While I'm sure that our current federal and state governments probably fucked up, in some way, in implementing the law in this case. It has been law for 70 years, quarantine and Ebola, among all other known communicable diseases at the time. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title42/pdf/USCODE-2011-title42-chap6A-subchapII-partG.pdf She should get some R&R and quit her fucking bitchin.
Thats a pretty heroic stance to take. Imagine if someone else got ebola because of someone's selfish decision. We're not taking about the flu, we're talking about something that has around a 50% mortality rate. At a certain point, if you're treating ebola patients, you have to recognize you have an obligation to the public health to be cautious. If you don't accept that need for caution, then caution will be placed on you. Government exists to regulate things like drivers licenses, drugs, etc because people are stupid selfish animals who often don't make rational decisions. Anyway, she really just needs to chill out for a bit. Two weeks really isn't that long of a time, and its not like she's in a prison, shes in an isolation unit. She's not chilling with Dixie, she's hanging out in a hospital room for a while. And no one is violating her due process by any stretch. People get sent to jail and have to bail out, is their due process being violated when they can't bail out and stay for a while?
The irony would be sweet, but then Christie would look like an ass despite his attempts to isolate her. I imagine she would claim she felt totally fine or just thought she had a cold. Here's a fun link http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html
I've taken the position I do because I'm not convinced the decisions being made are being based on logic and reason but instead on fear and hysteria. If the disease is such a dire threat then please tell me how effective quarantine procedures can be created out of a reactionary quarantine directive that wasn't implemented by a public health authority. As it stands, this quarantine is nothing more than a political maneuver made to appease illogical fear.
Trakiel, at this point I think you're just being contrarian. There's no way you actually can believe that people who were in hot zones can travel freely without putting the greater public at some risk.
I hope that woman goes to fucking jail. She knows there is a 21 day incubation period. So for her to say that "she feels fine" is completely irrelevant. The arrogance and audacity she is displaying is atrocious and to think she is somehow different than anyone else is completely irresponsible. To sit and play the civil rights card is disingenuous. I'm not suggesting a call for widespread panic. But normal, safe precautions should not be out of the question. The reason I think people are lying about having been in contact with Ebola patients is because they know they will be forced to quarantine. And they don't want to. Hey jackass, if you are going to go fight a losing cause, don't bring it home.
We don't live in a technocratic system. Politicians are hardly, if ever, subject matter experts. Even at the federal level, the surgeon general position (which is vacant I might add), isn't an authority position either. Hindsight is 20/20 and it may be an overreaction after the fact, but I would rather this nurse file a civil suit against the State of New Jersey than risk someone dying of Ebola.
Four weeks into basic training at Ft. Ord, CA, 3-4 guys in the barracks next door came down with spinal meningitis. Two of them died. Since this can be spread by coughing, sneezing, etc., there was much panic. We were due for a two week leave after the eight weeks of basic was finished. The Army brass was considering quarantine. We were not happy. So, some genius hit on a solution - we all got 2,000,000 i.u. of penicillin injected into our arms and were sent on leave. Great, huh? Except this was the viral form of the disease, not the bacterial, so penicillin would have absolutely no effect. Well, it would cure the clap if anyone had it. I never heard if any of the guys on leave or those they associated with while on leave to came down with the disease. But then, there's lots of things we never hear about.
Interesting, because if that hysteria exists, justified or not, then this quarantine will work to quell that. Never mind that it seems to be a reasonable precaution to take after it's been shown that the "we'll trust you to do the right thing" approach failed. After all the bullshit the US has done to the entire fucking country with the TSA and other "Homeland Security" policies, putting a single person into a quarantine seems to be the least of your issues.
You will probably not find a more staunch defender of individual rights than me. What is happening here is NOT an unreasonable restriction on her 'rights.' First of all, she went to a part of the world where there is an outbreak of an infectious disease to treat an infectious disease. She did so voluntarily. Part of the responsibility that comes with that is you may well have to follow some inconvenient protocols on your return, whether or not they were present when you left. Second, as pretty much everyone in the world now knows, 21 day incubation period. I'm glad she feels fine. Now. That's great. What about tomorrow? Or the next two weeks? Does she have a medical magic eight ball? Third, so far, there have been several 'health care professionals' that have utterly failed to follow basic protocols. Off the top of my head, two doctors have decided to just go out in public (Snyderman and bowling dude), one nurse went on a flight to Cleveland, and now this Maine cunt wants to go to the local McDonalds and play in the room with all the colored balls with immunodeficient orphans. Ok, maybe the last part isn't true, but my point remains unchanged. When the 'professionals' aren't playing by the rules, you need to make them. It's that simple. They should know better. Or don't go to fucking Africa. Humanitarianism is awesome, and people should be encouraged to engage in it, right up until the point where they risk other peoples' lives, because then it's not really humanitarianism, is it? She should be stuck in that home til she stops being a cunt, which based on the interviews I've seen will be a week from never.
As a nurse all I can say is fuck that entitled, self-important cunt. Thanks for making us look like assholes. She is selfish, wrong and unprofessional. If I was on the board of nursing in her home state I would be calling for her license for endangering the public welfare. I would also be looking for the medical licenses of the doctors who did what they did.
Wow, lots of hysteria on this page, even from those in the medical profession. Can I remind everyone that the only people who have contracted Ebola within the United States were the two nurses who were caring for Thomas Duncan when he was near death? Nobody else has been infected, not even Duncan's family in Dallas, and not anyone who came in contact with the doctor, Craig Spencer, who went about his normal daily activities in NYC while feeling the onset of symptoms. To argue that the nurse in Maine is a public health risk is to ignore all the facts we know about Ebola. I applaud Kaci Hickox for standing up for her rights, and I applaud the judge in her case who lifted her quarantine, based on facts. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/us/ebola-maine-nurse-kaci-hickox.html?_r=0
This isn't about her goddamned rights. This is willfully ignoring the 21 day incubation period at which point a person can become sick. And just because people were lucky enough not to get infected by the doctor in New York, who also lied to authorities about the level of his interactions with Ebola patients doesn't mean that all is well and good. The people who are applauding her with a bunch of "you go girl!" are some of the most misguided twats on the planet. She's more than likely not ill. OK, so wait till the incubation period is over and chill the fuck out.
I liked the comment someone made of the photo of her out on her bike ride wearing her helmet... "Why the hell is she wearing a helmet? I mean, she's not likely to get into an accident, therefore the helmet is medically unnecessary."
It is absolutely about her rights not to be unreasonably confined by a reactionary government. The fact that the NY doctor lied about his travel has no bearing on whether the Maine nurse could infect someone else with Ebola. Maybe you need some help understanding Ebola: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/qa.html From the page: "A person must have symptoms to spread Ebola to others." Requiring a person who has been exposed to Ebola to monitor and report their condition is reasonable. If Ebola were able to be spread before a person shows symptoms it would be necessary to quarantine anyone who had been exposed to it for the duration of the incubation period, but we know for certain that's not how it works. Quarantining her when she shows no signs of being infected is unjustified.
No but it shows that people are willing to lie about really important things to avoid a quarantine. The problem is not that she's not contagious right now. It's that after people seem to be showing symptoms, they have already been in public places and done things. The symptoms don't all start at one time. They start flu-like and get worse. If you just wait until the 21 day period is up and nothing is wrong, its fine. If you choose to go help treat Ebola patients, there is nothing wrong with being made to follow a simple protocol. When it comes to things like this, I always feel its better to be safe than sorry. I don't think anything that I am saying is hysterical or unreasonable. And this chick is making it about something its not because she thinks she's special.
If she were just some average schmo, I might agree with you. For me, the fact that she is a nurse and has a responsibility to do the right thing and be a fucking professional , not act like a self-important ass.
If you were going to an area of mass-death -- e.g. ebola regions -- to for the conscious purpose of helping those who are dying, knowing you might become infected also, you'd have to accept that your own death is a possible outcome, right? That means you are doing this out of your desire to help others, without regard to your own personal safety, correct? That means that, in essence, you have already accepted this as a possible suicide mission... And from that logic, anything "less than death" is a good outcome, correct? So how is being quarantined while you are still alive after your mission, considered bad? It's still "less than death," and you still accomplished your mission of helping others. I just don't get it.
You are placing an amazing amount of faith in a person being aware of exactly when their symptoms start. You ever get the flu? I do. I also know that when I do, it doesn't happen that one second I'm asymptomatic and the next second I have 103 degree fever and feel like a bag of ass (ok, to be fair, I always feel like a bag of ass). But my point remains. Is a person symptomatic and contagious at 99.7? 99.8? You monitor twice a day, so we're all good right? No way someone might be symptomatic, not know their temperature is now 99 and they can spread it while they are at the grocery store (by sneezing on a self checkout thing - yes, it's not airborne, but mucus is a bodily fluid) because 6 hours earlier they were 'normal' and their 6 hours away from the next monitoring. That's certainly a risk worth taking, right? Or how about the person whom made an affirmative (and laudable) choice to go somewhere that there's an outbreak and expose themselves to this disease accept the absolute minimum personal responsibility and follow the protocols so they don't potentially expose anyone else if they were exposed. Yes, it's inconvenient. But someone's chosen course of action that could result in hurting someone doesn't get out of responsibility because it's inconvenient. Well, unless they work on Wall Street, but that's a different issue.
I think someone mentioned work place sanctions for these healthcare workers who disregard protocol. This seems to be the best course of action. Unless you have laws in place covering these quarantine situations for healthcare workers, you aren't going to have the force of law on your side (due process and all). We can change the laws to reflect this but Im never one to suggest passing reactionary laws in paranoia frenzy. Good lord though can you imagine the first lawsuit/media frenzy when it's determined an infected healthcare worker disregarded protocol and got a civilian sick with Ebola? It really is an interesting topic of debate when it comes to personal freedoms and personal responsibility in light of possibly spreading a very high mortality rate virus in your normal daily movements. Where do your rights end and others' rights begin? Somehow it has already become a partisan issue. There really is nothing people won't blame on their political opposites these days.