Nurse Kaci Hickox who was quarantined over Ebola fears sues Christie

A nurse held for three days in quarantine at a Newark hospital last year after aiding Ebola patients in West Africa has filed suit against Governor Christie and members of his administration, saying they violated her constitutional rights by holding her against her will without due process.

The nurse, Kaci Hickox, had spent a month in Sierra Leone treating Ebola patients and training other health workers for Doctors Without Borders. When she returned home on Oct. 24 and landed at Newark Liberty International Airport, she became the first health worker ensnared in the Christie administration’s new policy to impose a 21-day mandatory quarantine on travelers arriving from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea who had come in contact with Ebola patients.

“We are filing this claim to hold those who made this decision accountable and also to highlight and fight against the lack of due process in the quarantine policy in New Jersey,” Hickox said Thursday via skype from her home in Oregon.

“It was clear to me that politicians and in particular Governor Christie were really reacting out of fear,” she said. “When you choose to detain someone out of fear that’s discrimination.”

The incident occurred last fall amid growing national worries about Ebola reaching the United States from West Africa, where an outbreak has killed more than 11,300 people and infected more than 28,500, according to the World Health Organization. Before Hickox’s return to the United States, a Liberian national who was visiting Texas died of Ebola at a Dallas hospital and Craig Spencer, a Manhattan doctor who had worked with Ebola patients in Guinea, set off a health scare in New York City after he rode the subway and visited a bowling alley while sick from the disease, though he didn’t yet know he had the virus. He has since recovered.

Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled Ebola quarantine policies last October amid public concern that health workers who had been treating Ebola patients could not be trusted to self-quarantine when they returned to the United States. At one point, New Jersey had about 100 people in active monitoring, different than quarantine because they must contact local health officials daily and must take their temperatures and watch for symptoms.

Related: Ebola quarantine process criticized by health care worker isolated in Newark

When questioned about the quarantine policy last year, Christie defended it. “Your first and most important job is to protect the health and safety of the people who live within your borders, and the fact is that we’re doing exactly the right thing,” he had said. A poll taken a few weeks after the quarantine policy was implemented, 67 percent of New Jersey residents approved of the decision to quarantine Hickox, and just 19 percent disagreed.

Hickox, 34, is seeking $250,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer representing Hickox, said that amounts to $2,000 for each hour of her 80-hour detention plus extra for punitive damages.

The 35-page complaint, filed in the United States District Court of New Jersey, also names as defendants Mary O’Dowd, the former state health commissioner, as well as Christopher Rinn and Gary Ludwig, two other employees of the state health department.

Siegel said Hickox is suing Christie and others as individuals, which could mean the governor would have to pay for his own private lawyer as well as pay any judgment himself if the court sided with Hickox. “It sends a message to other elected officials that they will be held personally responsible for actions like this,” Siegel said.

Christie spokesman Brian Murray said Thursday the governor would not comment on the suit because it is a pending legal matter.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with body fluids or through exposure to objects contaminated with the virus, such as needles. Symptoms, including fever, headache and muscle aches, commonly appear within eight to 10 days of exposure, but the maximum incubation period is 21 days.

In her complaint, Hickox argues that she followed all Doctors Without Borders infection control policies while in Sierra Leone, such as wearing protective equipment when in contact with patients and keeping a three-foot distance from people suspected of having Ebola.

After landing in Newark and telling immigration officials she had been treating Ebola patients, Hickox was held apart in a quarantine center at the airport. “No one told her what was going on or what was going to happen to her,” the complaint states. “There seemed to be no coordination among the persons who interviewed her.”

Among those who questioned her was a man wearing a weapon belt “who spoke to Hickox aggressively as if she were a criminal,” according to the complaint.

When someone tested her with a non-contact thermometer, it registered a temperature, but an oral thermometer later used at University Hospital in Newark showed no fever.

Hickox was taken from the airport to the hospital in an ambulance escorted by eight police cars with lights flashing and sirens blaring, and she was held in an isolation tent in an unfinished section of the hospital facility with inadequate heating, the complaint states. She had to ask for several blankets to keep warm, and had no access to the outside world other than her cell phone, which had weak reception, making it hard for her to send or receive email for personal or legal reasons, according to the complaint. She had access to a portable toilet but not a shower.

“I felt completely alone and vulnerable,” Hickox said. “It was really hard. I had a lot of tough moments.”

While being held, she showed no symptoms of Ebola, and threatened legal action with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. At the time, Christie replied in response, “I’ve been sued lots of times before. Get in line. I’m happy to take it on.”

He also said he didn’t think the state’s quarantine policy would discourage health care workers from going to West Africa. “I think folks should understand part of the sacrifice is going over there and the remainder of the sacrifice is when you come home,” he said then.

Hickox was later released and went home to Maine, where she was kept under quarantine for several days until a Maine judge ruled she didn’t have to be quarantined.

Hickox’s experience became a cause celebre among other health care workers, and her case sparked national debate about how to handle people exposed to Ebola. Christie and President Obama also clashed publicly over the state’s quarantine policy.

Hickox said she did not sue University Hospital or the health care providers because they weren’t the ones who enforced the quarantine. She called the nurses, doctors and staff “wonderful, compassionate and kind.”

Before her stint in Sierra Leone, Hickox had also worked as a medical team leader, nurse manager and primary health care manager for Doctors Without Borders in Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Myanmar. Hickox married in the past year and moved to Oregon where she is “a clinical nurse educator for a large health care provider.” She has not been out of the country since Sierra Leone. But she said she hopes to do more humanitarian work overseas and hopes New Jersey’s quarantine policy is changed by then were she to land back in Newark.

Why are you repeating the same damn questions over and over and over, even after I’ve answered them over and over and over?

And why are you just repeating your position that it is contradictory, without any explanation, despite my repeated explanations of exactly why it’s not contradictory.

I can’t tell, are you really that dense, or are you trolling?

Because you fail to see the contradiction.
You would not host someone in your house who was exposed to Ebola but not showing symptoms, yet you claim there is no danger in same.
Therefore you should be willing to host them.
But you won’t.

Why not?

Because if that person became symptomatic, then being in close contact with them (including hosting or living with them) would increase my risk of contracting the disease.

Whereas them being out on the street while exhibiting no symptoms does not increase anyone’s risk of contracting the disease.

Y’know what, you keep telling yourself there’s a contradiction. I’ll stick with the opinion of every infectious control expert who studies this stuff, and thinks that the right answer is no quarantine and no close contact. Again, I’ll also stick with history, which has proven them (and me) right. You can stick with your scared, chickensh*t view of the world.

“Because if that person became symptomatic, then being in close contact with them (including hosting or living with them) would increase my risk of contracting the disease.”

So quarantine to prevent such a situation is best practice.
But you have an issue with that.

So quarantine to prevent such a situation is best practice. But you have an issue with that.

Nope. Limiting close contact with others is the best practice. Quarantine is unnecessary.

Quarantine does that without the possibility of princess getting bored and wandering in the city like that idiot doctor did.

But, again, it is not necessary. And that idiot doctor left his house after symptoms began. That wasn’t a failure of the protocols - that was a failure of the idiot doctor to follow the protocols.

Kaci didn’t know if she was infected or not, full period of incubation had not passed.
And yet she went out and about too.
You excuse it in her but not the other idiot?

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