U.S. nurse quarantined over Ebola criticizes her treatment

Mandatory quarantine of people exhibiting no symptoms and when not medically necessary is definitely unconstitutional but that isn't to say the attitude of this nurse doesn't also leave something to be desired. .

Ms. Hickox’s mother said she had sent her daughter a text message asking if she thought she would be detained when she returned home: “She texted back: LOL that’s not going to happen.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/nyregion/nurse-in-newark-tests-negative-for-ebola.html?_r=0

he cud invite not just the police

could

the nurse should know being American....if and when an elementary school boy flashing his new Swiss Army knife in front of others, he cud invite not just the police, fire ambulance, even tactical SWAT team or worst army to the school! this is America wat do u think!

No hug from America's lead-from-behind pResident for Ms. Hickox

wow very interesting since you are not nurses,

she does understand the disease, and she is concerned that she was being treated as a pariah, with an armed guard and kept in a tent in 12 degree weather (at night). as for the idea of internet access- well if their network goes that far and they allow such things in - but the government tends not to allow much to get to prisoners, (ooops - patients) since they feel it will upset them.

she had more sense than a soldier would in dealing with the disease, and please Sensei258- SPOCK - you quote SPOCK?

I think a few posters missed the point of the nurse's criticism. It wasn't that she was quarantined, it was how she was quarantined.

Hickox, who was transferred from the airport to a hospital where she was placed in isolation, described a confusing and upsetting experience at the airport and worried the same treatment was in store for other American health workers trying to help combat the epidemic.

"I ... thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal, Hickox wrote in an article published on Saturday by The Dallas Morning. 'Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners"?

What everyone seems to miss is that the nurse wasn't complaining about the quarantine itself, she was complaining about the manner in which it was imposed and the conditions she had to live in.

There's a huge difference between kidnapping someone at the airport and imprisoning them in a tent for weeks on end without information, and showing a little humanity by having a doctor meet her, discuss the reasons and duration for the quarantine, put them in a comfortable pre-fabricated home with furniture that can be easily sterilized, with a cheap throw-away laptop, internet connection and the menus from a dozen take-out places taped to the wall, with an invitation to order whatever they want (and this makes a LOT more sense than it seems - fast food containers are generally designed to be incinerated and they can be delivered safely through an "air lock" system).

Under the first conditions (kidnapping and imprisonment) 21 days full of uncertainty is an eternity. Under the second set of conditions 21 days of catching up on emails, browsing the net and eating fast food...well, that's some people's idea of paradise and the time flies past.

People like this nurse are high risk individuals, having worked with ebola patients in Africa. It is entirely correct to place them in quanantine when they return to the US. They do not have the right to (potentially) spread disease around the country.

What is her problem? Is she really a certified nurse? If you're in direct contact with Ebola patients you have to expect to be quarantined. There is no other option.

But then they'd be interfering with her personal freedoms. And we all know in America that personal freedoms take precedence over everything. Everything.

//Ebola tourists should be forced to take a boat back home

I can see James Cameron working on the script already, Kate Winslett, a plucky nurse returning from Liberia... a dark night, an iceburg..

Ebola tourists should be forced to take a boat back home -gives them much more time to check for symptoms.

It's a small price to pay for the safety of others.

She probably realizes it isn't spread through casual contact, even living or working around infected, symptomatic individuals, but would be better off whining less about civil liberties violations and educating more from a public health standpoint.

“Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?”

What is her problem? Is she really a certified nurse? If you're in direct contact with Ebola patients you have to expect to be quarantined. There is no other option.

The real risk for a real outbreak of Ebola in America is in having the disease running out of control in Africa so it will spread importantly and end up sending dozens of patients from all around the world to American airports. Any measure that makes African control more difficult will increase this risk. In this way this quarantine will only make less people volunteer to work in Africa, the probability of a global outbreak increase and soon every city with an international airport will have cases to deal with.

In reality the quarantine is a step back that the government had to take to calm down a general population that don't understand the disease thanks to misinformation that blows up tiny probabilities and hides huge ones. There are many other infectious diseases that are much more dangerous to Americans than Ebola (lets say, ten times less fatality rate but 1000 times more probability of getting infected) but for some reason people just ignore them and worry instead for the disease that require close and prolonged contact with a symptomatic person to be transmitted.

This is the result of making decisions based on the opinion of the average Joe that have a high school level (if lucky) understanding of infectious diseases even when is exactly the opposite of the recommendations of professionals that have invested decades of their lives to understand the complex situations that comes with an emerging disease.

A soldier does not come back and put out a killer virus into the public.

Since the previous returning "Doctors Without Borders" personnel decided it was ok to ignore a self-imposed quarantine and also decided it was perfectly ok to ride subway trains and go out for pizza... I have no problem whatsoever of imposing mandatory quarantines for people arriving with a risk of having contracted Ebola in West Africa.

@sensei258 Its not the quarantine, but the way its being handled. And it is probably being handled by the same TSA employees who never went to college, barely graduated high school, and had to retake the 9th grade.

Hickox is a health care professional and I am sure she realizes the need for quarantine. But she is not an animal, and such information such as how long she will be held she has a right to know. And you don't stick her in a make-shift tent outside the hospital.

I'm sorry if the quarantine inconveniences you but "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one".