New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) took a little heat last month when his state put a nurse returning from West Africa in quarantine even though she said — and a doctor reportedly agreed — that she had no symptoms. Christie, with his usual bravado, was unapologetic and he even predicted that his state’s quarantine policy would soon be the national standard.
These days, though, there isn’t much left of that quarantine policy — because thankfully, it seems, nobody has come back from the affected regions in Africa with symptoms of the disease that has killed more than 5,000 people on that continent this year.
Currently, 71 people are being actively monitored after returning from West Africa, Donna Leusner, director of communications at the New Jersey Health Department, told TPM in an email Tuesday.
However, “no one in NJ is under quarantine order,” she said.
Those being monitored are taking their temperature twice daily at home and reporting it to the local health department, Leusner said. The monitoring lasts for 21 days, the maximum incubation period for the Ebola virus, according to health experts.
They “have no restrictions on travel and are permitted to move about freely in the community, including going to work and school,” she said. “These persons are instructed to immediately self-isolate if symptoms begin, and seek medical evaluation at a nearby hospital.”
I don’t get the vitriol at the nurse that so many had, especially Bill Maher, as if she was an attention grabber. You could see that even the scaremongers among the press weren’t afraid or they wouldn’t have chased her around without protective gear themselves.
I think you’ll find that the politicians and the press were the “attention grabbers”. The nurse just wanted to go home after a grueling shift in West Africa. The press grab attention because spectacularism is their bread and butter and politicians grab attention because that’s just what politicians do when they think it’s going to help their approval numbers…
They weren’t quarantined. They were just forced to stay on the George Washington Bridge cause NOBODY’S getting off there.
i wish that nurse would sue the fat bastard myself, teach that pompus prick a well deserved lesson
Plus one governor currently being monitored for Stromboli…