CDC SC

[AFpheonix]

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/he...530meshtb.html

Gee, I have a rare form of tuberculosis, and I get told to stay put. Hmmm....I know! I think I'll take a long transatlantic flight and risk infecting other people with a multiple drug resistant strain of TB! Yay!

Oh...why oh why am I in isolation now with an armed guard outside my room?

[Eireann]

I still can't believe this guy:

He knew he had tuberculosis.
He knew it was resistant to first-line antibiotics.
He knew he would have to be flown almost all the way across the country to get the right treatment.
HIS WIFE'S FATHER WORKS FOR THE CDC, SPECIALIZING IN TB!!!!

So, what does he do? Hops a plane to Greece, gets married, goes to Italy, the CDC catches up with him, he freaks out in the belief that he'll die if he doesn't get back home (then why did he even LEAVE in the first place?), he takes more flights, exposes more people, sneaks back into the country, and now he's surprised he has an armored guard outside his door.

Oh, and he's sorry that he exposed God-only-knows-how-many people to his rare, potentially lethal form of TB. But it wasn't his fault! He was afraid!

Yeah, right.

[Dreamstalker]

Yes, I can imagine being quarantined on vacation sucks, but deal with it if you need to.

A good family friend had a battle with severe bacterial pneumonia while in Paris, and wound up staying there for about two months longer than anticipated until her doctor said she was well enough to fly. Yes, she was bummed at having to stay for longer, but she and her husband both knew it was the best for her.

"Didn't want to put anybody at risk", yet took two transatlantic flights while knowing what he had and how dangerous it could be. I'd say that the possible consequences if others get infected is much greater than the "inconvenience" of his treatment.

If I were in charge of getting the guy back to the US for treatment, I would have also issued a warrant.

[Cia]

If the Italians had problems with getting his TB taken care of did he expect that the CDC wouldn't have given them help? What a frelling jackass.

He didn't care that they preferred him not to fly. He just didn't care. End of story. It was all about him, his wedding and his honeymoon. It didn't matter if they had said 'we recommend you don't' because he was going to fly anyways. I hope he has to pay for all those people to be notified and tested.

He's the Typhoid Mary of the 21st Century.

I would ask who in their right mind would fly on national/international flights when they know they are carrying a communicable, drug resistant strain of some disease. But we already know the answer to that one.

[BunnyJas]

I have a condition that causes me to be very subceptible to respiratory diseases and I have a higher risk of becoming very ill or dying if I catch a bad one. If I had caught TB from this idiot, you can guarantee that I would be hauling his ass off to court. There is absolutely NO excuse for this stupidity.

This quote probably is the funniest and scariest:

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he said. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary confinement in Italy thing."

What kind of "well-educated, successful, intelligent" person doesn't know the risks of TB, how contagious it is, and goes against doctors orders to fly to another country?? Now he's whining about gaurds being posted at his door?! From this quote, he obviously does not understand the consequences of his actions and is only seeing how something like this inconvienanced HIM- that alone is frightening.

[Bramble]

Actually from what I've heard he wasn't told that the form of TB he had was the rare deadly type UNTIL he was already over there.

[Eireann]

I've heard the opposite. He knew he had TB, he had been treated with antibiotics, the antibiotics didn't work, he knew he would have to be treated at a special clinic in Denver. And if he'd been in any doubt he could have (gasp!) called his fiancee's father, who works for the CDC and specializes in TB.

I still can't believe this guy. Whenever a person says, "I am [insert description here]," I assume exactly the opposite. It works very well for me.

[Cia]

You just don't fly at all when you know you have a communicable disease be it TB, chicken pox, measles, mumps or whatever until you are no longer contagious or you are cured.

As Bunny said there are people out there who are very suseptible to these kind of air borne diseases. It will be just dumb luck if no one else catches this.

[AFpheonix]

Actually from what I've heard he wasn't told that the form of TB he had was the rare deadly type UNTIL he was already over there.

They knew it was resistant to first line antibiotics, (as several strains are, including DRX) and they asked him nicely to not fly. They didn't find out it was the DRX strain until he was over there, and at that point, told him to turn himself into the Italian health dept.
At that point, he decided to go all Bourne Identity and run.

[KaeZoo]

Actually, I can sympathize with the guy.

Yes, he was advised not to travel for health reasons, just like anyone with a serious disease would be advised not to travel; but he was told repeatedly that he was NOT contagious. And in fact, he wasn't contagious; he had no fever, he was not coughing, and tests of his sputum found no TB bacteria.

The guy was about to begin treatment for a potentially fatal disease. He wanted to get married, have some fun, and enjoy his honeymoon for a little bit before beginning a potentially very unpleasant part of his life. You can argue about the wisdom of traveling overseas at this point, but I can totally understand his reasons for doing it; and again, he didn't have any reason to think he was endangering anyone but himself. He knew he had a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis but did not know he had extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB, a rare variety that's very hard to treat. One of the people who told him he WASN'T a danger to others was his future father-in-law, a TB expert at the CDC.

So while he's overseas, he gets the call and finds out that he has a much rarer, much harder-to-treat form of TB. At the same time he's told he can't come home, that he has to "turn himself in" to the Italian health system and stay there indefinitely. Basically he's trapped in a foreign country, more or less told (he thought) to stay there and die.

Can you really blame him for panicking, trying to find a way to get home any way he could? He still didn't have any reason to think he was a particular danger to others. He had been tested, he had been told he wasn't contagious, and nothing about the new diagnosis changed that.

Obviously most people still aren't going to agree with what he did. I'm not saying he was right. But I'm saying that I can understand his reasons for doing it.

[Eireann]

I don't feel sorry for him at all. If someone used the dreaded initials "TB" when referring to my health, and I KNEW FULL WELL that I was going to have to undergo treatment at a specialized medical center, the last thing I would even THINK about doing would be to board an airplane. After all, what if something happened en route? As self-absorbed as this guy is, he didn't even stop to think of what might happen if the disease suddenly worsened, leaving him stranded in Europe, whose health-care system he regards as primeval, judging from his actions. Or, what if his wife had suddenly started showing symptoms on their honeymoon?

I don't see any mention of him being told, or even thinking he had been told, to stay in Italy to die. He was told to stay there for treatment. And in his panic, it never even occurred to him or his wife that all they had to do was call her father, who would be able to tell them exactly what was going on.

With all the travel time they put in - one flight after another, then driving across the border - they had ample time to reconsider the wisdom of their actions. But they never did.