Kaci Hickox, the nurse who rejected quarantine first in New Jersey and then in Maine after she worked with Ebola patients in West Africa, has not given up her fight.
“I never had Ebola. I never had symptoms of Ebola,” Hickox wrote in an op-ed published Monday in The Guardian. “I tested negative for Ebola the first night I stayed in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s private prison in Newark. I am now past the incubation period – meaning that I will not develop symptoms of Ebola.”
“I never had Ebola, so please stop calling me ‘the Ebola Nurse’ – now!” she emphatically added.
Following Hickox’s every move became a national obsession just a few weeks ago, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and then Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) insisted on keeping Hickox quarantined away from the public despite the fact that she was asymptomatic. Ebola can only be transmitted when an infected person is showing symptoms of the virus.
Hickox accused Christie and LePage of running roughshod over medical science and the Constitution for their own political benefit.
“They bet that, by multiplying the existing fear and misinformation about Ebola – a disease most Americans know little about – they could ultimately manipulate everyone and proclaim themselves the protectors of the people by ‘protecting’ the public from a disease that hasn’t killed a single American,” she wrote of the two governors.
A Maine judge had expressed a similar sentiment in his ruling that released Hickox from quarantine, writing that “the court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational.”
