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Border agent allowed TB patient in U.S.
Associated Press ^ | May 31, 2007 | GREG BLUESTEIN and DEVLIN BARRETT

Posted on 05/31/2007 4:28:06 PM PDT by Baladas

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To: Buddy B

Our terrorist enemies just found another way to kill Americans by the thousands. Sometimes they must be amazed at our government’s feckless stupidity.

The border patrol agent should be fired.

Speaker should be incarcerated.

Speaker’s father should be placed on leave while the CDC determines whether he should be fired.

Meanwhile, elderly women and young children will be forced to remove their shoes and Caucasian and East Asian women will be selected at random for extensive scrutiny at our airports. Even though none has ever been even implicated in an act of terror or endangerment of the American people.

Our supposed “Homeland Security” department is not only staffed, but headed, by incompetent bullies like Michael Chertoff. They act tough around people they can push around, but shrink from anyone from whom they should be protecting us.


61 posted on 05/31/2007 7:17:30 PM PDT by dez (Giving visas to illegals is like giving car thieves legal title to the cars they steal)
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To: GovernmentShrinker

So how do you know more than the CDC per the Atlanta Journal Constitution?

While he was honeymooning in Rome, CDC officials asked him to agree to indefinite isolation in an Italian hospital. Instead he fled. Despite the CDC putting the man on airlines’ “no fly” lists and having his passport flagged, the man and his bride were able to elude health authorities and sneak back into the United States by flying to Canada and driving across the border last week.

Indefinite isolation in a foreign country for a non-threatening malady?


62 posted on 05/31/2007 7:27:06 PM PDT by sgtyork (Liberalism worthy of the name emphasizes freedom of the individual, democracy and the rule of law.)
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To: sgtyork

Tuberculosis is hardly “non-threatening.”

It’s a horrible disease that ravages its victims. I remember the rural hospitals in which TB victims were quarantined. I know people whose grandparents and great uncles died from the disease. It’s not a pretty sight, and far worse to experience.

This nation worked incredibly hard to eliminate Third World ravages like polio (I know several, including close family memebers, crippled by it), smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera (another terrible illness), encephalitis, and dengue fever.

Now our political class are rolling the red carpet across the Mexican border to where most of these diseases flourish. At the same time, the incompetent fools that head and staff our “Homeland Security” look away as people they know are infected with these diseases travel on our aircraft and enter our country.

What is wrong with these people?


63 posted on 05/31/2007 7:48:44 PM PDT by dez (Giving visas to illegals is like giving car thieves legal title to the cars they steal)
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To: dez

Very strong agreement!


64 posted on 05/31/2007 8:20:26 PM PDT by sgtyork (Liberalism worthy of the name emphasizes freedom of the individual, democracy and the rule of law.)
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To: dez

Further thought, when I was a kid in the 50s my Mom was deathly afraid of TB.

We made so much progress in public health, how can we let it slip away?


65 posted on 05/31/2007 8:22:54 PM PDT by sgtyork (Liberalism worthy of the name emphasizes freedom of the individual, democracy and the rule of law.)
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To: Baladas
A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis
was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded
a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials
said Thursday. The inspector has been removed from border duty.


Remind me again, why do we have a customs/border-inspector service?

I suspect the thing to do is IMMEDIATELY FIRE all the management,
then promote folks like the lady agent that sniffed out the
Millenium Bomber, and see about re-hiring anybody that was
let go for not being a "team player" or complaining about the
ineffectiveness of our border control.
66 posted on 05/31/2007 8:39:28 PM PDT by VOA
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To: Shermy
Of the many thousands of jobs that the father-in-law could have had....TB researcher for the CDC is the one that makes the f-i-l the number one suspect.

They should be able to trace any mutations in the organism to one that the CDC had possession of.

Everyone catch the VA hospital, cream of rice cereal anthrax scare today??

BA

67 posted on 05/31/2007 9:35:17 PM PDT by Battle Axe (Repent for the coming of the Lord is nigh!)
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To: John Jorsett
LOL. Yes, but even Barney managed to bungle his way into getting it right, but I guess that only works in fictitious towns, by fictitious cops, on TV.
68 posted on 05/31/2007 10:20:31 PM PDT by khnyny
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To: sgtyork

It’s not permanently non-threatening, since if left untreated it will progress and become very contagious.

But look at this from the point of view of the patient, who had already been told repeatedly that he poses little risk of transmission due to his complete lack of symptoms, and knows that he’s been carrying this bug and running around in close proximity to lots of people for many months, though he’s just now been told it’s totally drug-resistant. He also knows that his new wife, who he’s been making out with for at last the past few months, still tests negative for any form of TB so he’s got a first-hand example of how low his ability to trnsmit the disease is.

A few days ago he was led to believe he had a treatable form of TB, and that he could look forward to a long happy life with his new bride. Now he’s got some CDC guy calling him in a panic, telling him he’s got a deadly disease for which there’s no reliable treatment, and asking him to stay “indefinitely” in a hospital in a foreign country, where he doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t know what his legal rights are, and knows little or nothing about the quality of the medical care system, and he’s thinking he’s going to be left to die there. Little wonder he bolted. What’s much less understandable is why the CDC couldn’t predict that. From everything I’ve read, it doesn’t seem that they offered him any assurance that they’d arrange to transport him home within a few days, and just needed him to stay in an Italian hospital until the special travel arrangements could be made. THAT would almost certainly have secured his cooperation.

The CDC’s response to this guy’s illness has been unpredictable and irrational, and now they’re trying to look like super-duper protectors of public health by going way overboard with their handling of the case. The chances that anybody got infected by this guy are very close to zero, and are the same for the recent airline travellers that the CDC is now making a big show of trying to track down and notify and test (test for what? it’s not like they’d test positive this soon even if they did catch it) as for all the people he’s come in close proximity to over the past months while neither he nor the CDC had thought there was any reason to put him under tight restrictions.


69 posted on 05/31/2007 11:39:29 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: Baladas

Why don’t we have border security?


70 posted on 06/01/2007 3:37:26 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie
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To: Baladas
Note to excuse the boneheaded border agent, but if Speaker lied to the agent in any way in order to facilitate his entry, is that a crime? Anyone know?
71 posted on 06/01/2007 3:40:27 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: Letitring; sgtyork
From an NYT article today:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Tuberculosis-Infection.html

Officials told him they would prefer he didn't fly, but no one ordered him not to, he said. Speaker said his father, also a lawyer, taped that meeting. ''My father said, 'OK, now are you saying, prefer not to go on the trip because he's a risk to anybody, or are you simply saying that to cover yourself?' And they said, we have to tell you that to cover ourself, but he's not a risk.''

72 posted on 06/01/2007 8:49:25 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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