In a case so filled with @$$clowns, it's hard to stand out, but this crybaby clearly has what it takes:
(Reuters) - New Jersey's mandatory quarantine for certain travelers from Ebola-stricken West Africa will likely face its first legal test this week, after a lawyer for a quarantined nurse said she would file a federal lawsuit within days.Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer, said Kaci Hickox's isolation upon her return from West Africa raised "serious constitutional and civil liberties issues," given that she shows no Ebola symptoms and has not tested positive for the disease.Emboldened by the fawning publicity from her childish tantrum, and today's governmental pique over her quarantine by the state of New Jersey, woman-child and alleged nursing professional Kaci Hickox is now electing to quite literally make a federal case out the state's decision not to let her wander to and fro until she goes symptom free from Ebola for 21 days, after arriving in the US only 48 hours from working amidst the outbreak of same in pestilential Conkary, Guinea.
Michelle Mello, professor of law and public health at Harvard University, said courts in such cases seek to balance the level of danger posed by the disease with the likelihood that the individual poses a public threat.
But she said courts have found reason to uphold past quarantines, even when there was no definitive proof the individuals were ill.
"I don’t think it is clear, but I suspect when all is said and done, it won’t be successful," she said.
Her entire rationale is that the state should wait until she, like medical assclown Craig Spencer, starts shedding virus all over a major metropolis before the state should have the right to keep her from walking hither and yon like a modern-day Typhoid Mary.
Because after all, what 's most important here is not the rights of 317M Americans to not be exposed to Ebola, but instead Hickox's inalienable right to dine at Olive Garden and Taco Bell, and shop at Old Navy.
Let us grant that she has the right to be at liberty. Fine.
What she doesn't have is the right of return to the country from a place in the middle of a massive epidemic. So that leaves a simple solution.
Ship her fat whiny ass back to Conkary, and let her do her quarantine for 21 days there, under the auspices of the CDC. If she goes 21 days symptom free, then permit her return to the US. (Oh, and bill her personally for the accommodations.)
Everybody wins, and she can go down in history as the most lunkheaded excuse for a medical professional since someone threw a bag over Tom Frieden and made him stop holding international press conferences.
But I'd rather a federal judge elects to wait 19 more days before issuing the ruling that her case is moot, and dismissing it.
"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."
Unlike NY Gov. Jellyfish, Chris Christie has indicated that NJ is not backing down despite the whinging:
"New Jersey is not changing its quarantine protocol. The protocol is clear that a New Jersey resident with no symptoms, but who has come into contact with someone with Ebola, such as a health care provider, would be subject to a mandatory quarantine order and quarantined at home," [Christie spokesman] Roberts said. "Nonresidents would be transported to their homes if feasible and, if not, quarantined in New Jersey."
Psst! Hey, Princess! Guess what?
We've quarantined ACTUAL HEROES before, and they didn't piss their pants or sue anybody about it.
Get OVER yourself.
10 comments:
For the jackassery file:
"Let them eat caviar!"
For the eugencis file:
"It really is a terrible shame there are too many niggers in Africa; something should be done about that, soon"
How about quarantining them all at their expense at Gitmo?
The one part of her gripe I thought had merit was about being stuck in a tent for three weeks. I'm guessing there are FEMA trailers left over from hurricane Sandy up there, seems like they'd be ideal for giving these people somewhere to stay.
Every nursing register has a requirement, a la medical profession, to 'first, do no harm', no?
Whether she subsequently turns out to be infected or not, simply by demanding the 'right' to wander aimlessly about potentially infecting others, and actually causing major concern for those others, she is causing considerable harm.
She has demonstrated her willingness to place her 'wants' above all others needs, and to completely ignore basic, rationale and reasonable public health actions.
So strike the whinny b****h off the register!
(Unfortunately the registers, like so many other institutions, are run by the usual idiots, so PC credentials are judged more important than knowledge, skill or ability now, so that probably wont happen).
What she is also failing to consider is that … whilst a politician/judiciary 'may' cave, just what does she expect from her fellow citizens after self identifying herself so? Think she'll be welcomed into the local mall/coffee-shop? Let's be honest here (considering how some denizens of the city will react) I suspect her life expectancy will be marginally shorter if she strolls around demanding access to everyone than if she was infected and stayed home (such action, whilst questionable at least, already has precendent – here, someone known to be infected with a fatal disease, HIV for example, who deliberately attempts to infect others is classed as an attempted murderer. So 'do' you have the right to defend yourself against someone you suspect, reasonably, is infected who blithely wants to infect others?).
As an aside, many here (NHS) have continued to 'volunteer' their services. The thing is, not one is what you would call either knowledgeable, experienced or a professional (whose response has been a resounding 'hell, no!' - for all the reasons obvious to anyone with half a brain). So the 'only' nursing staff who do volunteer are those who I personally wouldn't trust to empty a bed-pan with the instructions written on the bottom.
She was a CDC EIS officer in Las Vegas from 2012 until August, 2014, still works for the CDC (who are anti quarantine).
http://www.uta.edu/utamagazine/archive-issues/2010-13/2012/07/passion-practicality-drive-nursing-graduate/
Think any of this could be, I don't know, politically motivated?
With Mr. "Our #1 concern is overpopulation" Klain at the helm, and the WHO bureaucrats off swilling caviar with Putin, we already know that the old-line eugenicists are running things -- so *of course* they're going to come up with every excuse they can to NOT do whatever is prudent or expedient in preventing a pandemic.
This is political. Yesterday I read a story about what a hero, that guy Spencer is. Yeah, ok so this hero goes around the town, ignoring this symptoms and infecting people around him. Bullshit. The only reason for stories of praise about these returning Ebola carriers, is so to drum up support for keeping the borders open. And this particular story is to make it harder to quarantine people. In my opinion, Spencer should lose his license to practice medicine, after the crap he pulled. If he needed to call for an ambulance a few hours after returning from bowling adventure, he was symptomatically ill much earlier. If this jackass doesn't have enough sense to avoid crowds while feeling ill, knowing that he was exposed to Ebola, than that jackass should not be treating sick people and jeopardizing the life of all those he comes in contact with. No, Spencer is not a hero. He is just another me-me-me, turd.
" have been denied service at restaurants, and had their children treated differently"
So.... riddle me this.
You work with ebola patients outside the US and you are subject to a mandatory quarantine for 21 days. BUT if you work with ebola patients in NYC you get to ride the crowded subway home at the end of your shift. You go to restaurants and ride taxis. Your kids go to school.
I'm for quarantine on travelers, and that nurse is a self important, entitled, whiny b***h, but this is clearly unequal treatment under the law.
Why are NY medical staff allowed to roam around freely? Mainly because otherwise, no one would do the job.
I don't see this ending well.
nick
This troublesome nurse (or somebody) was bound to get into questioning the legal quarantine authority of New York and New Jersey. The power of the Connecticut Governor, who has announced an intention to to quarantine people, and may already have done so in a couple of cases, has yet to attract this kind of attention. There's nothing wrong about questioning what New York and New Jersey are doing here, really, since civil liberties actually are being interfered with. (I do not buy the idea that the nurse ought to be shipped back to Conkery to trouble the CDC there, though. Who should pay for that, how should she be transported, and how about the issue of exposing yet more people to the nurse during transit if not done by a specially equipped private plane?)
This is a state police power issue, of course. See, e.g., http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33201.pdf.
As usual, reasonableness questions can be raised. Remember the no big drinks in NYC matter -- an ordinance ultimately struck down in a 4-2 decision in June of this year by the New York Court of Appeals because it was deemed an invasion of the power of the legislature (loopholes for certain businesses and not others), not because it was flat-out dopey? Courts can be a little dopey themselves. Is this such a case?
The quarantine standards being used in New Jersey and New York may be vulnerable to attack because they apply, as I understand them, only to incoming health workers from West Africa who have been exposed to Ebola, but not to others coming in after originating from or passing through an Ebola-affected state (a potential "arbitrary and capricious" problem). Aesop, you will recall, quite correctly urged in this blog that this ought to be the case for all coming from or through those countries. Nothing arbitrary about that approach, but it's one that offends even more civil libertarians.
Key, too, is that these measures apply to symptom-free arrivals without much scientific evidence (if any), notwithstanding public fear and misconceptions, to support them. Still, picking out health workers who have been directly exposed to Ebola cases in West Africa as the class to be quarantined is not altogether daffy and so ought to survive such a challenge. That is, the state probably is not powerless to respond to such an urgent disease situation just because the available scientific evidence and analysis about the disease is flimsy, incomplete, or arguable in various respects.
There also might be a question about the extent to which the federal Health Services Act and regulations under it preempt state authority in this area. One would think that this argument ought to be a loser even though the state quarantine policies do not yet seem to have detailed regulations governing their implementation.
So in the end the challenge should fail.
New York, though, seems to have folded on this to a degree under pressure from Washington -- not because of reasonableness considerations, but for political reasons.
Lawyers just love this crap. Politicians, too. Lord help the rest of us.
Well she got her wish, NJ is releasing the whinny nurse from quarantine. So what's the book on her having Obola and spreading it, 30 to 1? I'd take that bet.
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