Stop calling me 'the Ebola nurse'
November 17, 2014 8:59 AM   Subscribe

 
Thanks for posting.
posted by josher71 at 9:05 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Since all humans originally came from Africa which is a current ebola hotspot my position is that we should all be quarantined immediately.

The fact that it's cold today and I'd rather be at home snuggling with pets is in no way shaping this public policy recommendation.
posted by vuron at 9:15 AM on November 17, 2014 [15 favorites]


Man, this takes me back. Remember Ebola? God, that was some crazy shit. Remember that? It was back... right before the mid-term elections a couple weeks ago. Wild times, wild times.

You don't hear about it so much anymore. I wonder what ever happened to Ebola?
posted by Naberius at 9:19 AM on November 17, 2014 [95 favorites]


Republican Presidential hopeful Chris Christie.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:20 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Are you suggesting that politicians were hyping the threat of Ebola for political gain?

I am shocked at your cynicism that people might be politicizing a public health situation for personal gain.
posted by vuron at 9:22 AM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


The government has always lied. The public seems to be a bunch of terrified, hypochondriacal ninnies to an almost unbelievable extent. I don't care if the government or Fox or whoever is trying to scare you, WHY ARE SO FREAKING SCARED OF EVERYTHING? Like sheep. Mindless, unthinking sheep. You're going to die eventually so get over it. Sickening.
posted by umberto at 9:23 AM on November 17, 2014 [16 favorites]


Have just tried to find the video - but Rachel Maddow did a really great, comprehensive breakdown of ebola's communicability and symptoms at the beginning of one of her shows. Going from that to a conversation with someone on Facebook has given me a theory of what's behind the panic:

Someone on Facebook was freaking out about this nurse going on a bike ride while she was at home. "Ebola is transmitted through body fluids," he said, "and isn't sweat a body fluid?" I had just seen Rachel's show and told him that "if you actually have ebola, you go from feeling like you have the flu to shitting your guts out and puking everything up to bleeding from all orifices to dying. If you had ebola, you wouldn't feel like going on a bike ride." And we went back and forth another couple times in that vein.

It's just hit me now - the last time that there was this big viral disease that was really deadly that affected anyone in the US (at least to the point that it made news), it was HIV. And that was only 30 years ago - within memory for a lot of people. Including me. And I do sort of recall that the grounds were shifting awfully fast when it came to information about the disease - first it was something that only affected a couple of isolated groups of people - then that expanded. It got the reputation of being something that was only spread sexually - then that expanded too. We also probably started thinking that the window of time between "infection" and "symptoms start showing" was short as well - only to learn that "wait, someone can be infected for five years before symptoms start showing up?" So for some, "you can't spread ebola through sweat" may actually sound a lot like "yeah, and we also thought only Haitians could get AIDS, but look how wrong we were about that, what are we gonna find out tomorrow?"

The difference is, of course, that HIV was basically unknown until things started rolling in the 70's and 80's. The very first mention I remember of it is a popular-science magazine I had when I was a kid, which did an article on "How The CDC Works" as its cover piece once and was using "for example, there's this new disease they're investigating now...." as its test-case. (They weren't even calling it AIDS yet; I think the article concluded by saying that someone was suggesting GRID as a disease name.) By contrast, the world has had experience with ebola - it's just that it's all been outside the U.S., so it doesn't make most people's radar. So all they know is "eek deadly disease that is contagious and I haven't seen it before", and the only playbook they have for "how to deal with that" is back when we were all collectively learning "oh, okay, so that's how HIV works" and they freak out.

(Tangentially related - an awesome Colbert Report video, with a former politician laying down truth about ebola.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:24 AM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


If we had better health care in this country, maybe people wouldn't be so afraid of a curable disease.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:25 AM on November 17, 2014 [39 favorites]


I have mixed feelings about this woman. On one had, the North American response to ebola has been ridiculously fearful. None of the original patient's immediate connections (girlfriend and nephews) developed ebola, even though he was very symptomatic in their presence. We've seen that feverish patients (i.e. very early in their infection) are very very low risks to people. So I appreciate that this nurse is highlighting the exaggerated response, and the lack of scientific common sense applied.

On the other hand, I think she is taking a tone-deaf, selfish stance in the way she communicates her concerns. If you have been face-to-face with ebola patients, the kind and graceful thing to do is to refrain from close contact with others, for the good of social health, until the incubation period is over. I understand that she lives in a remote area and didn't do anything horrible aside from ride her bike and talk to a reporter. But I think her attitude about it has been an indignant "how dare you", and that doesn't speak well for her character.

This may have to do with how she was apprehended at the airport when she arrived, which sounded like she was taken off guard and treated like a criminal. It was very heavy handed, and her outspokenness may be a reaction to that. But still. Can't you understand that you were face to face with a disease at its most communicable, and so people are concerned? There is a middle ground and she seems to not want it to be in the middle, but more on her side.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:29 AM on November 17, 2014 [25 favorites]


You're right Peepsburg, she is as selfish as the most selfish entitled American and I can't stand that I continue to hear from her. Until somebody else contracts the disease while within our borders I have a feeling this issue will continue to be invisible now that the elections are over. Pathetic.
posted by ReeMonster at 9:33 AM on November 17, 2014


If we had better health care in this country, maybe people wouldn't be so afraid of a curable disease.

My understanding, and perhaps this is a semantics problem with language more than anything else, is that ebola is NOT curable, per se.

We have no drugs to treat the disease. We actually have no way to even alleviate the symptoms. My understanding is that treatment for ebola, even at the most advanced medical care facilities, involves mostly providing fluids and nutrition to the patient whose body is trying to expel as much fluid and nutrients as possible.

Basically, we don't cure the disease. We try to provide basic support for a living creature until the person's own immune system either fights off the disease or fails and the patient dies.
posted by hippybear at 9:34 AM on November 17, 2014 [14 favorites]


I think one of the issues causing the hysteria, though, is that in the third world countries where Ebola has been prevalent until this large outbreak that has spread beyond Africa, it wasn't actually all that curable. I'm an educated person who's read a lot of pop science about stuff like this over the years and I've been surprised at how treatable it's been in the context of modern, first-world hospitals. It's going to take some time to convince people that what happens in Africa isn't so much because of the virulence of the disease as the inadequacy of the facilities for dealing with it. I mean, I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the other day, filmed in 2001, where they made an Ebola joke as a stand-in for something sure to kill somebody. Everything we've heard about the disease until this year is that it kills more or less everyone who gets it.

Seeing how treatable it actually is if caught early and managed well makes what's happening in Africa even more depressing, of course, and it would be nice if the political focus could be more on modernizing health care in the third world rather than quarantining everybody who flies in from Liberia. But, you know. Politics.
posted by something something at 9:34 AM on November 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


If we had better health care in this country, maybe people wouldn't be so afraid of a curable disease.

Because very few are infected in North America, and because the quarantine measures have been swift, it has been a largely curable disease in North America. If the system was swamped and overwhelmed with patients (as it is in west Africa), then the recovery rate drops dramatically. So people are right to be afraid of it, since by most measures it continues to be a very deadly disease.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:34 AM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


Republican Presidential hopeful Chris Christie: Happy to sacrifice civil liberties for momentary political gain.

I'm the opposite: I love Ms. Hickox unapologetic tone -- how willing she is to call out the fear-mongering for what it is (or rather "was," now that midterm elections have passed).
posted by gladly at 9:35 AM on November 17, 2014 [37 favorites]


The government has always lied.

Better put, with this deliberate, transparent lie, politicians undermine their own government's credibility for their own benefit. It's like a CEO shorting their own stock.

Many people, like this nurse, work their entire lives to deliver good, credible information on hard and scary problems like ebola. It takes years, decades of good work to build that trust. It takes just one political opportunist at a press conference to damage that, to panic the press and the public into bad decisions and rash actions like her unlawful confinement.
posted by bonehead at 9:36 AM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


My understanding, and perhaps this is a semantics problem with language more than anything else, is that ebola is NOT curable, per se.

"Treatable" is perhaps a better description. It is an extremely treatable diseases, requiring nothing more exciting or exotic than an intake of fluids.
posted by Artw at 9:37 AM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


I think something that has been guiding public perception to the disease in North America is the rather gruesome reputation the disease has - a terrifying way to die - plus the way the epidemic has been reported.

The reports by MSF and so on in the summer and early fall talked about a massive epidemic/pandemic with catostrophic consequences.

However, what they were referring to was a catastrophe for a handful of west African nations, not a global pandemic. The three countries most affected have a combined population of about 20 million tops.

Ebola is catastrophic for them, and potentially their neighbours. Ebola has demolished their health systems, and has demolished their economies. Any kind of socioeconomic progress that has been made since the wars of the last twenty years or so has been wiped out. A true disaster.

However, when people in North America and so on hear "catastrophe" they immediately connect Ebola with some sort of 28 Days Later scenario in their own country.

Kind of funny how Ebola reporting has totally vanished from the news over the past month.
posted by Nevin at 9:38 AM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


There is at least one trial vaccine as well, but I'm not certain that its (their?) effectiveness is yet known.
posted by bonehead at 9:38 AM on November 17, 2014


If we had better health care in this country, maybe people wouldn't be so afraid of a curable disease.
If by "better" you mean more accessible I doubt it, look at the shameful reaction Canada had to it.
posted by Poldo at 9:38 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Peepsburg, I think her character is just fine. People seem to think that she was running around the town of Fort Kent forceably kissing people. She *did* refrain from contact with others, with the exception of her partner (who I would imagine was cognizant of any risk, being a nurse himself). Instead, she was turned into a political pawn.

Or, as a friend of mine said: Jeezus, she lives in Fort Kent, Maine - isn't that isolation enough?
posted by scolbath at 9:40 AM on November 17, 2014 [13 favorites]


that ebola is NOT curable, per se

Other things that are not curable: the common cold, influenza. Unsurprisingly, all three are caused by viruses.
posted by Slothrup at 9:41 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Nevin: "Kind of funny how Ebola reporting has totally vanished from the news over the past month."

NPR and the BBC had stories about it this morning, though.
posted by boo_radley at 9:42 AM on November 17, 2014


scolbath -

exactly. the crazy thing about the conversation is that she didn't really flout anything. She followed MSF and CDC guidelines, which have worked very well in the past.

t's what Dr Craig Spencer followed - and he got himself to care without infecting anybody. Why? Because the guidelines are safe, and they get people into care before they could contaminate anybody else. And because they're well-suited for medical professionals who should be good at monitoring themselves.

her point, generally speaking, was that unscientific quarantines suck arse compared to evidence-based recommendations that have worked really well for MSF for months and months and months.
posted by entropone at 9:43 AM on November 17, 2014 [18 favorites]


We also have to acknowledge that the timing of the first Ebola case in the U.S. was very politically useful to Republicans who wanted to whip up fear of the Other just in time for the 2014 midterm elections. I am most definitely not endorsing any conspiratorial account about the origins or spread of the Ebola virus, but I do think that the Republicans were extremely politically shrewd in deriving a political "opportunity" out of Ebola.
posted by jonp72 at 9:45 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


You're right Peepsburg, she is as selfish as the most selfish entitled American and I can't stand that I continue to hear from her. Until somebody else contracts the disease while within our borders I have a feeling this issue will continue to be invisible now that the elections are over. Pathetic.

Perhaps do some more research before going off about her behavior. She was following the proper procedures from multiple agencies that have had experience with Ebola. The idiocy of the politicians and people around her that had no experience--and worse, their not-even-subtle ulterior motives--and their nasty treatment of her actions and personality is by far the more pathetic action here.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:47 AM on November 17, 2014 [35 favorites]


Nevin: "Kind of funny how Ebola reporting has totally vanished from the news over the past month."


I haven't really noticed that, since there's a new patient in Nebraska being treated who was just airlifted in-- decreased dramatically because of lack of American cases, yes, disappeared, no. The doctor in NYC was the last case before that, and he's already been released. I think all the other quarantines are up? I do wish there had been articles just as prominently placed noting the complete lack of transmission between any of the Americans with Ebola and their families so far, but lack of Ebola isn't as interesting, I guess. Hickox's treatment by NJ state officials was appalling and unscientific. I don't know why she should have to moderate her tone vis a vis an unlawful quarantine. If a governor lied (or, to be kinder, was seriously uniformed about terminology?) to the press about a disease I didn't have, I'd be pretty mad too.
posted by jetlagaddict at 9:53 AM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


I hope she runs for public office.
posted by Renoroc at 9:56 AM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Until somebody else contracts the disease while within our borders I have a feeling this issue will continue to be invisible now that the elections are over. Pathetic.

What, you want the pre-election fearmongering to keep going on forever?
posted by anazgnos at 9:57 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


ReeMonster: You're right Peepsburg, she is as selfish as the most selfish entitled American and I can't stand that I continue to hear from her. Until somebody else contracts the disease while within our borders I have a feeling this issue will continue to be invisible now that the elections are over. Pathetic.
This post comes off so supremely unself-aware that I flipflopped several times trying to decide if ReeMonster is lampooning ebola panickers, or is genuinely disdainful of the woman in question.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:58 AM on November 17, 2014 [23 favorites]


Oh, no-- I just flipped back to the NYTimes and the doctor being treated in Nebraska has passed away.

.

I can't imagine how hard it is to face Ebola and to fight it on the front lines or as part of the hospital crews here.
posted by jetlagaddict at 10:00 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


This is one of those things that I am sure would have gone off far differently had the nurse in question been of a different gender.
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:01 AM on November 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


This is one of those things that I am sure would have gone off far differently had the nurse in question been of a different gender.

I was trying to figure out a way to phrase this without sounding "angry" so I wouldn't get immediately written off but I couldn't. Thank you for voicing this.
posted by bleep at 10:04 AM on November 17, 2014


The public seems to be a bunch of terrified, hypochondriacal ninnies to an almost unbelievable extent.

It's profoundly frustrating.

Our local hospitals made a big production of "ebola readiness drills" that were splashed all over the news, and had our city in a total uproar for weeks, complete with the screaming that anyone who was helping Ebola patients should be left in Africa permanently and never be allowed to come home "just in case".

I wanted to set them all on fire with my brain, just to make the stupid stop.
posted by MissySedai at 10:05 AM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm sure her treatment in Chris Christie's tent was shitty and unwarranted, but she's waaaay too far on the other extreme. At one point -- granted, after she had already been aggravated and possibly mistreated -- she had a fever. No, I don't trust health professionals who have been exposed to Ebola to self-monitor without any additional level of verification. People get careless, people can act maliciously, and people make mistakes, frequently. The nurses in Dallas were health professionals too.
posted by Behemoth at 10:06 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


The fact that they made fun of this nurse on the Country Music Awards was sickening. Sure, I like humor, and I can take a joke, but we shouldn't be commenting on people's medical issues as a punchline (especially when there is no basis in medicine for believing she was ill). The line that got everyone in a tizzy was when the guy in the cowboy hat called the CMAs "White-ish," but at least that line has some a lot of truth to it.

Yeah, fuck these guys.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:10 AM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


If the system was swamped and overwhelmed with patients (as it is in west Africa), then the recovery rate drops dramatically. So people are right to be afraid of it, since by most measures it continues to be a very deadly disease.

Except that it's not just that the healthcare system in west Africa was overloaded. It's that it was really, incredibly crap to begin with. Doctors Without Borders didn't suddenly spring up to deal with Ebola. It's not like they had a system that was working fine with, say, basic curable childhood ailments and basic nutrition and the like and then it just failed miserably under the load. The thing about the developing world is that it's developing--some parts of it look very much like here, but some parts of it really don't. I wish people cared a tenth as much about helping to improve resources like this in poorer parts of the world as they did about the remote possibility of the system here failing.

To me, the scariest part of this has always been not the prospect that it would start spreading in the US, but that people in the US would start going HIV-denialist/antivax about the current protocols. Being unscientific about this is the worst possible thing that could happen in the US. Because of the delay between infection and onset and really being infectious, there's time to catch this early and to keep infection rates low--if people seek care. The flip side of this "quarantine everyone because they might breathe in our direction" is the idea that the evidence-based program for handling it is unsafe or doesn't work. And that could keep people out of hospitals. The prospect of one person dying at home under the care of relatives (possibly while taking some internet herbal supplement) scares me more than a hundred mostly-asymptomatic people wandering around my community.
posted by Sequence at 10:12 AM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


At one point -- granted, after she had already been aggravated and possibly mistreated -- she had a fever.

The most correct statement would be, "At one point, her temperature measured with a forehead thermometer was 101°" This does not mean she "had a fever" - this was an extrapolation made by the authorities in New Jersey.
posted by muddgirl at 10:12 AM on November 17, 2014 [15 favorites]


I love this article so much and want to share it on Facebook but I know that way lies madness.

Good for her. Always let science be your guide, not the politicians, not the talking heads on TV, not your fears.
posted by bondcliff at 10:13 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I understand that she lives in a remote area and didn't do anything horrible aside from ride her bike and talk to a reporter.

I may be misreading you, but it sounds like you think going for a bike ride and talking to a reporter were horrible things to do. Which means you misunderstand the risks. There was no risk to anyone near her, unless you imagine that she would go from feeling fine to vomiting and shitting all over people in a matter of seconds.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:15 AM on November 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


US Google trends for the word "ebola". (Our elections were held November 4, BTW.)
posted by IAmBroom at 10:15 AM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


The most correct statement would be, "At one point, her temperature measured with a forehead thermometer was 101°" This does not mean she "had a fever" - this was an extrapolation made by the authorities in New Jersey.

If you believe that, after coming back from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, a single elevated temperature measurement is not cause for concern, then I really hope you have nothing to do with healthcare.
posted by Behemoth at 10:17 AM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


(Our elections were held November 4, BTW.)

Christie wasn't up for election.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:19 AM on November 17, 2014


She's 100% in the right. I don't understand the need to defend Chris Christie, here. His latest actions were irrational, in the least, entirely politically motivated, and did nothing to protect the public. She is absolutely right to take this bloviating, empty-headed, anti-science idiot to task.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:20 AM on November 17, 2014 [9 favorites]


I live in Maine and therefore will not participate in this thread until 21 days after my last exposure to this news story.
posted by JanetLand at 10:20 AM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


If you believe that, after coming back from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, a single elevated temperature measurement is not cause for concern, then I really hope you have nothing to do with healthcare.

It was actually a non-elevated temperature measurement, followed by an elevated temperature measurement, followed by an Ebola test that showed she had not contracted Ebola, followed by a 21-day period where she showed no symptoms of Ebola.

A single elevated temperature measurement may be cause for "concern", but that does not mean the same thing as "cause for a slapdash and unscientific quarantine." It appears to my layman's eyes that Hickox was very concerned about Ebola. What actions did she take that lead you to believe she was not concerned about the possibility that she may have contracted Ebola?
posted by muddgirl at 10:22 AM on November 17, 2014 [14 favorites]


Responding to another point in your first comment:

The nurses in Dallas were health professionals too.

The nurses in Dallas appropriately self-monitored, and when they became symptomatic they received the appropriate isolation and treatment. They did not, in fact, infect anyone else. The nurses in Dallas were professionals and were not quarantined. They are an object lesson how, exactly?
posted by muddgirl at 10:26 AM on November 17, 2014 [21 favorites]


I admire the livin' daylights out of Kaci Hickox. Volunteering to treat people with Ebola is heroic. Doing it under the conditions in West Africa even more so. Then coming home and standing up to bullies like Christie and LePage.

Ebola Virus Disease(EBV) is treatable. There is an experimental drug that has a high success rate; none of that drug is available because it takes a long time to manufacture. There are treatments, but the success rate is not 100%. Health care workers are at high risk, and it's reasonable to monitor them closely, possibly even to place some restrictions on their movement. Treating heroic health care workers like felons, name-calling, and other douchery is bad health policy and doesn't encourage people like Kaci Hickox to be willing to treat people with EBV. Stupid. So embarrassed that Maine re-elected Lepage. Americans are embracing the stupid. I'm equal parts mystified and horrified.
posted by theora55 at 10:27 AM on November 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


The public seems to be a bunch of terrified, hypochondriacal ninnies to an almost unbelievable extent. I don't care if the government or Fox or whoever is trying to scare you, WHY ARE SO FREAKING SCARED OF EVERYTHING?

This. This. A thousand times this. I say this not just as a liberal who is bothered the constant Moral Panic of the Week, but as a red-blooded American too. Hello? Whatever happened to "the land of the free and the home of the brave"?
posted by jonp72 at 10:39 AM on November 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


This is one of those things that I am sure would have gone off far differently had the nurse in question been of a different gender.

Honestly, no, I don't think so. See: Craig Spencer.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:42 AM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


It was actually a non-elevated temperature measurement, followed by an elevated temperature measurement, followed by an Ebola test that showed she had not contracted Ebola...

At which point she was released and allowed to travel to Maine, and the legal battle there is a whole other can of worms.

The nurses in Dallas were professionals and were not quarantined. They are an object lesson how, exactly?

I am referring to the fact that they contracted Ebola in the first place, which means that at some point there was a failure in the containment protocol -- either because they failed to follow guidelines properly, were not fully aware of the guidelines, or because the guidelines were insufficient in the first place. The point is that people make mistakes, and arguing against any sort of additional safety checks because some politicians are jerks is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
posted by Behemoth at 10:43 AM on November 17, 2014


The problem here, from start to finish, is the health care process being politicized. This is what happens in a country that openly mocks educated people and significantly underfunds science. This is what happens with a political party that directly contradicts consensus science to further their political agenda. See also Ted Cruz and James Inhofe.
posted by Nelson at 10:45 AM on November 17, 2014 [11 favorites]


"We don't really know how it spreads."
"We could all be at risk."
"We should quarantine them all!"
"Those people are putting us all in danger."
"The government is covering up the risk!"

Comments heard about Ebola, recently...and about AIDS 30 years ago.
posted by librosegretti at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


I know my willy is clean but would you trust me to cook for you without washing my hands?

For all you 21-day-ers: MSNBC...penetration through intact skin has not been definitively ruled out...the possibility of such "subclinical transmission" remains very much open, said Dr. Andrew Pavia...
Also unknown is whether the time between exposure to Ebola and the appearance of symptoms depends on which bodily fluids someone contacted. If it does, then someone exposed through, say, saliva rather than blood might incubate the virus for longer than the 21 days officials have repeatedly said is the outer limit of the incubation period.

That was the longest incubation time during the 1976 Ebola outbreak, said Dr. C.J. Peters, a field virologist at UTMB. But "I would guess that 5 percent of people" can transmit the virus after incubating it for more than three weeks, said Peters, whose battle against the Ebola outbreak in a monkey colony in Virginia was recounted in Richard Preston's 1994 book "The Hot Zone."
Being a Health Professional doesn't mean that you are correct. There are multiple strains of Ebola.

I've lived in Japan where people wear masks when THEY have a cold. She was extremely irresponsible.
posted by valhallan at 10:47 AM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


The point is that people make mistakes, and arguing against any sort of additional safety checks because some politicians are jerks is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

You know what's different about those two circumstances? Vinson and Pham were treating a man who was extremely, extremely sick, having lots of contact with said bodily fluids at the time when they were at the highest possible viral load. A mistake at that time could very well have been fatal. Of everybody who had contact with him, only those two people got sick, having had contact at the most infectious time. And they were working at a hospital whose track record for this was so fantastic that they'd initially sent Duncan home despite being obviously ill. But, again, he went home not just running a slight temperature but obviously ill, and only Vinson and Pham got sick.

It is not at all the same to say that we need to restrict personal freedoms of those who might be infected but aren't yet infectious anyway, because hospital procedures during that scary high-load time period are vulnerable to human error.
posted by Sequence at 10:52 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


At which point she was released and allowed to travel to Maine, and the legal battle there is a whole other can of worms.

She was released after she made such a fuss that media attention became focused on NJ. The original intention was to keep her quarantined for 21 days even though she continued to have normal temperature readings and tested negative for Ebola:
Saturday, Oct. 25, 6:40 a.m.: The state Department of Health announces Hickox’s preliminary test for the Ebola virus came back negative. The agency said Hickox would continue to be quarantined and under observation at University Hospital. “The individual remains under mandatory quarantine for 21 days and will be closely monitored by public health officials,” the statement read.
The point is that people make mistakes, and arguing against any sort of additional safety checks because some politicians are jerks is cutting off your nose to spite your face

Who, exactly, is arguing against any sort of additional safety checks? Hickox, for example, agreed to self-monitoring and reporting to state authorities. So did the Dallas nurses. So did the doctor who contracted Ebola in New York. It appears to me like our current system is working fine, despite political calls by some state governors to ignore medical advice and institute stricter quarantines.
posted by muddgirl at 10:53 AM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


I've lived in Japan where people wear masks when THEY have a cold. She was extremely irresponsible.

I mean, that's great. I live in an American city with a staggeringly high number of children who are unvaccinated against pertussis, measles, mumps, and other diseases, which routinely cause very bad medical outcomes for the community. I am substantially more worried about pertussis than I am about ebola. However, I still don't see how her desire for a self quarantine is "extremely irresponsible."

At which point she was released and allowed to travel to Maine, and the legal battle there is a whole other can of worms.

She was in quarantine for several days, and wasn't released until long after clean tests, media attention, and legal threats.
posted by jetlagaddict at 10:54 AM on November 17, 2014 [9 favorites]


Self-monitoring?

Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever. Wiki
posted by valhallan at 10:58 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Typhoid Mary was the opposite of self-monitoring.
posted by hippybear at 10:59 AM on November 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


valhallan, doctors still aren't to my knowledge willing to rule out that transmission of HIV through saliva, but I don't believe there's ever been a confirmed case of it having done so. The notion that we should imprison people because of an unproven transmission possibility is ridiculous. Yes, of course there's a possibility that it could get transmitted despite the remote possibility. People could die. There's a considerably less remote possibility that my getting into a car this afternoon could lead to the death of me or another person, but it's still distant enough that we all drive every day. There is no possible way we can render everyone 100% safe from disease transmission and still enjoy civil liberties.

What you seem to be proposing is that we lock people up on the mere suspicion that they're asymptomatic carriers, and that's really frightening.
posted by Sequence at 11:00 AM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


We have known a lot about Ebola for 40 years. Unless it decides to mutate right now, you cannot be an asymptomatic carrier.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:00 AM on November 17, 2014


This nurse has clearly done damage to the public's perception of quarantine and acceptable risk. I was never actually afraid of Ebola, but I viewed the government's measures and precautions as an excellent dry run for the real deal shit that's bound to come down the line sooner than later. Political posturing and public health initiatives are not mutually exclusive.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 11:01 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Typhoid Mary was the opposite of self-monitoring.

Indeed. Anyone actually familiar with the details of that story would find it strange to see it invoked here.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:03 AM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


The astounding thing is we have people in a panic imagining elaborate scenarios of transmission that have probabilities in a range much, much lower than the possibility that they will die in a horrific traffic accident, a risk that most of them take many, many times a year. Some say it's because in a car they feel more in control, but that's, of course, an illusion.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:04 AM on November 17, 2014


Indeed. Anyone actually familiar with the details of that story would find it strange to see it invoked here.

*hand raised* Ohhhh! Pick me! I did a whole report on her in my Modern American Medical History Class! She was a healthy carrier who had never once in her life been symptomatic and believed it impossible that she could be the cause of the typhoid that was killing all of her employers. Except she was and she did and viruses and bodies are weird like that sometimes and we're still learning things about Ebola all the time :)

*the more you knooooooowwwwww*
posted by TheGoldenOne at 11:06 AM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


i'm going to go watch walking dead right now because this thread is spreading worse than Pontypool with none of the fun.
posted by valhallan at 11:13 AM on November 17, 2014


"No, I don't trust health professionals who have been exposed to Ebola to self-monitor without any additional level of verification."

As a health care professional, may I suggest you imagine what your health care experience would be like if that sort of distrust was mutual.
posted by klarck at 11:15 AM on November 17, 2014 [9 favorites]


i'm going to go watch walking dead right now because this thread is spreading worse than Pontypool with none of the fun.

Oh, so that's where you've been getting your medical knowledge from?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:17 AM on November 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


I think it's incredibly responsible to help ebola victims in the parts of Africa that are affected. It's also responsible to follow the guidelines given to you by DWB and the CDC.
posted by josher71 at 11:24 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Can we set the "she had a fever" thing to rest? She never had a fever. The airport immigration agents were using a low-accuracy forehead thermometer. These things have severe limitations, one of which is that if the subject is flush their skin temperature will rise and the reading will be high.

If I may draw an analogy: using a forehead thermometer is like finding matches on eHarmony. Immigration officials got several negative matches until finally they found a match they liked (a match that confirmed their preconceived notions). Their next step was to immediately start printing wedding invitations. Kaci, meanwhile, went on her forced date with quarantine, which resulted it nothing but negative results.

What happened at the airport was simply that the agents didn't know how to use the equipment they were given. Kaci Hickox even told them such, pointing out that a thermometer reading would be much more accurate. Did they listen to the health professional in the room? Of course not. Without any solid evidence they'd already decided what course of action they were going to take.
posted by sbutler at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2014 [32 favorites]


No, I don't trust health professionals who have been exposed to Ebola to self-monitor without any additional level of verification.

The only way that you can assume that self-monitoring to fail for someone like Ms. Hickox (or any other health professional, really) is to assume that for whatever reason, these trained, educated people would choose not to seek treatment for a disease that is really, really good at providing a horrifying death without treatment.

Does anyone believe that she would have gone bike riding if she had a fever? Was vomiting (or even feeling nauseous)? Or had any inkling of actual symptoms of this disease? Not unless she was riding her bike TO a hospital that had the appropriate support infrastructure to, you know, keep her alive. Yeah, she's got some political convictions -- but she's not going to die an Ebola-death just to prove a political point.

Ms. Hickox had every incentive to go in for treatment if she got sick. That's why I trusted her to "self-monitor without any additional level of verification." The fact that she also had the training allowing her to even better determine if she was sick is just icing on the cake.
posted by sparklemotion at 11:28 AM on November 17, 2014 [16 favorites]


Look, Americans who go to Africa to care for ebola patients are heroes, Chris Christie is a horrible evil windbag, the ebola scare in America is ridiculous overblown hysteria fueled by xenophobic racism about a scary African disease coming onto our shores, and Kaci Hickox did nothing wrong.

Still, I think her public statements were not very politically effective. People are scared, there are public health concerns, it is simply callous to say, "Fuck you, you uneducated imbeciles, leave this to the experts," even if it's true. Nothing is certain and when there is considerable risk it's troubling to hear the "professionals" talk as if there is complete certainty.

If ebola was some pollution-related environmental concern, I don't think commenters here would have the same reservations about hearing from the uneducated masses and the political figures responsible to them.
posted by leopard at 11:45 AM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ron Klain and the 6.5 billion in funding should help alleviate why Ebola will disappear from the headlines, address the states response...oh wait, he was out of site. So what has changed since he was appointed?
posted by brent at 11:53 AM on November 17, 2014


As a health care professional, may I suggest you imagine what your health care experience would be like if that sort of distrust was mutual.

Can you be clearer as to what you'd like me to imagine, exactly? Maybe if I went to a doctor's office after being exposed to Ebola in West Africa and the doctor observed elevated temperature and decided to isolate me in the hospital until it became clear that I do not have Ebola, even though I said "oh, I'm totally fine, I can handle this myself?" Yeah, it's not ideal, but I would understand.
posted by Behemoth at 11:55 AM on November 17, 2014


a lungful of dragon: His latest actions were irrational, in the least, entirely politically motivated, and did nothing to protect the public.

It's a smart political move. Voters will remember that Chris Christie stood up against the dumb lib Typhoid Mary who cares more about playing doctor with Shaka Zulu than being a Real American.

Crying eagle goes here.
posted by dr_dank at 11:56 AM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


Thank god that, since the days of Typhoid Mary, we've developed ways to test if someone has a particular virus so that we don't have to assume that everyone is an asymptomatic carrier.

Maybe if I went to a doctor's office after being exposed to Ebola in West Africa and the doctor observed elevated temperature and decided to isolate me in the hospital until it became clear that I do not have Ebola, even though I said "oh, I'm totally fine, I can handle this myself?"

Again, that's not what happened in the case of Ms. Hickox. She was quarantined on the basis of one elevated temperature reading, and after several days the health authorities insisted that she serve out the full 21 day quarantine despite any further high readings and despite a negative test for Ebola. Only her vocal, public, and continued insistence that there was no medical reason to continue the quarantine led to her release.
posted by muddgirl at 11:59 AM on November 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


People are scared, there are public health concerns, it is simply callous to say, "Fuck you, you uneducated imbeciles, leave this to the experts,"

Callous or not, these concerns seem totally baseless.
posted by josher71 at 12:09 PM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


Anyone who doesn't trust a health care worker to self-monitor for symptoms ought to have even more distrust for politicians who think they're public health experts or epidemiologists.
posted by rtha at 12:13 PM on November 17, 2014 [15 favorites]


IndigoJones: (Our elections were held November 4, BTW.)

Christie wasn't up for election.
What makes you think all those Google hits were initiated by Christie?
posted by IAmBroom at 12:14 PM on November 17, 2014


People are scared, there are public health concerns, it is simply callous to say, "Fuck you, you uneducated imbeciles, leave this to the experts,"

You open this door right now, do you hear me? You let me in that cockpit! I don't trust you to land! MY CHILD IS ON THIS PLANE!
posted by Naberius at 12:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [18 favorites]


To me, what speaks volumes about this situation is that governors Christie and Cuomo enacted the mandatory quarantine order without consulting with public health officials.

That should tell you that it was a political move, and not a public health move - total security theater.
posted by entropone at 12:24 PM on November 17, 2014 [17 favorites]


Ebola scares the fuck out of me, and I'll admit to not having enough knowledge to know how draconian our quarantine measures should be. That being said, I have a hard time being confident in the decision-making skills of a man who shut down a damn bridge because of a political grudge.
posted by bibliowench at 12:41 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


Bit late to respond, perhaps, but I lived in Japan and they stuck me on a freaking drip for a mild bout of food poisoning. For so many reasons, "they do it like this in Japan" is the most spectacular anti-trump card if we're talking about healthcare.
posted by ominous_paws at 12:49 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


There are a lot of eye rolling comments in this thread, but the fact that apparently nurses can't be trusted to take their own temperature has got to be near the top of the list.
posted by supercrayon at 12:50 PM on November 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


You know if there were an ebola vaccine these folks would be the first to claim it caused autism.

My favorite Facebook meme from this whole thing went, "100% of people infected with ebola in America caught it while trying to help someone else. Don't worry, Republicans, you are immune."
posted by cjorgensen at 12:53 PM on November 17, 2014 [26 favorites]


> "100% of people infected with ebola in America caught it while trying to help someone else. Don't worry, Republicans, you are immune."

Can we not do this here? No one truly believes that no Republican ever helped anyone else, and claiming all the good work being done by those fighting Ebola for one political party 1) is unlikely to be true, and 2) leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

(And if you're composing a reply asking why I support Chris Christie ....... well, I don't know what to say if that's how you're looking at it.)
posted by benito.strauss at 1:14 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't see anything wrong with a bit of hyperbolic shaming of people who support a party who demands savage cuts to government spending (including on disease prevention and emergency management) and then nominates themselves as Scientists-in-Chief who get to override the overwhelming evidence of how the disease actually operates.

Of course it's true that Republicans help people, but the specific kind of help we're talking about here (a robust, science-based approach to epidemic preparedness and mitigation) is constantly attacked by the Republican party. Republicans do believe in helping people, but the party dogma involves channeling that help through private charity and the powers of the free market, not the state, so I think it's totally fine to use a bit of snark to drive that point home.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:37 PM on November 17, 2014 [12 favorites]


Can we not do this here?

The market has spoken. Sorry.
posted by thelonius at 2:10 PM on November 17, 2014 [12 favorites]


"Fuck you, you uneducated imbeciles, leave this to the experts,"

said no public health expert ever.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:18 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Tried to explain to my Mom, with actual success: you should be scared of your tub. There is 2 billion % chance over ebola it will kill you. Yet you go in it every day. You should be scared of your car, the odds are even higher, yet you blithely drive about every day. If you're actually, seriously scared of ebola, you are easily and pointlessly frightened and --frankly-- not too bright, IMHO. What on earth are people so scared about? I did AIDS education in the late 80s and this is as big and stupid a reaction with less reason. "If someone who has HIV comes in the mall do we have throw all the food away?" What?! Seriously, what trauma leads people to this hysterical concern for themselves over NOTHING?

(Sorry...really reminds of the brainless hysteria surrounding HIV, which made me want to kill everyone overconcerned with their own massively unlikely deaths. A frustrating period of dealing with self-centered scaredy-cats. Who're the selfish ones again? Quit being alarmist cowards.)
posted by umberto at 2:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've lived in Japan where people wear masks when THEY have a cold. She was extremely irresponsible.

Putting a mask on because you have a highly contagious cold is not being responsible, because the mask barely does jack shit. Staying home because you have a highly contagious cold is being responsible.

Since Hickox wasn't sick and wasn't symptomatic, she was not at all contagious; hence she was being perfectly responsible.
posted by Camofrog at 2:23 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Maybe if I went to a doctor's office after being exposed to Ebola in West Africa and the doctor observed elevated temperature

Behemoth, you have a fundamentally flawed understanding of what happened at the airport with the nurse's temperature. Her temperature was taken *twice* at the airport with a forehead scanner. The first time it registered 98 degrees. Three hours later - three hours of frustration, exhaustion, confusion and inexplicably rude treatment - her temperature was again taken with a forehead scanner, which is when it registered 101 degrees. She tried to get them to use an oral thermometer so her flushed and angry face wouldn't affect the results. It appears they did not do that. Here's her account, published soon after:

I was tired, hungry and confused, but I tried to remain calm. My temperature was taken using a forehead scanner and it read a temperature of 98. I was feeling physically healthy but emotionally exhausted. Three hours passed. No one seemed to be in charge. No one would tell me what was going on or what would happen to me.

I called my family to let them know that I was OK. I was hungry and thirsty and asked for something to eat and drink. I was given a granola bar and some water. I wondered what I had done wrong.

Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101. The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said.

I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset.


There's no mention of an oral reading, which I'm assuming means it wasn't done. The officials had what they wanted: an elevated temperature reading.
posted by mediareport at 2:37 PM on November 17, 2014 [9 favorites]


Btw, the story of Martin Salia, the doctor from Sierra Leone who just died in a Nebraska hospital, is particularly tragic. His treatment came too late because while he was being treated for ebola in Sierra Leone, an early test there came back negative for the virus. His colleagues celebrated by taking off their protective gear and giving him hugs.

Then his symptoms didn't go away. A week later they gave him another test. It came back positive, and then he got flown to Nebraska for more aggressive treatment, which came too late to help. Everyone who hugged him is now in quarantine, too. From that WaPo link:

The doctors who tended to him in Freetown appeared to be unaware that an early Ebola test — taken within the first three days of the illness — is often inconclusive. In a country where information about the disease continues to move slowly, it was another potentially tragic mistake.

In many cases, a negative test at that stage means nothing because “there aren’t enough copies of the virus in the blood for the test to pick up,” said Ermias Belay, the head of the CDC’s Ebola response team in Sierra Leone. But M’Briwa and others treated the test as definitive, even though Salia remained feverish and weak. The first results were delivered by a team of Chinese lab technicians who had opened a nearby hospital. (The technicians declined Sunday to speak about Salia’s case.)

posted by mediareport at 2:48 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


>What makes you think all those Google hits were initiated by Christie?

What? I'm simply observing that Hickox and others here are accusing Christie of playing politics, and that it wouldn't do him much good in a year in which he wasn't running. Let's play out the possible scenarios, however. She turns out to be okay, no problem, the issue dies like every other piece of yesterday's news well before the next election cycle. If, however, she turns out to have the virus and it mutates and spreads, well, he the governor will have to explain to millions of registered voters what the hell he was doing.

Since Hickox wasn't sick and wasn't symptomatic, she was not at all contagious; hence she was being perfectly responsible.

Dr Salia thought he wasn't sick. Indeed, and unlike her at the time of her arrival in the US, he had a negative test to prove it. Science apparently dropped the ball in his case. No reason Science could not have done the same with her.
posted by IndigoJones at 2:48 PM on November 17, 2014


"Science" did not drop the ball in Salia's case. Underinformed technicians and healthcare workers appear to have dropped the ball in Salia's case.
posted by mediareport at 2:50 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Just now watching that MR.
Spot on
posted by clavdivs at 2:52 PM on November 17, 2014


Science apparently dropped the ball in his case. No reason Science could not have done the same with her.

Is anyone stating that Hickox should have gone completely unmonitored after passing the Ebola test? That she should have returned to her job as Chief Licker at a stamp factory? That she should have ignored any future Ebola symptoms?
posted by muddgirl at 2:57 PM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


The public seems to be a bunch of terrified, hypochondriacal ninnies to an almost unbelievable extent.

And why not? Ebola is no joke.
posted by Nevin at 3:08 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Dr Salia thought he wasn't sick.

Yeah, that's just completely incorrect. It's right there in the article.
posted by rtha at 3:12 PM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


What? I'm simply observing that Hickox and others here are accusing Christie of playing politics, and that it wouldn't do him much good in a year in which he wasn't running.

Christie has made all the motions of a politician running for President. Anyone who doesn't know this either shouldn't be discussing the politics around his actions, or is being cute about it.

She turns out to be okay, no problem, the issue dies like every other piece of yesterday's news well before the next election cycle. If, however, she turns out to have the virus and it mutates and spreads, well, he the governor will have to explain to millions of registered voters what the hell he was doing.

1) How is this not playing politics?

2) No, he would not. The CDC would have to explain their procedures, and the dozens of doctors and scientists who have strongly argued against quarantine would have to defend their assertions. Christie (and LePage) knew all of this, blatantly and knowingly attempted to defy the CDC and said doctors and scientists, and went ahead and did it anyways. It's pretty clear that the polls played a bigger part in their decisions than the sciences around infectious diseases.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:44 PM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


I'm simply observing that Hickox and others here are accusing Christie of playing politics, and that it wouldn't do him much good in a year in which he wasn't running.

Do you remember where Christie was and what he was doing while he was making a stand against dangerous heroic nurses? He was campaigning in Florida for the Republican gubernatorial candidate. He also spent time in my state of Pennsylvania campaigning for a lost-cause governor just so he could get in front of PA voters. Maybe you've noticed that Pennsylvania and Florida are important battleground states in presidential elections? Christie was absolutely making a political stand by fear-mongering and ignoring sound medical opinion and experience.
posted by gladly at 4:35 PM on November 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


Last week the WHO's Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee on Ebola released some preliminary guidelines for "clinical testing and generation of quality data of potential therapeutic interventions" for the disease.

Time has a more readable version under the headline WHO: These Are the Most Promising Ebola Treatments.
posted by mediareport at 6:11 PM on November 17, 2014


Can we not do this here? No one truly believes that no Republican ever helped anyone else, and claiming all the good work being done by those fighting Ebola for one political party 1) is unlikely to be true, and 2) leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Except, unless you want to engage in some serious revisionist history, it's easy to figure out which party was the more irrational one when it came to ebola. Which part blocked the appointment of a qualified surgeon general because he wants pediatricians to ask if there is a gun in the home (a stance the medical community has endorsed)? Which party wanted to block spending on ebola treatment and containment because too much of the money would be spent in Africa? Which parties pundits were saying this was part of Obama's plan all along to make America more like Africa? Which party has a track record of wanting to deny healthcare to more individuals? Which party was clamoring for "no fly zones" and total quarantines of infected countries, even though the experts were saying this would actually make things worse and not have the desired effect at all?

You could probably go on with this list for hours.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:51 AM on November 18, 2014 [4 favorites]


Can't you understand that you were face to face with a disease at its most communicable, and so people are concerned?

It's good that Ryan White was kicked out of school for having AIDS because you can get AIDS from being in the same room as AIDS. This is how AIDS works. Spare me the elitist jargon from your fancy "doctors." I got my medical degree by reading a scrap of the New York Post floating in a gutter and I vote
posted by Awful Peice of Crap at 6:17 AM on November 18, 2014 [9 favorites]


In addition, the people who flew to Africa to help dying people who cannot control their bowels - for free - are extremely selfish for not wanting to be illegally arrested while they are physically incapable of spreading the disease
posted by Awful Peice of Crap at 6:19 AM on November 18, 2014


Nevin: The public seems to be a bunch of terrified, hypochondriacal ninnies to an almost unbelievable extent.

And why not? Ebola is no joke.
You need to look up the definitions of "hypochondriac", "ninny", and "unbelievable".
posted by IAmBroom at 9:13 AM on November 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


My problem with hysteria is that it extends to everything.

We need random checkpoints because of drunk drivers!

We need no-knock warrants because of drugs!

We need you to take off your shoes because of terrorists!

We need you to stay in this private prison for three weeks because of ebola!

Pretty much any freedom can easily be taken away if you focus on what you would give up to stay safe rather than on what you give up by pretending you are safe.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:49 PM on November 18, 2014 [3 favorites]


Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, just returned from a two-week trip to Liberia (where "for more than two weeks I'd had no physical contact of any kind with any human being") and describes her trip back to a "self-imposed quarantine" in Brooklyn, complete with multiple questionnaires, forehead fever scans, "color-coordinated, fashionable Ebola protection outfits," a mile-long hike from an isolated runway to the main terminal in Brussels, and what the check-in process with the CDC is like.

This tidbit was interesting, too:

Brussels Air is the last commercial flier servicing the Ebola-hit countries, and its flight crews are the only ones in the world today willing to make the twice-weekly journeys in and out of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
posted by mediareport at 1:38 PM on November 19, 2014


Why?

I mean unless she was gorging herself on infected meat, then why go into quarantine?

If there's a reason for this that makes sense, why is it?

I skimmed the article, so if it's answered there I flew over it.

A couple weeks quarantine sounds good about now. Catch up on my Netflix addiction. You can still get pizza in quarantine, right?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:48 AM on November 20, 2014


N.J. police force earned 500-plus hours of overtime guarding empty hospital for Ebola quarantine
The security detail at Hagedorn coincided with the Nov. 15 disbanding of a 23-member unit within the 92-member Human Services police department whose officers accompanied child welfare workers to dangerous neighborhoods and to search for missing children. The unit was disbanded to cut down on runaway overtime expenses.

On Nov. 17, a child welfare caseworker in Camden was confronted in her office and stabbed more than 20 times by a client she had been supervising.
posted by Nelson at 9:08 AM on November 24, 2014


Do you remember where Christie was and what he was doing while he was making a stand against dangerous heroic nurses? He was campaigning in Florida for the Republican gubernatorial candidate. [...] Maybe you've noticed that Pennsylvania and Florida are important battleground states in presidential elections? Christie was absolutely making a political stand by fear-mongering and ignoring sound medical opinion and experience.

Ironically, just yesterday I was out at lunch with the family and one of them found a different thing to focus on - "Gee, isn't it interesting that the ebola nurse made a stink about standing up to Christie - a Republican Governor - and then when she went up to Maine she made another stink against that quarantine - imposed by another Republican Governor. Two Republican Governors, hmmm."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:26 AM on November 24, 2014


Is your point that she's anti-Republican or that these Governors have their uneducated heads up their asses?
posted by cjorgensen at 1:01 PM on November 24, 2014


Their point (it was some relatives who said that) was that she was anti-Republican.

My point, in quoting that, was that no matter what circumstance, some people are gonna find a way to make a political spin out of it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:09 PM on November 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


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