Re: Doctor being tested for Ebola in NYC
If you are a highly trained medical doctor, and just witnessed first hand the deaths of Ebola in Guinea, and you return to the U.S.
Whether you feel well, or not, any responsible person, regardless of whether the government insists upon isolation, would place themselves voluntarily in a mode of low public contact and make of diary of all contact they do have, just in case.
If this person went to a public gathering, such as a bowling alley, given his level of training, exposure, and change of location from Africa to the relatively Ebola free area of the United States, we have to assume that for Political or Personal motivations, he is TRYING to deliberately spread the disease!
This man is, in my estimation, A TERRORIST!
This is a clear and present danger to the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans, and represents a valid case of deliberate Terrorism!
There is function, and then there is intent.
The challenge here is in understanding the general attitude towards Ebola of the very great majority of doctors.
They truly believe that the only way to catch Ebola is through contact with a very symptomatic patient's blood, vomit, or feces.
With the number of West African people with Ebola increasing, after spending just a month there treating the sick, he returns home, after having most likely had contact with a number of patients' blood, vomit, and feces, wearing less than adequate protection, adequate protection not universally available in West Africa, likely thinking, knowing as he does just how the disease is spread, that he may indeed have been sufficiently exposed to someone's blood, vomit, or feces, and monitoring his likely incubation period, and that if he does have the virus in him .. the
best care is here in America.
So he flies to liberal Belgium .. probably not telling airport security that he's just had super high-risk contact with Ebola .. and then he flies from Brussels to New York, a flight that no one is really screening. So that gets him home, to where the best care is.
Believing, as he does, that no one is in danger from him, believing, as he does, that there's insufficient viral load in body fluids prior to showing symptoms, especially in saliva, he goes out about his business on the town. Heck, he even has contact with his fiancee (who is now forced into 21-day isolation that might cost her her job)!
He's likely correct, that no one was in danger from him if he's not symptomatic, or even if he's barely symptomatic .. likely correct.
But, the problem he misses isn't medical, it's sociological -- it's his "bedside manner" toward his fellow American citizens that stinks.
And, he's missing that his behavior will be viewed as just another "arrogant doctor".
And, he's missing the selfishness in his behavior, ironic considering his volunteer work in West Africa was anything but selfish.
What he apparently doesn't grasp is that the great majority of people don't believe the way the very great majority of doctors do on this matter. The great majority of people are still understandably intelligently concerned about Ebola .. about the 24 hours prior to experiencing classic symptoms .. about how much of the virus truly is in saliva during those last 24 hours prior to symptoms .. about what happens if the doctors are wrong or somehow a very poor person gets infected and doesn't go to the hospital but is cared for at home (how the epidemic spread in West Africa) .. about how long the virus can exist on surfaces in the cold and dark as winter approaches .. about how healthcare professionals can contract the disease from ER walk-in patients they care for prior to them testing positive and being placed in protective isolation (how the two nurses got Ebola from Duncan in Dallas) .. about how each new case of Ebola exposes the virus to a new host that may be the right environment for mutating to airborne .. about the effect of each new case of Ebola in America on Wall Street .. about how deadly the virus is, especially without proper treatment from the onset of symptoms, proper treatment so many of America's own poor can't afford .. about how special prevention of the spread of Ebola will thus be a taxpayer burden ...
The great majority of Americans are rightly concerned.
But, the very great majority of doctors aren't concerned about these matters (even if some virologists are).
Terrorism is intent.
Sociological ignorance and selfishness, no, these are not terrorism.
But they are bad.
To return to the heart of our country's most populous city, six days prior to experiencing symptoms he most certainly knew were likely, and walk around freely amongst the populous?
Professional arrogance and sociological ignorance and egocentric selfishness, and even self-preservation over moral imperatives? Yes.
Terrorism? No. His intention wasn't to do harm to others but to take care of himself.
His volunteer organization, Doctors Without Borders, does a wonderful volunteer service, putting themselves at known risk, helping the sick who cannot afford medical care. They are to be praised for that, most assuredly.
But, the problem I have with this organization and its members, is their political philosophy with respect to the ".. Without Borders" part: they have a tendency to have disdain for geopolitical units, treating one place in the world like any other, like, in this case, West Africa and New York City are just part of one big planet, without different laws, or healthcare, or you name it.
So his liberal "Multi-Cultural Internationalist" attitude is on display, which contributes to his pretty lousy "bedside manner" toward his fellow Americans.
But, a terrorist? No.
Nevertheless, he should have a stern talking to about the value of being sensitive to people not possessing the great medical body of knowledge he possess, and about being sensitive to his country's government that's now attempting to promote the sociological general welfare of its people and implement physiological
and psychological protections for the American people ..
.. And about how, under the right host and conditions, a virus can mutate to airborne, especially after being passed from person, to person, to person .. in an epidemic like West Africa.