RN Detained and Quarantined As Ebola Hysteria Reaches a New Low

[MissyWrite]

NJ and NY have instituted a policy of placing health workers into mandatory 21-day quarantine upon their return from West Africa if they came into contact with Ebola patients.

This new policy is a reaction to unfounded public hysteria surrounding Dr. Craig Spencer's return to NYC after working with Doctors Without Borders, and his subsequent diagnosis of Ebola, after he had taken the subway and gone bowling. People fear Ebola can be spread through casual contact with an asymptomatic person, even though public health experts say there's plenty of scientific evidence indicating that isn't the case.

Is this policy based on the facts about Ebola transmission? Is it based on science? No, it's not, and in fact no one is saying that it is:

"Voluntary quarantine is almost an oxymoron," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. "We've seen what happens. ... You ride a subway. You ride a bus. You could infect hundreds and hundreds of people."

"Public health experts say there's plenty of scientific evidence indicating that there's very little chance that a random person will get Ebola, unless they are in very close contact -- close enough to share bodily fluids -- with someone who has it.

Still, there's also a sense that authorities have to do something because of Americans' fears -- rational or not -- and belief that the country is better off being safe than sorry.

Osterholm says, "You want to try to eliminate not just real risk, but perceived risk."

Mike Osterholm is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

Because of this irrational "perceived" risk, Kaci Hickox, 33, an RN who has been caring for Ebola patients while on assignment with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone, was detained at the airport, interrogated for hours, and placed in mandatory quarantine at a New Jersey hospital upon her return to the U.S. on Friday.

She has tested negative in a preliminary test for Ebola, and she does not have a fever, but the hospital says she will remain under mandatory quarantine for 21 days. She is not allowed to leave the hospital, unless officials reconsider that decision.

Here are some excerpts from her experience so far:

I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone - an Ebola-affected country. I have been quarantined in New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me...

I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a grueling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. I walked up to the immigration official...

I told him that I have traveled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: "No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions."...

He put on gloves and a mask and called someone. Then he escorted me to the quarantine office a few yards away. I was told to sit down. Everyone that came out of the offices was hurrying from room to room in white protective coveralls, gloves, masks, and a disposable face shield.

One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn't. One man who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls barked questions at me as if I was a criminal.

Two other officials asked about my work in Sierra Leone. One of them was from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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.

I was left alone in the room for another three hours. At around 7 p.m., I was told that I must go to a local hospital. I asked for the name and address of the facility. I realized that information was only shared with me if I asked.

Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong.

At the hospital, I was escorted to a tent that sat outside of the building. The infectious disease and emergency department doctors took my temperature and other vitals and looked puzzled. "Your temperature is 98.6," they said. "You don't have a fever but we were told you had a fever."

After my temperature was recorded as 98.6 on the oral thermometer, the doctor decided to see what the forehead scanner records. It read 101. The doctor felts my neck and looked at the temperature again. "There's no way you have a fever," he said. "Your face is just flushed."

My blood was taken and tested for Ebola. It came back negative........

http://www.dallasnews.com/ebola/headlines/20141025-uta-grad-isolated-at-new-jersey-hospital-as-part-of-ebola-quarantine.ece

This is what happens to nurses when public ignorance and hysteria is placated by politicians.

We've already seen nurses blamed for just about everything Ebola-related since the first case in Dallas, and now we see a nurse being held against her will, for no reason except to make scared people "feel safer."

"It does present serious civil liberties questions," said Norman Siegel, a civil liberties lawyer in New York and the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Historically, we've had these kinds of issues occur previously, and the courts then resolved the individual liberty issue against the larger concerns of the public's health concerns. So it then becomes a factual issue, the fact that she tested negative."

"It's completely unnecessary," said Harvard's Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute).

"I'm a believer in an abundance of caution but I'm not a believer of an abundance of idiocy."

[Mulan]

Whose roommate?

Kaci Hickox

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Everyone (non-medical) around me is outraged and feels Nurse Kaci is very arrogant and putting others at risk.

I wish she would just voluntarily go along with it until the CDC can come out with concrete recommendations and also back them up with strength instead of the lackluster way they have been acting to date.

[chadrn65]

Am I understanding this correctly, that a man who claims to be an MD but has no US license, no proof of ANY license, and who decided to personally "investigate the scope and severity of the Ebola situation" by flying around West Africa is now holding press conferences about his self-imposed quarantine?

How much of a nutball IS this guy?!

I read in another article posted by someone else that he is an MD. See below.

"He said he graduated from a medical school at a university in the Dominican Republic, but is not licensed in Vermont".

"He said he did his medical residency in Pennsylvania and later had a job offer in California, but came to Vermont".

Rutland man under quarantine intends to remain there

[toomuchbaloney]

Do you believe that epidemiologists and infections medicine professionals really don't know much about this virus after almost 40 years of study? Why?

Yes. Mostly because they've said they don't.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/health/genes-influence-ebola-infections-in-mice-study-suggests.html?_r=0

The work, by Angela L. Rasmussen and Michael G. Katze of the University of Washington and their colleagues, began three years ago, long before the current Ebola epidemic. They were inspired by their studies with the 1918 influenza virus that caused a worldwide lethal pandemic.

Using a variety of mouse strains, they found that genetics determined whether a mouse got sick or died from the flu, or never got sick at all. People, too, seem to have different responses to the same influenza virus. Dr. Katze, who has studied Ebola for the past decade, and Dr. Rasmussen, who chose to study infectious diseases because when she was in college she read "The Hot Zone," a book that told a terrifying tale of Ebola in Africa, wanted to find out if genes determine responses to Ebola.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

So little was-and is-known about the disease, Dr. Katze said. "All we know is that not everyone gets hemorrhagic fever, not everyone gets sick," he said. "There are a million articles about Ebola but very little scientific literature on the virus," he added, explaining that most of what has been published is opinion pieces, epidemiology, and clinical observations.

And so, fearful and irrational people will take the humble admission that there is much they don't know about this virus to imply that they are as ignorant as the typical lay person (or apparently the typical run of the mill nurse).

Just for giggles, how much do you suppose medical professionals know about most tropical viruses? Enough to define competent isolation and quarantine prevention protocols, not that the irrationally fearful would admit that.

Personally, I am sick of folks who have no respect for science and then who start throwing around the vitriol initiated by the likes of Hannity, Levin, Limbaugh, etc as if there was ANY reason to believe them rather than the experts (they may not know it all but they know it better than ANYONE on FOX or conservative talk radio).

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

I read in another article posted by someone else that he is an MD. See below.

"He said he graduated from a medical school at a university in the Dominican Republic, but is not licensed in Vermont".

"He said he did his medical residency in Pennsylvania and later had a job offer in California, but came to Vermont".

Rutland man under quarantine intends to remain there

He has SAID a lot of things. Proof, though, seems to fall short. None of the places he claims to have education from or worked in have any records indicating same.

Haven't heard from the Dominican Republic yet, but.....I seriously doubt it.

Seems he does have a Bachelor of Science.....which in my book is a LONG way from an MD, and an even LOONGGGGERRR way from being an ID specialist!

Without much doubt, he IS a certifiable fruitcake.

[chadrn65]

He has SAID a lot of things. Proof, though, seems to fall short. None of the places he claims to have education from or worked in have any records indicating same.

Haven't heard from the Dominican Republic yet, but.....I seriously doubt it.

Seems he does have a Bachelor of Science.....which in my book is a LONG way from an MD, and an even LOONGGGGERRR way from being an ID specialist!

Without much doubt, he IS a certifiable fruitcake.

Officials are looking into. When I first read the article I thought the same, but figured give him the benefit of doubt until I hear otherwise.

[SWM2009]

The State of ME seems to be the source of the information about Hickox's roommate having Ebola and its in the court documents they filed to have her quarantine enforced. However, same State of ME states in said documents that the danger/risk to Hickox from that incident has passed.

https://bangordailynews.com/2014/10/31/news/aroostook/judge-requires-monitoring-wont-ban-kaci-hickox-from-public-places-on-ebola-fears/

Hickox indicated she did not plan to comply after Thursday with some of the less restrictive measures the state subsequently pursued, according to an affidavit filed with the state’s petition by Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Sheila Pinette. Pinette did not specify which measures Hickox planned to refuse.

In her affidavit, Pinette said Hickox’s roommate in Africa was unknowingly infected with Ebola, adding that any potential risk to Hickox had passed.

[Bengalcat]

QUOTE=MissyWrite;8199205]Please try to recall the right to freedom of speech. Even nurses and other public servants have that. I don't think that her words equaled "rabid disparagement." You must find yourself offended quite often. What you should really be appalled at is the ignorance and cowardice of the American public.

I would want to be one of her patients if I belonged to the group she describes, because she would do her best to educate me and allay my unfounded fears. That is a BIG part of the solution.

Please provide supporting evidence for your allegation that I promoted suppression of free speech in the cited post or anywhere else on AN.

[OCNRN63, RN]

Thanks. Rachel Maddow is funny!

Does anyone else find it ironic that physicians are supporting Kaci far more than her nursing peers? (If AN is a snapshot of today's nurses?)

[toomuchbaloney]

I find it odd that so many people who are incensed about "losing their rights" in a variety of arenas are perfectly content and anxious for this female nurse to simply shut up and allow herself to be detained and quarantined (give up her rights) simply because ignorant people are afraid. They are offended by her actions and stance, as if she doesn't know her proper place in society.

bah

[Mulan]

I wonder who the roommate was (what country), what the outcome was, and how they got it, sounds like they don't know, "was unknowingly infected".

[toomuchbaloney]

I wonder who the roommate was (what country), what the outcome was, and how they got it, sounds like they don't know, "was unknowingly infected".

There is no verification that this is true.

Assuming that it is true, so what? The fact that they shared an apartment DOES NOT MEAN that Kaci would have acquired ebola from her. Please reference the experiment that TX conducted using the heavily contagious contents of the Duncan apartment and his close personal contacts.