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Have a potentially transmittable drug-resistant respiratory disease? Fly the friendly skies!

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

19:36 / 31.05.07

I'm sure most of you have read about this since it reaches into Europe and Canada:

link

My first reaction upon reading this in the local paper here where the man is being quarantined was this: "Asshole."

I've been reading various news sources about this story and generally what I'm getting is that the man in question was advised not to fly because he had a form of drug-resistant tuberculosis. The kind where you cough up blood and lots of Victorian poets had it or pretended they had it.

Let's see: if I had a nearly fatal form of disease--yes, granted, it's rare, but he still had it--and was advised not to fly because, y'know, I might infect other passengers, who might then go on to infect others, I would think reeeeeeally hard about jetting off to France, then Italy, then Prague.

I understand the dude was aware of his condition and any decision a person makes is obviously his own choice, but where is the line drawn for the common good of the populace?

Closed for Business Time

20:02 / 31.05.07

X boards public transport with easily transmissible drug-resistant infection Y - Z1, Z2 etc etc etc are at risk of contracting a fatal disease. In this case it was TB, it could've been MRSA, it could've been the next Spanish flu; it could've been on a boat, bus, train, tram or whatever. Even the streets.

Where can we draw the line between the common good, in this case public health, and the exercise of free choice and the basic right of unrestricted movement? Asked Kali.
How is being sick akin to being a criminal? I ask.

Have we in the highly developed world wrongly left public health to the uneasy collusion between state and the market these days, without as citizens and tribespeople evolving effective communal and "non-engineered", small-scale health activities, institutions and technologies?

In fact, what IS public health in regards to infectious diseases these days (specifically those where people are vectors or aid the spread of vectors)? Sanitary measures or exile as in pre-germ-theory times? Hygiene as in the pre-antibiotic era? In short, what are our potential political solutions in the post-"golden bullet" times?

Or, what Kali jus' said - good post.

There's a lab thread in this as well!

Closed for Business Time

11:13 / 01.06.07

This just in from the NYT:

An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and said he was told he wasn't contagious or a threat to anyone.

''I feel awful,'' Andrew Speaker said, speaking through a mask with ABC's ''Good Morning America'' at his hospital room in Denver. ''I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way.

''I don't expect those people to ever forgive me. I just hope they understand that I truly never meant them any harm.''

Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all knew he had TB before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was told that he wasn't contagious or a danger to anyone. Officials said they would rather he didn't fly but didn't forbid it, he said.

Link

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:20 / 01.06.07

Recent article in today's paper says that Fulton County health officials twice attempted to contact Speaker at his home and office and received no answer. In addition to that, they mailed out letters to both places, where it says IN WRITING they tell him not to fly as they don't know what kind of TB he has yet.

His attempt at an apology rings false.