Anybody following the TB patient story?

[Hawkmoon]

I have only been "following" it loosely -- to the extent that I'm aware of it. Just clicked on a link to a story about it and found this tucked away in the report:

Speaker, 31, an Atlanta lawyer infected with a rare, often fatal form of tuberculosis, said he has a recording made before the couple flew to Europe that shows health officials told him he was not a risk to others.

In the ABC interview broadcast Friday, Speaker said his father asked health officials whether Speaker was a risk to anyone, and health officials said he was not. "My dad taped it," he said.

Fulton County health officials have said they told Speaker before his trip not to fly. (Watch Speaker say he hopes fellow airline passengers will forgive him Video)

Asked about the tape, Steve Katkowsky of the Fulton County Health Department told CNN, "If such a recording was made it was without the consent and without the knowledge of Fulton County Health Department officials."

I find this to be profoundly disturbing. Reading between the lines, what the Fulton County Health Department is saying is, "Okay, we either lied to him or we made a mistake, but he had no right to make a recording of what we told him in order to show us up as liars or dolts later on."

So what if the recording was made without the knowledge or consent of the County officials? They were acting in the course of their official duties, and anything they did or said should be a matter of public record. If permission to record had been asked, would they have said "No"? On what grounds could they possibly decline? I have worked in a couple of public agencies. As far as I know, anyone who walked through the doors had every right to tape record any meeting we might have had. Certainly, in a matter of one individual's health the County could not have allowed CNN in to tape a meeting with Speaker and/or his father, but to suggest that the father in some way did not have a right to tape his own conversation with the County officials sounds an awful lot to me like an admission that they really prefer to be able to bury their bodies quietly.

More and more it seems that it would be prudent to walk around with a voice-actuated mini-recorder in your pocket.

[zahc]

I already carry my RH1 minidisc in my car for traffic stops. Given the state of Ohio's CCW laws and insta-felon notification requirements, you'd be crazy not to.

[mountainclmbr]

The TB patient is near here, in Denver. Maybe I should hold my breath until he is gone .

[Art Eatman]

I got out of the Army on 100% disability from TB, back in 1958.

I had only a small "infiltration", not an open lesion.  The only way I might have been contagious was if I French-kissed some gal and coughed at the same time.  Anyhow, I picked it up in Korea in 1955-ish, and it didn't show up on any routine X-Ray until late 1957.  None of my barracks-mates or my gal friend of several months' standing had been infected.

An open lesion inside the lung is a different deal.  A cough or sneeze can spray bacilli around.

As near as I can tell, this guy is in the infiltration stage and 99% odds he's not contagious.  His particular type of TB is far more dangerous, but the transmissibility is no different from what mine was.

Overall, it's just modern hysteria to sell fear and advertising.

Art

[RevDisk]

Eh, my entire unit was once quarintined for possible smallpox contamination.  Only, no one told us WHY we were on lockdown.  Apparently the health officials didn't think it was necessary to inform a bunch of soldiers why they needed to be locked in their quarters immediately after returning from a hostile fire zone.  So we did what any young men would do, rappelling out a window, sneaking past the sentries and hitting the nearest bar. 

Whoops.

Guy turned out to have chickenpox, so it ended up being nothing.  But apparently the docs had a field day out of the whole thing.

[K Frame]

I think it's horrific that the jackbooted thug government can interfere with this man's Constitutional rights on the basis of a claim of "public safety."

[gunsmith]

I find this to be profoundly disturbing. Reading between the lines, what the Fulton County Health Department is saying is, "Okay, we either lied to him or we made a mistake, but he had no right to make a recording of what we told him in order to show us up as liars or dolts later on."

the recording could be a violation of the law, I am not sure of the law in that state

[Art Eatman]

Probably better for the government to quarantine somebody who could spread a deadly disease than to have a neighbor shoot the guy.

Probably still a fair number of states with laws on the books about quarantining people with TB or syphilis.  Those can be cured via medical treatment that wasn't available when the laws were passed.  I was always raised-eyebrowed about the politics of AIDS, which is incurable.

SFAIK, anybody can tape anything, unbeknownst to the tapee, except on the telephone.  FedLaw sez ya gotta tell the other party that you're taping a phone call.

Art

[Leatherneck]

I've smelled a rat from the very beginning of this episode:
Why would his father record a conversation? Why would he even HAVE such a conversation? If the father was an expert in exactly this disease (in the CDC no less), why would he encourage the lawyer-son to travel abroad after such a diagnosis?

Too many loose threads for me...

TC

[K Frame]

No, TB Boy's Father is a lawyer.

The Father-in-law is the CDC medico.

He was probably with his son acting as the son's legal counsel. Not an unintelligent move on TB Boy's part.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

if tb boy was so innocent and believed he was cool why did he fly back to canada then drive across the border?  makes me wonder

[mtnbkr]

He did that after getting stranded in Europe by the CDC. 

Chris

[Art Eatman]

Did anybody pick up on the story that the CDC has several executive jets for "emergency medical flights", that cost us $7 milllion a year?  That are mostly used for VIPs to go to conferences?

But to have used one to bring the guy back would have been "a complicated procedure", they said.

Art

[AJ Dual]

I just want to see what that trophy wife of his looks like without the isolation mask on.

And dang strange that his FIL is a CDC TB researcher...

[mountainclmbr]

Almost as if FIL didn't want daughter to marry a lawyer.

[MillCreek]

Although it is been a while since I looked into it, I believe that every state, and the Federal Government, still have active public health laws allowing for the detention or quarantine of someone deemed a public health risk.  In recent years, most of the people thus quarantined have been people with TB who refused to take their meds, and in a couple of cases, HIV positive people who refused to disclose their status to sexual partners, and were deliberately trying to infect others.

[RevDisk]

Although it is been a while since I looked into it, I believe that every state, and the Federal Government, still have active public health laws allowing for the detention or quarantine of someone deemed a public health risk.  In recent years, most of the people thus quarantined have been people with TB who refused to take their meds, and in a couple of cases, HIV positive people who refused to disclose their status to sexual partners, and were deliberately trying to infect others.

Said public health laws have been on the books since the founding of this country.  For good reason too.  1918 flu pandemic killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people.  It first recorded at Fort Riley, and is rumored to have started in Kansas.

And HIV pos folks who knowlingly refuse to disclose their status are committing attempted homicide, or very realistically, actual homicide.  Not stuff to play around with.

[Vile Nylons]

Quarantining was used to a greater degree in the past when that was the predominant way to keep a disease from spreading. Nowadays we have meds. In my 20 years in public health I never heard or was involved in it's use. But then some of the old nasty stuff started reappearing in anti-biotic variants like TB. Since this predominantly happened within prison systems, quarantining by default was in effect.
As to this case there is something very weird going on. The FIL's job, SIL's disease is a coincidence too far, particularly with a unique form of TB. Just run of the mill TB is not very common. Then the father/lawyer and tapes. What's with that? And the DOH guys quote either sounds stupid or sounds like he feels he's being jerked with and set up by some nasty lawyer type.   Weird.

[Firethorn]

Nowadays we have meds.

We also have far higher public health standards for things such as sanitization and handwashing and such.

Not all communicative diseases have medications that will prevent a carrier from being infectious.  There are many that will shorten such a period, but in the case of a nasty enough one I can indeed see a quarantine being a good idea.

Many people more or less do that today anyways.

[roo_ster]

This case is getting curiouser & curiouser.

[Matthew Carberry]

There's only one logical response to a drug-resistant communicable disease.

Kill it! Kill it with FIRE! 


We have to burn the room.

(can anybody find that quote on a sound file?)