FOX news reports:
Maine nurse back from treating Ebola patients in West Africa followed through on her vow to defy the state's "voluntary" quarantine on Thursday, leaving her home for a bike ride.
Kaci Hickox and her boyfriend stepped out of their home Thursday morning and rode away on mountain bikes, followed by state police cruiser.
There was no immediate comment from state health officials, who were going to court in an effort to detain Hickox for the remainder of the 21-day incubation period for Ebola that ends on Nov. 10. Police were monitoring her movements but couldn't detain her without a court order signed by a judge.
The end of the 21-day period would be Nov. 10...
Earlier Wednesday, Hickox told NBC's "Today" that she doesn't "plan on sticking to the guidelines" and is "appalled" by the home quarantine policies "forced" on her....
The Portland Press Herald reported that Hickox appeared healthy and spoke calmly. At one point, she shook the hand of a British reporter who offered to do so after she stated that she did not have the virus and denied being contagious.She is simply wrong here if she claims that with certainty that she doesn't have the virus, since it is clear that it can take anywhere from 21 days to 42 days to detect the virus.
She also is apparently operating under the assumption that she would have to have a fever before coming down with other symptoms and being contagious.
Her view of the science of Ebola is far from a certainty. From Breitbart:
The director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) refused to definitively answer whether someone who does not have a fever can still transmit Ebola.
On Thursday, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), the Chair of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, asked if Ebola can be "transmitted from a person who does not yet have a high fever."
Murphy noted that the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have claimed that "Ebola patients are only contagious when they have a fever," but "the largest study of the current ebola outbreak found 13% of confirmed cases in West Africa did not have an associated fever."...This week, a Texas nurse who treated Thomas Eric Duncan contracted Ebola and reportedly had Ebola symptoms before she got a fever...Nina Pham, the Texas nurse who contracted Ebola after treating Duncan, reportedly was symptomatic before she got a fever.Hickcox is unlikely to have Ebola, but it is not a certainty that she does not have the virus. Her ranting is simply off the wall, especially since she presumably worked in west Africa to "help people." If she has such a great concern for humanity, why doesn't she just quarantine herself for 21 days and stay at home, watch TV, read books, surf the internet and talk on the telephone.
-RW
This article in the New England Journal of Medicine says that the mandatory quarantines are harmful in that they discourage people from volunteering their services in Africa, and that contagion is probably a factor rather late in the period after the person is symptomatic. There would seem to be a serious disagreement even among doctors about this whole matter. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1413139
ReplyDeleteWhen Hickox refuses to practice self-government, individual responsibility, to love her neighbor as herself, and quarantine herself for a period of time, then it is evident that Hickox has no concern for humanity. Her acts in west Africa to "help people" were done out of selfish motivation.
ReplyDeleteWhen people like Hickox refuse to take personal responsibility for herself, it's no wonder that government intrudes into the lives of individuals and businesses.