Posted on 10/26/2014 12:13:14 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I read this account of Kaci Hickox, a nurse for Doctors without Borders who returned from West Africa and was placed in quarantine as a result of the new policy adopted by New Jersey, with a growing sense of outrage and disgust.
She says there’s “disorganization” and “fear.” She says people treated her “like a criminal.” She says she worries that other health workers returning from Africa will also be put upon.
The fact that all four cases of Ebola in America are directly connected to returning health care workers from Africa doesn’t seem to penetrate; that the routine screening done at the airport didn’t detect Ebola in either Thomas Duncan or Dr. Spencer. Hickox seems perfectly willing to take a chance that health care workers returning from Africa don’t have the disease and should be able to walk around freely while “self-monitoring” their condition.
What a brave woman — who takes chances with other people’s lives. I don’t care how small the chance of contagion is — it is the responsibility of authorities to bring the chance of anyone else getting sick as close to zero as humanly possible.
I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a grueling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. I walked up to the immigration official at the airport and was greeted with a big smile and a “hello.”
I told him that I have traveled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: “No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions.”
He put on gloves and a mask and called someone. Then he escorted me to the quarantine office a few yards away. I was told to sit down. Everyone that came out of the offices was hurrying from room to room in white protective coveralls, gloves, masks, and a disposable face shield.
One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn’t. One man who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls barked questions at me as if I was a criminal.
Imagine that! One of her big complaints is that some of the airport screeners didn’t introduce themselves to her. Sheesh.
Two other officials asked about my work in Sierra Leone. One of them was from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They scribbled notes in the margins of their form, a form that appeared to be inadequate for the many details they are collecting.
I was tired, hungry and confused, but I tried to remain calm. My temperature was taken using a forehead scanner and it read a temperature of 98. I was feeling physically healthy but emotionally exhausted.
Three hours passed. No one seemed to be in charge. No one would tell me what was going on or what would happen to me.
I called my family to let them know that I was OK. I was hungry and thirsty and asked for something to eat and drink. I was given a granola bar and some water. I wondered what I had done wrong.
She wondered what she had done wrong? She just returned from ground zero of the most deadly outbreak of Ebola in history – a disease with a 70% mortality rate – and she wonders what all the fuss is about?
Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101.
The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said.
I guess we’ll have to take the word of Hickox that the officer looked “smug.” She couldn’t have been imagining that, right?
Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong.
I had spent a month watching children die, alone. I had witnessed human tragedy unfold before my eyes. I had tried to help when much of the world has looked on and done nothing.
Hickox should be commended for her service. She should be condemned for her martyr complex.
The entire account of her return is ridiculously subjective — full of characterizations of screening personnel that can’t be proven and are almost certainly exaggerated. Her main beef appears to me to be that she wasn’t accorded the deference she believed was her due as a result of her tour of duty in Africa.
No doubt she expected a hero’s welcome — perhaps a parade for her selfless acts. Sorry, but this self-pitying, whining account of her return elicits only disgust from me. Perhaps I’m being too harsh on someone who put themselves in danger to treat the afflicted.
But her attitude is reminiscent of many in this country who seem to think it more important to give the appearance of not panicking, rather than taking common-sense precautions to prevent even one more American from being afflicted with this disease. That’s the bottom line. And if some screening personnel don’t have the interpersonal skills to make Hickox feel at home and relaxed, I’d only say we didn’t hire these people to act like Dr. Phil; we’re asking them to expose themselves to possible carriers of Ebola. If it were me, I wouldn’t be all smiles and sunshine either.
That’s a shame.
The clowns in Washington D.C. might think Ebola is no big deal but America was a hell of a lot “better place” when we didn’t have all of this Ebola bull**** going on. Americans don’t need this.
14.9 of her 15 minutes are gone
so many people today think the world evolves around them, and that their views is the only ones which count.
This nurse is a far left loon probably upset that she can’t go out and cough on Republicans and get them infected. She gives nurses a bad name..if she had ANY decency she would suck it up and sit her ass at home til the 21 days is up
That’s what happens when reality breaks through the bubble a leftist lives in.
She’s not feeling the love with this little article. The Dallas newspaper comment section was hilariously negative towards her.
arrogance shows itself she knew what was happening and why another Sandra fluke
....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
Jake Tapper on Twitter is having trouble understanding “all the nastiness” directed at the nurse.
Her point was known one new anything....
The self entitlement culture is everywhere.
I read her comments and thought “well boo frikkin hoo. No one forced you to go to ebola country. Just because you make it out doesn’t mean you get special priveledges.”
Perhaps this nurse needs to cough on Jake for him to understand
I’ve met stupid nurses before but this one (who I obviously haven’t met) takes the cake!
I pick up a whiff of progressive activist global organizer type of flying monkey.
Do a little research and we may find out.
We didn't sign on for global do-gooding...don't try to draft us into your service.
Think of it as the dues you pay for being an elitist @sshole.
Maybe she’ll get to hug øbama too, and give him her attitu...uh, gratitude.
I recalled my last night at the Ebola management center in Sierra Leone. I was called in at midnight because a 10-year-old girl was having seizures. I coaxed crushed tablets of Tylenol and an anti-seizure medicine into her mouth as her body jolted in the bed.
It was the hardest night of my life. I watched a young girl die in a tent, away from her family.
OMG! She was directly, intimately, and by hand treating a highly infectious patient in the last moments of that patient's life. Indeed, she was doing so at midnight when fatigue and the powerful emotions of the event could have caused her to be careless in sanitary procedures. If there was ever a health care worker who was exposed to Ebola at its most virulent and infectious, she was it. No wonder she's in quarantine, and THANK GOD SHE IS, even if she was somewhat inconvenienced. She seems to think being an Ebola nurse somehow entitles her to put this whole country at risk. What an incredibly reckless fool.
that's liberal code for "tomorrow we start to call you people 'intolerant' or 'racist' or some other name you're not gonna like, so you better stop now!"
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