Friday, June 1, 2007
Appearances
I'd like to think that no one would be so cavalier as to deliberately endanger thousands of people's health. But years ago there was the guy who started a huge number of AIDS case in San Francisco. And now there is the man who has carried tuberculosis around Europe and the east coast apparently so he could get married when and where he wanted. He is said to claim that the Centers for Disease Control "advised" him not to go but did not forbid it in so many words. On the other hand, his father taped the conversation in which he was advised not to travel. How many conversations do you tape in a given day? Doesn't that kind of prove that he was playing some kind of a deadly game? The man is a personal injury lawyer and his father-in-law is a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control, specifically in the infectious disease section. This HAS to have been some kind of exercise to prove something, although we may never know exactly what, with public opinion so thoroughly against them.
Was this really an exercise to show that security systems are porous, that one can get away with something, legally and technically, unless precisely the right word ("forbidden" in this case) is used? Okay, then let's make him legally and technically talk with each and every person he exposed, and with all their family members. And let's have him legally and technically pay for all their medical tests and treatments.
007 in Africa has a helpful guide to the diseases involved (here) and she suggests something I agree with wholeheartedly: put the man in jail. He's acted like a loaded gun in human form. Have you ever been on a plane with someone who had a colds? By the end of the flight, most of the passengers are sneezing and coughing.
This man is educated and worldly. It seems peculiar that he, his father and his father-in-law acknowledge that they knew exactly what they were doing. So what informed their decision to have him travel to Italy? Did they think they were above responsibility, somehow? Were they testing airport and customs security? And what nonsense was the border guard saying when he explained that "he didn't look sick." Hey, Mohammed Atta didn't look dangerous. And Ted Bundy looked nice. And Andrew Speaker looks rational. Shows how utterly pointless, and sometimes downright dangerous, it is to judge people by their appearance.
Was this really an exercise to show that security systems are porous, that one can get away with something, legally and technically, unless precisely the right word ("forbidden" in this case) is used? Okay, then let's make him legally and technically talk with each and every person he exposed, and with all their family members. And let's have him legally and technically pay for all their medical tests and treatments.
007 in Africa has a helpful guide to the diseases involved (here) and she suggests something I agree with wholeheartedly: put the man in jail. He's acted like a loaded gun in human form. Have you ever been on a plane with someone who had a colds? By the end of the flight, most of the passengers are sneezing and coughing.
This man is educated and worldly. It seems peculiar that he, his father and his father-in-law acknowledge that they knew exactly what they were doing. So what informed their decision to have him travel to Italy? Did they think they were above responsibility, somehow? Were they testing airport and customs security? And what nonsense was the border guard saying when he explained that "he didn't look sick." Hey, Mohammed Atta didn't look dangerous. And Ted Bundy looked nice. And Andrew Speaker looks rational. Shows how utterly pointless, and sometimes downright dangerous, it is to judge people by their appearance.
Labels: headlines
Permalink | 
| posted by jau at 8:54 AM
007 in Africa — at 11:24 AM, June 04, 2007:
jau — at 11:27 AM, June 04, 2007:
— at 11:22 AM, June 09, 2007:
| posted by jau at 8:54 AM
5 more:
007 in Africa — at 11:24 AM, June 04, 2007:
Apparently "In Phoenix, Robert Daniels was diagnosed with XDR-TB and has been confined to a hospital jail unit for the last 10 months after defying doctors' instructions to wear a mask in public. Health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up.". So there is a jailing system but it seems like it's arbitrarily administered...
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jau — at 11:27 AM, June 04, 2007:
Thanks for that update. It's good to know a system exists but this guy (and who else?) obviously was playing it, given who and what he knew - and what he wanted to do. Scary, isn't it!?
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— at 11:22 AM, June 09, 2007:
A good piece.
And the bits of tape that the TB guy played on Larry King don't change the key facts.
It still is common sense to not fly while having any sort of TB. The county doctor was armtwisted by two slick lawyers + a slickster trainee, the so-called wife. (BTW, what these lawyers claim as "evidence" that they got married: photos of them dressed up.)
Andrew's latest expression of regret: "We're not the kind of people who back down."
But it is reassuring to see that most human beings wouldn't even think of acting as he did.
And the bits of tape that the TB guy played on Larry King don't change the key facts.
It still is common sense to not fly while having any sort of TB. The county doctor was armtwisted by two slick lawyers + a slickster trainee, the so-called wife. (BTW, what these lawyers claim as "evidence" that they got married: photos of them dressed up.)
Andrew's latest expression of regret: "We're not the kind of people who back down."
But it is reassuring to see that most human beings wouldn't even think of acting as he did.
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