Ebola Quarantines: USA taking away civil rights one person at a time?

originally posted by: AmethystWolf
I actually support this nurse. Clearly she is doing this to set a precedent. I respect that. If she isn't sick and has tested negative then she should be able to go about her life.....

If she isn't sick, and has tested negative....

It takes a while to test positive for Ebola, sometimes the test can be negative even after symptoms begin. Kent Brantly tested negative twice after fever started....

So NO....NO NO NO she is not clear because she feels fine now.

Now reconsider the rest of your thoughts on the matter, but do not muddy the waters by declaring her free and clear - she is not. She is a high-risk exposure, and unlike she keeps saying, the science is not clear on the matter, and neither does it agree with her position on the matter. Any one using her statements of 'science' to support an argument of unjust treatment against her is distorting the truth.

I do not oppose the idea of quarantine, I feel it is necessary to protects the rights of the citizens and prevent a permanent change in the ecology of this continent. Ebola will continue to grow like a slow-motion disaster unless something changes in the efforts to control it and stop the exponential infection rate. This will require sacrifices to liberties if this country intends to stop it from getting here. This will hurt economies.

I DO FEAR the current administration and what they can do with that kind of power.

That is MY quandry with rallying support for restrictions. I am sacrificing peace of mind right now due to the failure of this government to stop incoming visas, and to quarantine citizens tthat return from there. I have to travel, and get on airplanes. And those new policies I hope will make it safer for me to do my job, may also get me caught in a quarantine myself. Double-edged sword.

At the same time, I have to worry - what will Obola do with this new crisis? I fear he will let it stew until martial law is necessary to get control....and that is as scary or maybe even more scary than Ebola.

When we started this 6 years of hell, we were feeling the heat even then from the mixture of medicine and politics, but did we ever imagine this coming our way? The ultimate 'liberty' vs. 'safety' grudge match, and real concerns about who will be deciding who lives and who dies simply by the policies they set?

a reply to: lakesidepark

It takes a while to test positive for Ebola, sometimes the test can be negative even after symptoms begin. Kent Brantly tested negative twice after fever started....

Ah, I thought I heard that before. Thanks!

originally posted by: tavi45
She doesn't have Ebola.

That will not be confirmed for at least 21 days. Please see my previous post.

Why should she be quarantined?

Because we do not know yet if she contracted Ebola.

So by the arguments you guys are using we should quarantine anyone who comes from any other country. They might have diseases.

No. We should quarantine anyone coming from a known hot zone, especially when they have been in known contact with infected Ebola patients, and especially when it is a level 4 pathogen that has never been in the wild on this continent and has a 70 - 90% kill ratio.

Some people think their rights and knowledge supercede everyone elses, as in the case of this nurse, and the doctor in New York, and the nurse flying to Cleveland...
It doesn't, and we have to take some actions to protect everyone else's right to live safely with a reasonable expectation of not dying of disease from encounters with people known to be at risk.
Seems that is the law with other diseases....

a reply to: Petros312

the easeist way to deal with this is to let her go, but if she infects someone and they die charge her with premeditated murder.

a reply to: Petros312

IF you are dumb enough to go to africa and be around the god damn EBOLA then return to the US you NEED to abide by the quarantine. The risk outweighs this losers BS rights. It should be mandatory for people to be quarantined for this type of situation.

I can stand this attention seeking woman. Get her off the streets and place her in quarantine or arrest her. In fact send her back to Africa and take away her passport for being a threat to public health. Maybe that is a bit extreme but I have the same notion for Aids people too! All a threat!!

a reply to: projectbane

So wanting to have her constitutional rights respected is attention seeking? Seems like she wanted zero attention and just wanted to see her boyfriend and family after coming back from a place of death and disease. It seems like she doesn't want attention but to be left alone.

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: projectbane



So wanting to have her constitutional rights respected is attention seeking? Seems like she wanted zero attention and just wanted to see her boyfriend and family after coming back from a place of death and disease. It seems like she doesn't want attention but to be left alone.

At this point it does not really matter what SHE wants. She went there, and has some risk, hell her roommate is now reported to have died from Ebola....

It's a burden to be a disease risk. And not a burden that is usually CHOSEN. She chose this burden, but it appears not to be a hero, but to become self-righteous in her feeling of superiority over 'common' folk. And it appears with the roommate issue, she has some reason to fear, and is probably in full self-denial - seems we have seen this with almost every Ebola infected person here in the States so far. How else do you keep her bitchy attitude unless she is totally blocking out the possibility that she may become sick and die soon - full denial yes.

(of course, the other possibility - is that she is fully aware that she does NOT have Ebola, because her duties are being fabricated to represent herself as a DWF employee - when she is actually a CDC employee - fired by DWF - now working as media advisor - sent on a mission to act as an exposed HCW, to subvert any quarantine actions in the states before we even get started)

Temporary suspension of liberties for one person to prevent this pathogen from getting a foothold here is NOT too much to expect!

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: Petros312

That headline is kinda ridiculous. How long would it take to take everyone's civil rights away one at a time?

I am a huge advocate of personal liberty, but there is a public health interest that in this case trumps individual liberties. It has the potential to kill a LOT of citizens. It's not like people are being thrown in jail or anything, and if employers retaliate against quarantined employees, well then I'd say the ACLU could step in at that point.

NOTHING trumps anyone's liberty. There isn't any authority by the constitution to do that. Legitimate threats to public health have been dealt with since the USA was a country without ever revoking personal liberty. When these situations are legitimate, they have plenty of evidence and public support based on facts and only the facts.

Now we see politicians and a president who don't care about the facts or any scientific documentation to back them up in how they deal with things, but only as political tools to leverage them somewhere else in their goals.

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: projectbane

Seems like she wanted zero attention and just wanted to see her boyfriend and family after coming back from a place of death and disease. It seems like she doesn't want attention but to be left alone.

If she didn't want attention she wouldn't have thrown such a public hissy fit, requested services from a high profile lawyer, gone on the Today Show & agreed to have her attorney release a statement that she would NOT self quarantine.

She even went as far as releasing a photo on twitter or Facebook of her tired self taking a nap on the sofa!!!! If that's not for attention, I don't know what is.

People who don't want attention drawn to themselves, do just the opposite of what she is doing.

originally posted by: projectbane
a reply to: Petros312



...... Maybe that is a bit extreme but I have the same notion for Aids people too! All a threat!!

HIV is not the same. There are no symptoms for years unless you know exactly what to look for; and that disease is truly a 'internal bodily fluid' - blood, semen, and lymphatic fluid ONLY...

...the amount of virus exposure required is by magnitudes thousands of times higher than the exposure needed to establish an Ebola infection...

....quarantine of all KNOWN exposed people would not stop new infections (mainly because it was already in the populations of many countries before it was identified, and could be tested for - there was no locale we could isolate it to)....

...there is available treatment that not only restores health, but reduces the viral load to a level that makes it almost impossible to acquire an infection, and this does NOT exist for Ebola.....

And finally....if someone with HIV does something that knowingly exposes another to the virus, they have committed a felony, and are jailed!

FYI the U.S. did bar anyone with HIV from entering the country until the law was rescinded in 2007 in order to allow people to travel here to attend the IAS conference in Toronto that year - Canada also struck down their law that year....Australia, China, Russia, and many other countries still bar entry for those with HIV....

Don't send me to the island please....but if I was to do something that put someone at risk, I would expect to be jailed for the felony I had committed....these people whining over being mandated for an Ebola temporary quarantine have it a bit better, at least their misery will be over in 21 days and they can go back to being the asshats they were previously. If they violate laws meant to prevent the spread of deadly disease, arrest them and detain them, trial, sentence, the whole shebang! We already do that for the last global plague out of Africa.

I fear your wish may come true, as everyone will become outraged if Ebola gets loose in a widespread epidemic because of these asshats that think they 'understand the science' of a new outbreak already...the backlash will ensnare our liberties like we have never seen in out history - and the rabid response by the public to anyone that carries some type of disease will most likely run all over those that deal with HIV and other diseases too.

a reply to: NoCorruptionAllowed

I am inclined to agree, but you have a disease that is spread like the common cold, that has a 94% mortality rate for those over 45, 70% rate overall. So you are basically in favor of allowing this disease to spread unencumbered in the name of 'personal liberty'? I don't think this country has faced a potential epidemic like this, particularly when so many people travel.

Having said that, either the whole thing is overblown in the first place, or a whole lot of people are going to be getting sick in the next week or two. Obviously not enough information is being disclosed about the situation.

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

Lol. The terrifying dangers of potential dangers.

Ebola is not spread like the cold.....

There are tons of things we can do to prepare. Quarantining a healthy person for political theater accomplishes nothing.

I'll give into the overblown demands of the terrified populace when someone catches it who wasn't a health care worker treating someone with it. Until then let her hang out with her boyfriend.

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

Ebola is not spread like the cold.....

I guess that depends on who you choose to believe. On the one hand, the CDC published that it is, and experts have come out saying as much, but if it were spread as readily as the cold or flu, you'd think a lot more people would have it. That leads into the second part of my post - if it IS spread that way, then a whole lot of people are about to get real sick.

In case you didn't read between the lines, I did not claim to know, I simply said there are a lot of IFS to the whole situation. Time will tell, I guess.

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

It's aerosol not airborne. It's in between AIDS and the common cold. It's easier to get than AIDS by a long shot but I can't infect my while school with Ebola from sneezing a few times during 4th period. Ebola particles don't travel in the air. They travel only as far as the fluid they are in travels.

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

It's aerosol not airborne. It's in between AIDS and the common cold. It's easier to get than AIDS by a long shot but I can't infect my while school with Ebola from sneezing a few times during 4th period. Ebola particles don't travel in the air. They travel only as far as the fluid they are in travels.

Okay, well that makes sense. Doesn't exactly make me feel better about it.

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: NoCorruptionAllowed

I am inclined to agree, but you have a disease that is spread like the common cold, that has a 94% mortality rate for those over 45, 70% rate overall. So you are basically in favor of allowing this disease to spread unencumbered in the name of 'personal liberty'? I don't think this country has faced a potential epidemic like this, particularly when so many people travel.

Having said that, either the whole thing is overblown in the first place, or a whole lot of people are going to be getting sick in the next week or two. Obviously not enough information is being disclosed about the situation.

I think you may have misunderstood part of what I meant or said. I said when things have facts and documentation being used to deal with a crisis rather than politicians being able to begin calling for safety over liberty when no liberty needs to be revoked in order to regain safety by just using common sense and equal participation. Some are now calling for liberties to go to hell and lets start screwing people over, rather than use all the very same tools we had decades ago that did what could be done efficiently without screwing over the entire country's founding principles.

I could have worded my post better before..

Looks like a lot of people favoring mandatory quarantine are at odds with current developments on this:

"Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere ruled Friday that Kaci Hickox must continue daily monitoring of her health but said there is no need to isolate her or restrict her movements because she has no symptoms and is therefore not contagious.

The judge also decried the 'misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information' circulating about the lethal disease in the U.S."

Nurse free to move about as restrictions eased

a reply to: Petros312

Reason prevails. It's so rare these days. Good job Charlie.