Out of “left field,” MSNBC interviewed nurse Kaci Hickox, who – prior to the November election – was accused of being an Ebola threat and was quarantined.
Hickox, who was ordered to quarantine by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie after the Ebola scare of 2014, joins Chris Hayes for an interview about America’s public health system, and comments on the ongoing anti-vaccine controversy.
MSNBC
Currently, there is only one diagnosed case of Ebola in the U.S. – that of Dr. Craig Spencer in New York.
Ebola first came to the U.S. on August 2nd, when Dr. Kent Brantly returned to the U.S. from working in West Africa.
That didn’t stop people from making threats against nurse Kaci Hickox and her boyfriend Ted Wilbur in Fort Kent, Maine.
Tom Pelletier, Fort Kent’s chief of police, said he had received calls from people who wanted him to arrest Hickox, local media reported.
Wilbur told the Press Herald newspaper that he has withdrawn from his nursing program at the University of Maine at Fort Kent because university officials were not doing enough to stop threats against him.
The couple has decided to move out of state.
Kaci Hickox, the nurse who defied a mandatory Ebola quarantine in Maine and cast a spotlight on what critics saw as an overreaction to the dangers posed by health workers returning from West Africa, plans to move out of state, it was reported Saturday.
Hickox and her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, are leaving Fort Kent after Monday, the last day of the disease’s 21-day incubation period and the day when a judge’s order that she be monitored for the disease expires, The Associated Press reported.
The Portland Press Herald reported that the couple will move to another state, and that Wilbur recently withdrew from an accelerated nursing program at the University of Maine, also in Fort Kent.
Hickox has shown no signs of the deadly disease that has killed nearly 5,000 people in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
She was briefly placed into isolation in New Jersey upon her arrival on Oct. 24 from Sierra Leone where she was treating Ebola patients, and then allowed to travel to Maine, where the governor and health officials had sought to impose a mandatory quarantine. But a judge refused to impose that order, and instead allowed her to leave her home as long as she was monitored for symptoms.
It is not clear what the reasoning would be behind quarantining people who aren’t sick.
In New Jersey, nurse Kaci Hickox tested negative for Ebola several times.
A faulty thermometer at the airport showed she had a fever, but she later tested normal for that as well.
According to the Washington Post, she may not have intended to become the center of a political debate, but she is one now.
When the registered nurse — fresh from fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone — spoke out against a mandatory quarantine in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie was the first Republican to intervene.
While refraining from attacking Hickox personally, Christie took up an unusual rallying cry for a member of the party of Reagan: the need for big government to contain a mess.
“The government’s job is to protect [the] safety and health of our citizens,” Christie said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And so we’ve taken this action, and I absolutely have no second thoughts about it.”
Christie then apparently had second thoughts on Monday, when he freed Hickox from quarantine after supposedly talking to, among others, President Obama.
The left took up her cause. “When Kaci Hickox stood up to Governor Chris Christie for quarantining her against her will and claiming she was ‘obviously ill’ when she wasn’t, she did more than bring a little sanity to our Ebola-panic politics,” the Nation wrote. “She also struck a blow for all the teachers, nurses, public employees, minimum-wagers and workers of all kinds that Christie has bullied, belittled and silenced over the years.”
When back at home in Maine, Hickox defied another mandatory quarantine from another Republican governor, the partisan divide over her irresponsibility or moxie only deepened.
To the right, she was a do-gooder who fell from grace, trading praiseworthy humanitarian work for arrogant grandstanding as she and her boyfriend set off on a defiant bicycle ride with a group of TV camera crews in tow. To the left, she was a hero standing up to “bully governors.”
“There is something uniquely jarring about a display of selfish insolence from someone who is so praiseworthy in other respects,” Townhall wrote in a piece called “Kaci Hickox, Self-Absorbed Hero.” “Maddening traits usually come from maddening people, as their true character surfaces.”
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, more than seven in 10 Americans support mandatory quarantines for health professionals who have treated Ebola patients in West Africa, even if they don’t have Ebola.
The survey shows that 71 percent of those surveyed say the health workers should be subject to a 21-day quarantine, while 24 percent disagree.
Nurse Kaci Hickox, who has returned from treating patients in West Africa, has exhibited no symptoms and tested negative for the virus.
She has been battling with New Jersey and Maine over mandated isolation.
Those who oppose the practice of quarantines – including top health officials and White House administration officials — say that it is unnecessary and discourages health workers from fighting the Ebola outbreak at its source.
Support for the quarantines varies by political party, age and education level.
Eighty-five percent of self-described Republicans say they think the quarantines should be enforced, versus 65 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independents. Ninety-one percent of Tea Party backers also believe the quarantines are necessary.
Older Americans are also more likely to back mandatory isolation for the health workers. A third of those 18-34 years old oppose the requirements, compared with just one in 10 seniors.
And those with lower levels of education are more likely to support quarantines (80 percent of those with a high school education or less are in favor) than those with college or post-graduate educations (63 percent are in favor.)
According to Time Magazine, a judge in Maine rejected the state’s attempt to forcibly quarantine a nurse who has been clashing with officials over her defiance of a voluntary Ebola quarantine on Friday.
He reversed a court order that briefly mandated she avoid public places and transportation. Kaci Hickox – the nurse – must still continue daily temperature monitoring and approve travel with state officials, the judge ordered.
The order came Friday following a temporary order Thursday. The state has been pushing the nurse, Kaci Hickox, to follow quarantine guidelines laid out by federal officials for people at “some risk” of Ebola.
“I’m humbled today by the judge’s decision and even more humbled by the support that we have received from the town, the state of Maine, across the U.S. and even across the globe,” Hickox told reporters. “I know that Ebola is a scary disease. I have seen it face to face.
“I know that we are nowhere near winning this battle. We’ll only win this battle as we continue this discussion, as we gain a better collective understanding about Ebola and public health, as we overcome the fear and most importantly as we end the outbreak that is still ongoing in West Africa today,” she said.
1976 – Ebola is first discovered in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo near the Ebola River. Thirty-two Ebola outbreaks would follow, bringing the total number of cases before this outbreak to 2,361, including 1,438 deaths, according to the WHO.
March 19, 2014 – What would become the largest Ebola outbreak in history begins in March 2014 with 23 deaths from what is then called a “mystery” hemorrhagic fever.
Aug. 2, 2014 – Dr. Kent Brantly is flown from Liberia to Emory for treatment. He surprises everyone by walking out of the ambulance into the hospital in his protective suit.
Aug. 5, 2014 – Missionary Nancy Writebol is flown from Liberia to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, for Ebola treatment in its isolation ward.
Sept. 5, 2014 – Dr. Rick Sacra arrives at Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. He eventually gets a blood transfusion from Dr. Kent Brantly, the American missionary who survived his bout with Ebola.
Sept. 9, 2014 – An unnamed American Ebola patient arrives at Emory University Hospital for treatment. This patient had been working for the WHO in Sierra Leone.
Sept. 20, 2014 – Thomas Duncan arrives in the United States from Liberia to visit family.
Oct. 5, 2014 – Sacra hospitalized in Massachusetts with what doctors fear is an Ebola relapse. They isolate him out of what they said was an abundance of caution.
Oct. 6, 2014 – Ashoka Mukpo, 33, a freelance American cameraman who contracted Ebola in West Africa, arrives at Nebraska Medical Center for Ebola treatment.
Oct. 12, 2014 – Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas says that nurse Nina Pham has tested positive for Ebola. Pham is a nurse at the hospital and had tended to Thomas Duncan.
Oct. 13, 2014 – Amber Vinson flies from Cleveland to Dallas on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143, arriving at 8:16 p.m. She has no symptoms, but her temperature was 99.5 degrees that morning, according to health officials. She notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before boarding, and no one told her not to fly.
Oct. 14, 2014 – Vinson is taken to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas with a fever.
Oct. 16, 2014 – Nina Pham is flown from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas to the National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Pham treated Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where she works.
Oct. 23, 2014 – Dr. Craig Allen Spencer is diagnosed with Ebola the same day he went into isolation at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
Oct. 27, 2014 – A five-year-old boy was transported to Bellevue hospital in New York with symptoms of Ebola. The boy tested negative for Ebola that same evening.
With the exception of Thomas Duncan, who passed away, all of these patients have been declared virus-free and have been released. Kaci Hickox, who was detained in New Jersey and put in quarantine, tested negative twice for Ebola. She is now at her home in Maine. At this time, there is only one known case of Ebola in the U.S. – Dr. Craig Spencer in New York.
Though the state of Maine has a quarantine order on Hickox, she supposedly defied it by taking a bike ride on Thursday. She has stated that she feels healthy. Oddly, reporters in Maine routinely come within one or two feet of Hickox while questioning her.
On Friday, New York governor Cuomo and New Jersey governor Christie announced a mandatory quarantine for people who had been in West Africa and had contact there with people infected with Ebola. Illinois and other states soon followed suit.
California on Wednesday became the latest state to order a 21-day quarantine for travelers who have been in close contact with Ebola patients.
In an attempt to avoid the criticism lodged against New York, New Jersey and Maine that had blanket quarantine orders, California will allow county health agencies to impose the quarantine on a case-by-case basis.
It is unclear when the former patients intend on returning to work.
A nurse’s release Tuesday from an Atlanta hospital leaves a single person in the United States now battling Ebola, though she and others — including President Barack Obama — stressed the fight against the deadly virus isn’t over.
“While this is a day for celebration and gratitude, I ask that we not lose focus on the thousands of families who continue to labor under the burden of this disease in West Africa,” said 29-year-old Amber Vinson.
Smiling broadly and occasionally brushing aside tears, Vinson was surrounded by relatives as well as Emory doctors and nurses.
Nurse Nina Pham from Dallas, who also had Ebola, was released Oct. 24 from a National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda, Md.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Kaci Hickox traveled from New Jersey to Maine, where her boyfriend is a senior nursing student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. Hickox, who spent the weekend in a quarantine tent in New Jersey, said she never had Ebola symptoms and tested negative in a preliminary evaluation. She also sharply criticized New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for ordering mandatory quarantines.
Hickox, told CNN that her “basic human rights have been violated,” and was released Monday, two days after testing negative for Ebola. She was seemingly powerless to challenge her banishment to a quarantine tent in Newark.
The nurse’s treatment, as well as the quarantine policies of New York and New Jersey, have been criticized as heavy-handed.
Former Ebola patient Rick Sacra, a doctor infected in Liberia, likened the mandatory quarantine for returning health-care workers in New York and New Jersey to a “police state approach.”
Here is an interesting trailer from the movie “Quarantine” from 1989.
The plot of the movie was that society and the government overreacted to a virus. The quarantine became a Nazi-type witch-hunt. Masses of people were detained, and then – in an abuse of power – authorities selected who would live and who would die.
According to the information with the trailer: “A group of scientists investigates the causes of a plague that has invaded America, and battle over harsh methods which have been instituted by the government to stop it, including mass concentration camp-style quarantines.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, a Doctors Without Borders nurse who tested negative for Ebola after being put under mandatory quarantine in New Jersey lashed out Saturday at the move to force her detainment.
Kaci Hickox, a 33-year-old nurse from Maine who had been working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, was detained Friday at Newark Liberty International Airport under stepped-up protocols ordered by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo .
In an essay published by The Dallas Morning News on Saturday, Ms. Hickox wrote that being quarantined at University Hospital in Newark “is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me.”
Ms. Hickox said a forehead scan taken by an official at the airport initially said her temperature was 98 degrees. But hours later, after she said she became upset about being held without explanation, a forehead scan found her temperature to be 101 degrees.
A worker at the airport “barked questions at me as if I was a criminal,” she wrote.
At the hospital, her temperature was recorded at 98.6 degrees on an oral thermometer, and she said a doctor told her, “There’s no way you have a fever. Your face is just flushed.” After that, she said, her blood was taken and came back negative for Ebola after a test.
“I am scared about how health-care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa,” Ms. Hickox wrote. “I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine.”
Ms. Hickox’s mother, Karen Hickox, said in an interview that her daughter was being held in an “isolation tent” that has an air system and a portable toilet, but no shower. She said her daughter has been given hospital food by attendants dressed in full protective suits—the uniforms Ms. Hickox wore to treat sick patients on a five-week trip to Sierra Leone.
“There is no TV, no books, no magazines, nothing,” said Karen Hickox, who lives in Rio Vista, Texas, a city roughly 40 miles south of Fort Worth. Her daughter called on Saturday morning in tears.
“That’s not her normal demeanor,” her mother said. “If you knew her, she’s a very positive, everything-is-going-to-be-OK person.”
Doctors Without Borders said the tent wasn’t heated and that Ms. Hickox was forced to wear uncomfortable paper scrubs.
The organization said she hasn’t been informed about what comes next and has been issued an order of quarantine that doesn’t indicate how long she will remain in isolation.
The group also said in a statement, “While measures to protect public health are of paramount importance, they must be balanced against the rights of health workers returning from fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to fair and reasonable treatment and the full disclosure of information to them, along with information about intended courses of action from local and state health authorities.”
New Jersey Governor Christie said Saturday that his heart goes out to Ms. Hickox. He said it was a “difficult situation” and that steps were taken to make her comfortable.
“My first and foremost obligation is to protect the public health and safety of the people of New Jersey,” Mr. Christie said while campaigning in a governor race in Sioux City, Iowa.
New Jersey Governor Christie also said: “But you know I feel for her,” and “I hope she recovers quickly and we’re going to do everything we can in New Jersey and in our public health system to make sure that she does.”
Of course, she doesn’t seem to actually have Ebola.
Ms. Hickox was scheduled to remain under 21-day quarantine and may undergo further testing, officials said.
The quarantine was part of more stringent screening guidelines instituted in New Jersey and New York after another Doctors Without Borders worker, Craig Spencer, tested positive for the virus. Dr. Spencer was in stable condition in Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.
The mandatory quarantines apply to any medical workers who had performed services to individuals infected with the Ebola virus, officials said.
Individuals who had traveled to Ebola-affected regions of West Africa and returned through New York or New Jersey would be actively monitored by public-health officials even if they didn’t have direct contact with an infected person.
CDC guidelines had called for humanitarian aid workers to monitor their own temperature for 21 days after returning from West Africa.
The federal guidelines don’t call for any movement restrictions as long as they exhibit no symptoms of the disease.
Ms. Hickox’s mother said her daughter took previous missions with Doctors Without Borders. “She loves the organization. She loves what they do,” her mother said.
In other news, it was announced that the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, is traveling to Guinea on Sunday. She will also visit Liberia and Sierra Leone, making the trip despite calls by some US lawmakers for a travel ban on the three West African countries worst-affected by Ebola.
Ms Power, a member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, left Washington on Saturday.
Above are two pictures from October 24th.
Which one is more memorable? The one of the president giving former Ebola patient Nina Pham a hug? Or the picture of two governors announcing a forced Ebola quarantine?
Friday, the governors of New York and New Jersey ordered an involuntary quarantine for all people entering the country through two area airports if they had direct contact with Ebola patients in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. They will be automatically confined for monitoring during the 21-day incubation period of the virus.
The two-state forced quarantine policy was instituted a day after Dr. Craig Spencer, a physician for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, tested positive for Ebola and was admitted to a special isolation unit at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
A few hours later, New Jersey health officials said a nurse who had recently worked with Ebola patients in Africa and landed in Newark on Friday had developed a fever and was being placed in isolation at a hospital.
She did not initially display symptoms of Ebola but later developed a fever, said New Jersey Health Department spokeswoman Donna Leusner.
She had been quarantined earlier in the day under the new policy, even before she had symptoms. Officials did not know Friday night whether or not she had the virus.
However, recent news on Saturday indicates a preliminary test shows that the health care worker does not have Ebola, New Jersey officials said.
She was the first to be quarantined under the new policy.
But here’s the thing: the unidentified woman will remain in quarantine at a hospital in Newark for at least 21 days under the controversial new state policy.
The mandatory quarantine even for non-symptomatic travelers will last 21 days, the longest documented period it has taken for an infected person to show symptoms of the disease.
So again, a preliminary test shows that the health care worker does not have Ebola, but she will remain in quarantine for 21 days anyway.
Is this a 21-day prison?
According to the New York Times, the new measures go beyond what federal guidelines require and what infectious disease experts recommend.
These actions were also taken without consulting the city’s health department, according to a senior city official.
Both governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, portrayed these steps as necessary. “A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” Mr. Cuomo said. “This is too serious a public health situation.”
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said Dr. Spencer probably should have self-quarantined beginning on Tuesday. “At that point I would have locked myself in, and I would have started checking my temperature hourly,” he said.
However, Dr. Schaffner said he saw no need for an automatic 21-day quarantine or isolation period for people arriving from West Africa – even health workers. There is no medical reason for it, he said, because people are not contagious until they develop symptoms.
Also, three people who “had contact” with Dr. Craig Spencer have been involuntarily quarantined, and investigators have compiled a detailed accounting of his movements in the days before he was placed in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center on Thursday. They were reported still healthy on Friday.
So, again, three “healthy people” were quarantined.
What does that mean – “had contact?” It is claimed that the disease only spreads through bodily fluids. Does that mean the three people had contact with Dr. Spencer’s bodily fluids?
According to the Times, “(i)n New York City, disease investigators continued their search for anyone who had come into contact with the city’s first Ebola patient, Dr. Craig Spencer, since Tuesday morning.”
Again, what do they mean by “come into contact?” Played bowling near his alley? Dr. Spencer remained in stable condition on Friday, and doctors were discussing the use of various experimental treatments. The bowling alley has been temporarily shut down.
Friday, the White House sidestepped questions about whether a nationwide quarantine of returning health care workers was being considered.
The Federal government has already put procedures in place, including enhanced airport screenings and the monitoring of people arriving from Ebola-afflicted countries.
There was also concern that the move in New York and New Jersey might have an adverse effect on getting workers to West Africa, where more than 4,500 people have died of the virus and medical workers are in short supply.
City health officials have said Spencer, 33, did not begin to show symptoms until Thursday morning, the day of his hospitalization, and was thus not contagious before then.
However, public fears about transmission of the disease were stoked by the disclosure that he had ridden subways, taken a taxi and visited a bowling alley in the days before he fell ill.
Medical detectives, meanwhile, have tried to retrace Spencer’s steps in the city in search of others who might have been exposed.
Does politics play a role?
After first seeking to allay concerns that Dr. Craig Spencer put others at risk, New York Governor Cuomo said Friday that common sense demanded these measures.
Cuomo is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party led by Obama, and New Jersey Governor Christie, a Republican, is widely discussed as a potential 2016 contender for the White House.
In Washington, Obama also sought to reassure a worried public with an Oval Office hug of Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who was declared Ebola-free on Friday after catching the virus from Duncan.
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the CDC also confirmed that a second nurse, Amber Vinson, no longer had detectable levels of virus but did not set a date for her to leave that facility.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to discuss the possibility of a nationwide quarantine policy but said “these kinds of policy decisions are going to be driven by science” and the advice of medical experts.
A senior administration official said it was important for the United States to take “coordinated” action on the issue.
What about discrimination?
The new United Nations human rights chief expressed alarm on Thursday over anti-African prejudices arising from the Ebola crisis, warning against what he described as ill-conceived quarantine enforcements and discriminatory travel restrictions.
“Only a response that is built on respect for human rights will be successful in quashing the epidemic,” he said.
As the global response to the crisis accelerates, he said, “it is also vital that every person struck down with Ebola be treated with dignity, not stigmatized or cast out.”
Concerns about rights and liberties with regards to the quarantine have been raised. Is being quarantined the same as being arrested?
“It’s a severe restriction that the use of which should be very much guarded, that people should have a right to an attorney and some type of due process,” said attorney Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project. “When they quarantine someone, they should make sure that they are not treated as a criminal.”
Dr. Craig Spencer’s case brought to nine the total number of people treated for Ebola in U.S. hospitals since August. Only one person has died from it. Several of those who had the disease were health care workers who had been working in West Africa.
Just two, nurses Pham and Vinson, contracted the virus in the United States.
Only four Ebola patients have been diagnosed with it in the country: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Oct. 8 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, the nurses Pham and Vinson, and Spencer, the first New York City case.
Dr. Kent Brantly was the first person with Ebola to arrive in the U.S. this year. He arrived here on August 2nd.
Ebola was first discovered in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo near the Ebola River in 1976. Thirty-two Ebola outbreaks would follow, bringing the total number of cases before this outbreak to 2,361, including 1,438 deaths, according to the WHO.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/25/us-health-ebola-newyork-idUSKCN0IC2CU20141025
OK, Fine. 