Groom Under Federal Quarantine

[Jamo]

...it's probably the Russians...

[Ron61]

Jamo,

That was why I asked in my post above that since he was a lawyer, ( sorry I forgot to add Personal Injury as it was in some of the articles ) I just wonder what his attitude would have been if he got off a plane and found out that HE was sitting next to a person with the TB He has. My guess is that he would be tracking down every person on every flight and be filing law suites for endangerment or something.

Ron

[Jamo]

Yup...he's probably going to sue the government for allowing him to fly and therefore endangering other folks thereby creating in him a certain level of angst which prevents him from having sexual relations with his wife (or pig or sheep or goat) which causes him even more emotional distress.......

[imagine2frolic]

Jamo, Just the thought of the beastiality give me emotional stress right now! Your a twisted man with twisted humor!

[mn12]

Originally Posted by Ron61

Fred,

I think this strain he has is some kind that is not normal or something. Ron

It's a special strain that doesn't seem to respond to the antibiotics used to treat TB. From what I have read survivability is roughly 50% with this strain and it can take up to 6 months for it to develop after you have been exposed. I would imagine even if the people who were siting near don't contract it they would have grounds to file for mental aguish during the 6 month wait.

[Sizzler]

Andrew Speaker, 31, a personal-injury lawyer from Atlanta, arrived at the Canadian border May 24 after disregarding explicit instructions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remain in Italy - where he was on his honeymoon - for fear of spreading his potentially deadly strain of TB.

Speaker knew he had a severe strain of TB before departing to marry Cooksey's daughter, Sarah, on a Greek island in mid-May. He only found out later, when he was in Rome, that it was the rarest and most lethal of TB strains, resistant to most antibiotics.

Speaker has said his desire to get treated in Denver - where he'd been told he best specialists worked - compelled him to rush back to the U.S. from his honeymoon, taking a secretive, circuitous route to avoid being flagged as a health risk at American airports.

His defiance potentially exposed hundreds of airline passengers and crew to tuberculosis. It also could expose Speaker to lawsuits from those fellow travelers, should they become infected.

"There's a general duty not to put any [others] at undue risk," said Gregory Keating, a law professor at the University of Southern California. "I think he's got a problem."

From Rome, Speaker and his wife flew to Prague and then to Montreal. They rove to the border crossing at Champlain, N.Y. At the checkpoint, both their passports set off warnings when scanned into a computer. The alerts instructed the guard to isolate and detain Speaker, and immediately call health authorities.

But the inspector, who has since been removed from border duties, apparently concluded that the travelers looked healthy. They spent no more than two minutes at the checkpoint before crossing into the U.S., said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke.

The lapse at the border outraged Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who called for a federal investigation.

"Today it was one sick and very irresponsible person who slipped through, but tomorrow could bring much worse," Schumer said. "There is just no excuse for this. God forbid this was someone bent on doing us harm."

As soon as Speaker crossed the border, he moved to comply with federal authorities. On May 25, as he and his wife drove south from Albany, he answered a cellphone call from the CDC, which had been frantically trying to reach him, and agreed to check himself into an isolation unit in a New York City hospital. From there, he was transferred to his hometown of Atlanta, where he was kept in a hospital room under armed guard.

In a meeting May 10, county officials gave Speaker the diagnosis, which the CDC was working to confirm. In turn, he informed doctors of his plans to fly to Europe in a few days for his wedding.

Exactly what was said next remains in dispute.

Speaker has said the authorities told him they'd rather he not fly on a commercial plane, but did not order him to stay home.

"He specifically asked if he was not permitted to go. They said, no, we prefer you not to go, but we're not [telling] you not to go," his father, Ted Speaker, told CNN. Father and son practice law together in Atlanta.

County officials said they expressed more than a preference. "He was advised very strongly not to travel," said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness.

The next day, May 11, the county prepared a written medical directive. It can't be enforced like a court order, but the intent was unmistakable. "The letter did not say 'We prefer.' It said, 'You are directed,' " Katkowsky said.

But Speaker never got that letter.

It is unclear where he spent May 11, but he was not at work when county officials arrived with the directive. They mailed a copy to his home, but it was too late.

On May 12, they boarded an Air France jet to fly from Atlanta to Paris, then on to Athens.

On May 18, as they celebrated their marriage on Santorini - an island famed for its sheer red cliffs and black-sand beaches - the CDC confirmed the diagnosis of multi-drug-resistant TB. Other test results on May 22 showed Speaker had a still more severe strain of TB, known as XDR, or extensively drug resistant.

On May 23, a CDC quarantine officer reached Speaker at his Rome hotel with the news. The officer begged Speaker not to move, asking him to turn himself in to Italian health officials while the CDC worked to get him safely back to the U.S., said Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC's director of global migration and quarantine.

Speaker heard the conversation differently. In a phone call to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday, he explained that he thought he'd languish indefinitely in an Italian hospital. He feared he might die without help from specialists in Denver.

The next day, Speaker and his wife fled.

From other stories it seems that his original flight was due to depart May 14th. Like so much about what he says, you just have to wonder.

All these concerns about the passengers and people he came in contact with while blithely flitting about, which are more than warranted, but no one seems too worried about his new bride. Hasn't she been in close contact with him for weeks? Just what did she know, and when? With her background growing up with a TB researcher, was she supporting his decisions?!

Already, fellow passengers of his have been tested, are anxiously awaiting results, and being told that they'll need to continue getting tested for as long as a year, all because this guy who was so deathly afraid of Italian hospitals and who wouldn't accept any treatment center other than Denver, galavanted about the globe with no regards to the health and well-being of anyone else.

[aharris]

The problem is that TB, while not particularly contaigous, is a slow indolent infection that can remain dormant for years. Many people are exposed but do not develop TB because they develop immunity. Some are exposed and only develop active disease years later.

The major problem with this strain is it's resistance to treatment. Normal TB is treated with two or three different medications for a period of 9 months. Thats how hard the normal TB is to kill.

TB is particularly dangerous in immune compromised individuals. It's common in the prison system and in many South East Asian countries.

Andrew

[Jamo]

He likes to fly so phuking much, stick him on the shuttle that's going up in a few days and kick his ass out the door.

I'm getting more pissed the more I hear his (and his father's/father-in-law's) bullsh!t on the news.

[Ron61]

Seems kind of odd that all of the excuses are being made for him and no mention of his wife, her immediate family, or others who would have spent quite a bit of time in close proximity to him. I think I am going to sue for the mental stress of having to read this crap about Poor Him.

Ron

[DAVID GAGNARD]

tfalk;

Hardly the same situation... Last time I checked, AIDS is spread via shared bodily fluids, needles, etc.
If you could get AIDS by sitting within a few rows of someone, they'd have closed the most of the airports in the world.

You are correct, I guess I did not clairfy my statement.......seems to me and I could be wrong, but the guy they suspect that was the originater of the Aids virus was an airline pilot and or he jet setted all over the place and was suspected of infecting many people in many places, that's how it was spread the way it was........again, maybe my imagination, but it seems I remember something to that effect..........

David