM. And agree not to kiss strangers in the interim.
I'm surprised that most of you are perfectly okay giving the government, whom we all trust so much, total power to impose a quarantine whenever they want even if they can find no expert to support their position.
10/30/14, 3:41 PM
So you do think there should be some limits to what she can do? For you it is just somewhere between "don't kiss strangers" and "21 day quarantine".
Oh sweet freakin' Jesus. Anybody, liberal or conservative, who is "supportive" or non-supportive of disease control quarantines, as a function of their political ideology, is a fucking idiot.
Here here! *pounds table with shoe or something*
Can we have actually one freaking thing anymore that is not about politics???
They should be monitored and tested and at the first sign of illness should be quarantined. I don't think that is an extreme position.
Just like the Dallas nurse who was told it was ok to fly? (After all, it's just a little fever...)
nn Althouse said...
"SomeoneHasToSayIt"
Apparently not.
Ha. But, the C-word is gender neutral. See dialog in the movie "In Bruges".
I suspect there isn't a great ideological divide over this whole to quarantine or not thing if you talk to people who are not generally engaged in politics (so no one who reads this blog).
But the divide is evident, because the Coastal Media Elite has gone out of their way to shame the rest of us with our caution by screaming SCIENCE! at the top of their lungs. Not that they know anything themselves.
For example, this graph was passed around twitter by the Coastal Media Elite like the Shroud of Turin itself. "Because Science! HIV is easier to get than Ebola, you neanderthals!"
Except, you know why HIV infects more people than Ebola? Because someone with ebola is dead in 30 days and someone with HIV can live for a very long time, infecting others, but still feeling fine. And yet they think they're the smart ones....
For example, this graph was passed around twitter by the Coastal Media Elite like the Shroud of Turin itself. "Because Science! HIV is easier to get than Ebola, you neanderthals!"
Almost everyone who spread that chart around had zero idea what it actually meant.
Freeman Hunt said...
Why does this break on political lines? I find that bizarre.
As do I. Almost all the commentary on this site has come from right wingers. One moderate and one lefty have chimed in occasionally. If this topic was not driven by partisan hackery one would expect a greater diversity of views on the right, particularly since it touches directly on the key issue of individual versus state rights.
Todd -- They should be monitored and tested and at the first sign of illness should be quarantined. I don't think that is an extreme position.
...and if you're contagious once you become symptomatic? And you've already demonstrated a lack of regard for the health of others with your behavior?
Freder @11:49a) - Calm down, dear. There is no need to become hysterical.
Reasonable people can disagree about the necessity of quarantines. Reasonable people are also going to be skeptical of the competence and motives of any parties who have conducted themselves as the anti-quarantine parties have conducted themselves thus far.
As for the unreasonable, I think we can confidently assert that, if this were a Republican administration propagandizing against quarantine (a not at all unlikely scenario), we all know perfectly well that you and the other usual suspects would be over here lickety-split with your Daily Kos talking points about how the corporate-tool rethuglicans were putting us all at risk to safeguard the Koch brothers profits or something, lol.
Let's say there is a 90% chance she is ebola free, or 95% chance. How many cases does it take? How many hospitals are there in Maine that they can afford to shut down their ICU for all other patients to treat a single case?
Since it is not yet clear how it spreads, nobody knows the odds.
Why does this break on political lines? I find that bizarre.
It's political because Obama's CDC has mishandled this from the beginning. So the loyal Dems had say, hey, this really is not all that big a deal.
And they thought the "courageous" nurse in the tent would be just the image they needed for a nice diversion this close to next week's elections.
Is there a leftist throw-down going on here?
Anglelyne --
So it is not politics now, but if it were a republican prez. against quarantine, all persons who now say they don't support quarantines would say that they do support quarantines?
Steve, I think it is hilarious to hear the same people pushing #WARONWOMEN to be accusing other people of whipping up fear.
I only wish I could buy you guys air time to explain to all of the yokels in America whom you clearly despise why quarantine is a bad idea. If only we could get them on the air before the mid-terms.
ARM says:
"As do I. Almost all the commentary on this site has come from right wingers. One moderate and one lefty have chimed in occasionally. If this topic was not driven by partisan hackery one would expect a greater diversity of views on the right, particularly since it touches directly on the key issue of individual versus state rights."
I'm a right winger and I come down on the side of individual rights -- as I do in almost all cases. These people freaking out over a very small risk -- probably about the same as getting pregnant from a toilet seat -- are nothing but a bunch of girls' blouses. Big ones. Big girls' blouses, that's what they are.
And in the news, CDC ADMITS sneezing from an infected person can spread Ebola.
Ebola can LAST 100 HOURS outside the human body.
And one wonders why a quarantine would be needed, right?
Tim in Vermont says:
"Since it is not yet clear how it spreads, nobody knows the odds."
It's very clear how it is spread.
The information is all out there on the internet and you can find it if you want. It's not as easy as it should be as the reporting is piss poor. We are being badly served by the media.
If you want to know how it spreads, you can find out. You can also find out why it is extremely unlikely for the virus to be spread by someone without symptoms. Also, why someone who is in the very early stages of the disease (showing earliest symptoms) is very unlikely to spread the disease. You can learn that the amount of virus in a person's body fluids is so low when symptoms first start that they are pretty much noncontagious for a couple days.
People with ebola, apparently, do not test positive for the virus for a couple days after the start of symptoms and the test is a very, very sensitive test. The possibility of transmitting the disease at that stage is probably akin to the possibility that the moon is made out of green cheese. One cannot say either is impossible with absolute certainty.
Thank you Cachorro Quente. I am a Democrat and feel there SHOULD be a quarantine. This effort to fit us into to little boxes is so boring.
I second your characterization of our efforts to communicate with each other about this.
If I had to nutshell the concerns that people who are desirous of a quarantine have (and that would be me), it would be finding yourself in public when you go from asymptomatic to symptomatic.
Tim -- Vermont is pretty close to Maine. Maybe this is a good time for your Florida vacation. Is it possible that we actually agree on most issues. Why do you automatically assume that someone who disagrees with you one one issue opposes you on every issue? Is politics that black and white for you?
Steve Uhr, I have considerable experience with EPA cost benefit analyses. They aren't worth spit. Cherry picked data to support the desired outcome.
But the point is that American policy has always been that even one life saved is worth cost and inconvenience to the rest of us. Miracle drugs get pulled because a small % of patients are made more ill, cars get recalled because a single gas tank exploded.... We are risk averse as a society. We use disinfectants, seat belts, helmets, hand sanitizer, nanny cams, SPF 75, to reduce already small risks. Now we are supposed to tolerate additional risk because someone who thinks she is smarter than everyone else is inconvenienced?
I doubt very much that she has been within a mile of an Ebola patient. She is a bureaucrat, not a clinical provider. It was all for show and to burnish her resume.
n.n said...
Whatever happened to medical ships?
We have 2. USNS Comfort, Norfolk VA and USNS Mercy, San Diego, CA. Both 1,000 bed hospitals.
and of course we have wonderful quarantine facilities at GITMO
Michael K said...
I doubt very much that she has been within a mile of an Ebola patient
To be fair, she hasn't been knowingly near an ebola patient....
" If this topic was not driven by partisan hackery one would expect a greater diversity of views on the right, particularly since it touches directly on the key issue of individual versus state rights."
The issue is competence of people given power over individuals. You really should read this article which suggests that the epidemic is going to burn out in Africa sooner than expected because of quarantine.
I appreciate that you were supportive on evolution but not everything is political. Epidemics of insanely dangerous things are coming and it is time to think about how to deal with them.
Chikungunya is Swahili for “walks bent over.” It attacks the synovial membranes in your joints. It's agonizing. In fact, you're afraid you won't die. But most people get through it. It was, a hundred years ago, a fairly benign disease. There was a lot of travel between India and Durban in South Africa. Commerce, personnel, people, immigrants, back and forth. And the population density ramped up. It’s an RNA virus—you won't find an RNA virus that has more than about 10 genes or so, because any more than that it's made so many mistakes as it's replicated its genome, it's nonfunctional. So it doesn't get propagated. Some time over the last 100 years, one of these strains had a single mutation that enabled it to replicate to a higher titer inside the mosquito, and now that's the dominant form, which means these patients are getting a higher dose of virus. As with any infectious disease agent, the bigger dose you're exposed to, the quicker and more severe are going to be your symptoms.
This is science, not politics.
HT said...
Thank you Cachorro Quente. I am a Democrat and feel there SHOULD be a quarantine. This effort to fit us into to little boxes is so boring.
I second your characterization of our efforts to communicate with each other about this.
The issue with the health workers is that they have made a significant sacrifice to work under appalling conditions. They have taken a very considerable personal risk in order to stop the spread of the disease, something that is of benefit to all of us. We should be celebrating their sacrifice and courage rather than demonizing them and sticking them in a plastic tent in a parking lot with a porta-potty on their return. For me, Christie was completely over the top in his treatment of an unusually brave US citizen. The atmosphere that prompted him to do this was driven by partisan politics. That is unacceptable to me.
Agree with Michael K. Not likely this woman had any involvement in treatment of Ebola patients
Michael K said...
I doubt very much that she has been within a mile of an Ebola patient. She is a bureaucrat, not a clinical provider. It was all for show and to burnish her resume.
You are being inconsistent here. Either she was at risk of getting the disease or she wasn't. If she wasn't, as you imply, then there is no case for quarantine.
I find your imputation of her motives unworthy. There are a lot of easier ways to advance a career.
HT says:
"If I had to nutshell the concerns that people who are desirous of a quarantine have (and that would be me), it would be finding yourself in public when you go from asymptomatic to symptomatic."
It's still a very small risk for two reasons:
1. The amount of virus in body fluids is still very low at that point. It's not a step function, people don't go from almost no virus particles in their fluids to massive amounts, Probably, it's an exponential increase, but time is still early.
2. The gross symptoms which result in easier transmission (projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea (up to 3 gallons/day!) come later.
Lots of people had some contact with Duncan after he became symptomatic and none were infected. Both the Dallas nurses had contacts with people up until, and somewhat after, becoming symptomatic and nobody became ill. The one who flew to Ohio was planning a wedding and had, from what I understand, quite close contact with her fiance (though, how close we don't know). The 21 days on her contacts are pretty close to expired and the median incubation period passed quite a while ago.
So, while I understand your concern, I don't agree that there is much of a risk involved.
If people really want to make health care professionals less likely to make them sick, they should get the nurses and doctors to be better about basic hygiene such as hand washing; hospital transmission of infections is a much greater threat than ebola.
If people really want the government to mandate some action that will save thousands of lives per year, they should demand that the government mandate annual flu shots.
Keep it up, lefties. Take ebola and run with it! That's a winning strategy.
Ok, fine. As an aside, the topic is Ebola. That I and others would like to stay focused on that does not mean we want thousands of others to die due to lack of hospital hygiene. (or the flu, or diabetes, or cardiovascular disease and on and on and on and on!)
So, you make a case on admittedly not the strongest of evidence - viral load and us not knowing a whole lot so far.
Moving on - so you have a pretty high profile Nurse Huffington going out on her bike (and I still don't know what the extent of her patient contact was, if any). What message does this send to regular people? It's been brought up here. If we start to see people recovering fast (thank you first world health care system) and medical personnel flipping off the notion of quarantines...you know? Then might we not have a real situation on our hands? Personally, I think so. If medical personnel can't be careful and thoughtful of others, why should we expect non-medical personnel to be? And why on God's green earth do the Christian missionaries self-quarantine in Tennessee (or nC)?
ARM says:
"We should be celebrating their sacrifice and courage rather than demonizing them and sticking them in a plastic tent in a parking lot with a porta-potty on their return. For me, Christie was completely over the top in his treatment of an unusually brave US citizen. The atmosphere that prompted him to do this was driven by partisan politics. That is unacceptable to me."
I mostly agree with you. Except, she was screened at the airport and the instrument did indicate that she had a fever, though something was wrong as she later tested (multiple times, I assume) to have no fever. According to her account, she was treated rudely and insultingly, and, to whatever extent that is true, it should not have happened and the assholes that treated her poorly should be disciplined. But, when the tests available indicate someone has a high probability of being symptomatic, isolation and further testing are proper.
Probably we agree that she should have been treated better by the hospital and the State of New Jersey. Also, I think Christie, and perhaps other New Jersey officials, probably violated privacy laws in their public statements and Christie's claim that she was "obviously ill" may be defamation per se and I think she should sue his fat ass just to find out. I say that even though I'll probably vote for Christie in 2016, if he's on the ticket.
The least she could do is go hug Obama.
I'm sorrry. When it comes to Ebola, fear is good.
A disease that liquifies your organs is a bit nasty. We'll ultimately stop it, when people fear the disease and ramp up their personal space and the Health care systems assume the worst about treatment and risks.
Michael K said...
suggests that the epidemic is going to burn out in Africa sooner than expected because of quarantine.
The single most important factor is that the infectivity of the virus is very low. It is not really a human virus. The recent results from Liberia are encouraging. I doubt that the quarantines in that region are all that effective, since nothing else seems to be.
HT
I disagree that we don't know a lot and have little evidence. I don't think mandatory quarantine of asymptomatic people is justified and your opinion differs. So be it.
As for the fact that some Christian aid workers self-quarantine, as does the military, apparently, this doesn't tell me anything about anything. Indeed, we should stay on the topic of mandatory quarantines rather than the ideosyncrasies of some groups.
Do you mean contagiousness instead of infectivity?
I'm afraid I don't see why this woman should allow her freedom to be infringed without due process of law. The government claims that the other 300 people on her flight are no danger at all, none at all! Either A) they are right, and she is also no danger to any of us, or B) they are wrong, and we are fucked. The doctor from CA seems to think it is B), but what does he know? He's just some kind of freaking ebola expert. If the federal government is not going to impose a travel ban, then what is the point of a "quarantine"? 301 people get off an airplane, and one of them spends the next 40 days under lock and key, while the rest circulate freely? "No good deed goes unpunished" is an observation, not a moral standard.
I think we can confidently assert that, if this were a Republican administration propagandizing against quarantine (a not at all unlikely scenario), we all know perfectly well that you and the other usual suspects would be over here lickety-split with your Daily Kos talking points about how the corporate-tool rethuglicans were putting us all at risk to safeguard the Koch brothers profits or something, lol.
Well, as usual, your assertion is 100% wrong.
ARM is still insisting on the tent in a parking lot lie, even after being shown that it is false.
No surprise there.
Also, let's say someone gets vomiting sick, say, on the Metro or at a restaurant, and someone jumps in to help. That person is now potentially infected all because someone who thought they'd be fine a few more days guessed wrong.
Who is saying that we shouldn't quarantine people who are "vomiting sick"?
steve uhr: So it is not politics now, but if it were a republican prez. against quarantine, all persons who now say they don't support quarantines would say that they do support quarantines?
Christ, you're dense. And it's really funny, because the stupider and more egregiously point-missing your comment, the more pleased you seem to be with your own cleverness.
"I find your imputation of her motives unworthy. There are a lot of easier ways to advance a career."
I have looked at her publications and that is how it looks.If you have other information, I will apologize.
Here is the CDC site .
" I doubt that the quarantines in that region are all that effective, since nothing else seems to be."
Did you read the article ?
I doubt it. You know more than anybody but Obama.
ARM: ...celebrating their sacrifice and courage...demonizing...an unusually brave US citizen.
None of the above is of any relevance whatsoever to the question of quarantine.
I note the correlation between this type of magical thinking - i.e., the belief that an exposed individual's quality of character alters virus properties - and the propensity to run around babbling ignorantly about Science!
...demonizing
It takes a pathetically childish mind to believe that putting exposed people in quarantine is "demonizing" them.
So, since Kaci has no fever, we needn't worry, right? Well, not necessarily -- Ebola research: Fever not a surefire sign of infection:
So long as an individual's temperature does not exceed 101.5 degrees and there are no visible symptoms of Ebola, health authorities say it should be assumed the person is not infectious.
Yet the largest study of the current outbreak found that in nearly 13% of "confirmed and probable" cases in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and elsewhere, those infected did not have fevers.
I mean, look. The citizens of Liberia do not have a right to a US visa. But the US government has determined that the danger posed by issuing such visas is so trivial that there is no need to restrict them. If that is true, what justification can there be for arbitrarily -- hell, capriciously -- restricting the lawful movements of a US citizen? Why should she allow some bunch of self-selected busy-bodies to declare that she is the one person in North America who is required to take ebola seriously?
It takes a pathetically childish mind to believe that putting exposed people in quarantine is "demonizing" them.
And stupid.
I grew up watching the moon landings. What's the first thing they did with the astronauts after plucking them out of the ocean? They put them in quarantine. Right there on the aircraft carrier they ferried them to.
Here's a picture of President Nixon greeting the Apollo 11 crew through the glass window of their quarantine pod. Here's a picture of the pod.
It takes a pathetically childish mind to believe that putting exposed people in quarantine is "demonizing" them.
And stupid.
I grew up watching the moon landings. What's the first thing they did with the astronauts after plucking them out of the ocean? They put them in quarantine. Right there on the aircraft carrier they ferried them to.
Here's a picture of President Nixon greeting the Apollo 11 crew through the glass window of their quarantine pod. Here's a picture of the pod.
I'd like to see anyone, anywhere make the case we were demonizing the Apollo 11 astronauts in any way.
Anglelyne said...
It takes a pathetically childish mind to believe that putting exposed people in quarantine is "demonizing" them.
So your 'argument' is that she has not been the subject of intense character assassination on right wing talk radio and web sites? Is that your argument?
Here's a headline from the SFgate website:
Bay Area doctors join Ebola fight despite quarantine risks
I think earlier, it might have even said "despite quarantine danger". Maybe they changed it. It does say the article was updated.
In either case, it's a joke headline. They're not facing any danger or any risk by fulfilling a quarantine requirement. That's absurd hyperbole, but of course it fits the narrative. And, apparently, it's not deterring them from going, so that fear seems to be overblown as well.
"And stupid.
I grew up watching the moon landings. What's the first thing they did with the astronauts after plucking them out of the ocean? They put them in quarantine. Right there on the aircraft carrier they ferried them to."
Well, I am glad we agree that putting astronauts in quarantine was monumentally stupid. Believe me, there is no ebola on the Moon.
ARM: "Anglelyne said...
It takes a pathetically childish mind to believe that putting exposed people in quarantine is "demonizing" them."
So your 'argument' is that she has not been the subject of intense character assassination on right wing talk radio and web sites? Is that your argument?
Impressive, ARM. That's a balls-to-the-wall batshit non sequitur even by your superior looney-tune standards. Are you trying to make your avatar weep?
I wish I could have a 3-week staycation. I'd get so much done!
Give up, Anglelyne, you're trying to do the functional equivalent of explaining calculus to a Cat.
Isn't avoiding a quarantine evidence of racism?
Still, if millions of illegal aliens transferred from/through Mexico, and dispersed throughout America, are exempt from scrutiny, then so too should Hickox and company.
Anglelyne said...
That's a balls-to-the-wall batshit non sequitur even by your superior looney-tune standards.
You seem to have lost the plot, again.
You misread what I wrote and then go apeshit when I call you on it, rather than try to understand where you went wrong. Reading comprehension, it's a valuable skill.
Currently we seem to have one self-acknowledged right winger on the side of freedom. I count this as progress.
Stop counting beans.
She does not pose an infection risk, and thus should not be quarantined. This is not a complicated concept to understand.
HT said...
Stop counting beans.
You could walk into gun club in Macon county and get a broader diversity of views.
I mean, look. The citizens of Liberia do not have a right to a US visa. But the US government has determined that the danger posed by issuing such visas is so trivial that there is no need to restrict them. If that is true, what justification can there be for arbitrarily -- hell, capriciously -- restricting the lawful movements of a US citizen? Why should she allow some bunch of self-selected busy-bodies to declare that she is the one person in North America who is required to take ebola seriously?
And yet that same government has decided that 12 of our soldiers returning from their tours of duty in Liberia should be quarantined in a foreign country (Italy). To the consternation of that country. Where is the consistency in policy from this completely incompetent administration?
I think we all prob. agree that the administration has been inept in handling the ebola crisis, turning what should not have been a political issue into a political issue.
Time to worry about razor blades in candy.
"So your 'argument' is that she has not been the subject of intense character assassination on right wing talk radio and web sites? Is that your argument?"
Once she lawyered up and defied the quarantine, she was inviting this. It isn't just "right wing talk radio" that is critical.
Personally, I don't care as I think she is a phony and never went near an Ebola case.
This is some sort of political agenda by her.
America's Sweetheart was wearing a bicycle helmet for *her* protection. She doesn't give a sh*t about anyone else's.
Who is saying that we shouldn't quarantine people who are "vomiting sick"?
Well, sh*t, there goes Mardis Gras.
I've come to one, single, definite conclusion from reading this thread.
And each of you who does not guess it right should, out of respect, send me $1 so I can retire comfortably.
Ready? Got your cash and envelopes at hand?
Jupiter is Blighter.
Where personal responsibility and the law never meet.
"It isn't against the law so I can do anything I like"
This is why we have so many useless and overreaching laws.
sticking them in a plastic tent in a parking lot with a porta-potty on their return
If you looked at the pictures, it was clear that this was an effort to deal with the issue of waste disposal which has come up a few times in emory and dallas. You can't keep track of waste that gets flushed down the system with the rest.
It's brilliant that people go to africa to help patients (although hit sounds like this particular nurse didn't actually do that). It's also brilliant if they care enough about their family and communities in America to self quarantine like the doctors in California and Tennessee and the nurse in texas.
According to her account, she was treated rudely and insultingly
I think we should get the truth of this, but lots of people think they've been treated rudely when they haven't. Haven't you ever worked retail?
"I'm surprised that most of you are perfectly okay giving the government, whom we all trust so much, total power to impose a quarantine whenever they want even if they can find no expert to support their position."
-- An expert supports the quarantine. Please at least pretend to have a working knowledge of the topic at hand.
"Who is saying that we shouldn't quarantine people who are "vomiting sick"?"
-- Like with Thomas Duncan, people don't go from perfectly healthy to obviously Ebola patient in a convenient quarantine, clean room at the drop of a hat. From the moment obvious symptoms [vomiting, etc.] occur, to the moment you diagnose them with ebola, you are putting many, many, many people at risk.
If you want to take that risk, then just say it: You'd rather risk a few people dying so that you don't inconvenience someone for a few days.
"So your 'argument' is that she has not been the subject of intense character assassination on right wing talk radio and web sites?"
-- That has primarily been because she decided her convenience was worth more than following quarantine procedures. Odds are, if she had agreed to the quarantine and simply complained about the mistreatment, people would have been on her side [as they were until she decided to ignore the quarantine.]
Matthew Sablan said...
"An expert supports the quarantine."
Oh, well. An expert! Everyone should always do as the experts say, even if they disagree.
What Sandra Fluke was to birth control, Kaci is gunning to be about quarantines.
Shanna quoted me,
"WHO suggests 42 days for quarantine..."
And then wrote,
"I don't believe this is the case, the 42 days is twice the quarantine - it is when they will declare a country officially 'ebola free' or something.
The longest I've heard of an incubation period is 25 days, although I haven't looked closely at it. (and then there were some points about the virus living longer in breast milk, semen, etc)."
Here's a link to the WHO website where you can find the information I had, that the safe incubation period is 42 days and coincedentally WHO considers a country ebola free if no new cases have been reported for 42 days.
You can read it here:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/14-october-2014/en/
So here we have a situation where everyone is quoting the 21 day figure like it was the 11th Commandment when the number could be quite higher. Settled science.
The media, as reported by Sharyl Attkinson, are doing their duty to the state by not reporting any new ebola facts before the election.
We are being played for suckers and this time it isn't just with the price of gas, this time we could die.
Join the fight for real freedom, call in sick and stay home. Self-isolate for safety and sanity.
Jupiter: The point was someone said no experts supported the quarantine. Pointing out that, hey, actually, a Nobel prize winner supported it -- an expert -- was to demonstrate that the previous commenter was clearly poorly read up on the matter, in re, experts and quarantines.
Sometimes experts are wrong; sometimes they differ. That is a different thing than saying: "No expert ever is saying X," in an attempt to cast your opponents as flat-Earth creationists.
This is known as the subtext of the comment I made previously. The fact I had to unpack it into actual text weakens the point, rhetorically, but at least we can be assured it is no longer going over anyone's heads.
So, thanks, I guess, for making me explain the joke.
Like with Thomas Duncan, people don't go from perfectly healthy to obviously Ebola patient in a convenient quarantine, clean room at the drop of a hat. From the moment obvious symptoms [vomiting, etc.] occur, to the moment you diagnose them with ebola, you are putting many, many, many people at risk.
You're putting many, many, many people at risk by leaving your house. After all, you might have Ebola and not know it, too.
What we do know is that there is no evidence that Ebola carriers are contagious prior to when they begin running a fever. Hickox is not running a fever, ergo she poses no known risk. End of conversation.
What we do know is that there is no evidence that we know of that Ebola carriers are contagious prior to when they begin running a fever. Hickox is not running a fever, ergo we assume she poses no known risk. End of conversation.
There, fixed that for you...
Matthew Sablan: This is known as the subtext of the comment I made previously. The fact I had to unpack it into actual text weakens the point, rhetorically, but at least we can be assured it is no longer going over anyone's heads.
This is your brain on twitter. We seem to have reached the point where the average person is incapable of following a chain of thought longer than a 140-character bullet point. Or for longer than 20 minutes.
So, thanks, I guess, for making me explain the joke.
Since getting jokes more complex than fart jokes requires more cognitive capacity than that, in the future there will be nothing but fart jokes.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/14-october-2014/en/
Yes I read that days ago. It says:
"According to WHO recommendations, health care workers who have attended patients or cleaned their rooms should be considered as “close contacts” and monitored for 21 days after the last exposure"
Then it says:
"For WHO to declare an Ebola outbreak over, a country must pass through 42 days"
Which is what I said. 21 day quarantine, 42 to declare country outbreak over.
Now maybe you are worried about this:
"The period of 42 days, with active case-finding in place, is twice the maximum incubation period for Ebola virus disease and is considered by WHO as sufficient to generate confidence in a declaration that an Ebola outbreak has ended."
But it is still linked to the ending of the outbreak not quarantine.
What we do know is that there is no evidence that Ebola carriers are contagious prior to when they begin running a fever. Hickox is not running a fever, ergo she poses no known risk. End of conversation.
Actually, the doctors tracking the outbreak said they found NO fever in something like 13% of cases (I believe the exact figure varied by outbreak). Other symptoms (diarrhea and vomiting) we found somewhere around 60someodd% of the time.
Shanna wrote:
Now maybe you are worried about this:
"The period of 42 days, with active case-finding in place, is twice the maximum incubation period for Ebola virus disease and is considered by WHO as sufficient to generate confidence in a declaration that an Ebola outbreak has ended."
But it is still linked to the ending of the outbreak not quarantine.
I read this and may be misintrepting but just below that in the WHO report is this:
Recent studies conducted in West Africa have demonstrated that 95% of confirmed cases have an incubation period in the range of 1 to 21 days; 98% have an incubation period that falls within the 1 to 42 day interval.
So doesn't that say, everything else notwithstanding, that for a small percentage of Ebola patients the incubation period is longer than 21 days?
"What we do know is that there is no evidence that we know of that Ebola carriers are contagious prior to when they begin running a fever. Hickox is not running a fever, ergo we assume she poses no known risk. End of conversation."
There, fixed that for you...
I love that you think that's a "fix". We have no rational reason to believe she's a danger, but let's take away her rights anyway because there *could* be dangers we don't know about.
The problem with you and the rest of the pants-wetting brigade is that you aren't bright enough to think through the implications of this. If the government can strip people of rights without having to prove they're a danger, they can do the same to you.
Indeed, by your standards, you too may currently have Ebola. If asymptomatic people can transmit it, literally everybody in the world could have it. The question ceases to be "have you been in contact with someone displaying symptoms" and becomes "have you been in contact with anyone, who has been in contact with anyone, etc etc, who eventually displayed symptoms".
So go lock yourself in your house for 21 days and shun all human contact.
Shanna, in the study you're talking about, Ebola patients who displayed no fever displayed other symptoms. They found no cases where a person was asymptomatic but contagious.
Nobody is saying "so long as her fever stays down there's nothing to worry about, even if she starts to vomit blood or something".
That's fair Revenant, except you did say 'What we do know is that there is no evidence that Ebola carriers are contagious prior to when they begin running a fever'.
Just offering a clarification.
The way these people are self monitoring is taking temp. They should know that's not fullproof.
Matthew Sablan said...
-- That has primarily been because she decided her convenience was worth more than following quarantine procedures. Odds are, if she had agreed to the quarantine and simply complained about the mistreatment, people would have been on her side
Ah, the authoritarian impulse. If she has just done what we wanted we wouldn't have had to bitch-slap her.
Revenant said...
Your worry of the risks of government involvement are not without merit and on many, many issues I would stand shoulder to shoulder with you that the government should step out of the way BUT (very big BUT) this woman voluntarily went into an area where there is a current, contagious illness because there is a current, contagious illness there. To want to ensure she does not carry said illness is not only smart but prudent. As we currently are not (even) 90% sure we know how it is transmitted, it is only prudent to want to control her movements until we can verify that she is free of a illness that (among other things) can make you bleed from your eyes and has (globally) a 50% chance of killing you.
If this precious little snowflake was a real healthcare worker and really cared about people, she would self quarantine herself especially after making such a stink when the government tried to do that. Instead we have a nurse that thinks she is a god and knows all and is more extra double good than all of her sad, rube neighbors and has earned the RIGHT to prance around town during the incubation period of this virus which she likely does not have but can not say to 100% certainty that she is right.
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