A nurse who was quarantined in New Jersey after returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa described the experience in a harrowing first-person account published Saturday.
The Dallas Morning News published the narrative from Kaci Hickox, who worked in Sierra Leone for Doctors Without Borders. She showed no symptoms upon her return, but the hospital is requiring her to remain quarantine for the 21 days that will ensure she does not have the disease.
“This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” Hickox wrote.
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.
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.
“The epidemic continues to ravage West Africa. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that as many as 15,000 people have died from Ebola,” Hickox said. “We need more health care workers to help fight the epidemic in West Africa. The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity.”
But if we treat them with dignity and humanity, how can we ever be sure they aren’t working with ISIS to bring OBola into the country so that the ObamaCare death panels can finally force us into our FEMA trailer concentration camps for white people?
It seems to me that people in charge tend to act more and more like nazis. There was no need to make this nurse feel guilty about working with Ebola patients in Africa. She should be congratulated.
I was sympathetic at first, but can you imagine how huge of a scandal it would be if they sent her home after a 101 degree reading and she eventually tested positive for Ebola? The officials involved in that decision would be criticized as sharply as the Texas hospital who sent Duncan home after his first hospital visit.
The proper course of action here was/is to quarantine her, test her blood, check her fever for a couple of days, determine that she very likely does not have Ebola, and send her home while asking her to check her temperature a couple times a day.
With that in mind, her only legitimate grievance is that they weren’t friendly enough to her when screening her. Meh.
yes, she is to be commended for her work in Sierra Leone, but she also sounds like a self-righteous prima donna … from the the tone of her comments, you would think she had been sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners … 21 days in medical quarantine, while inconvenient, is hardly an onerous burden … her good work in Africa does entitle her to place the health of Americans at risk
Not surprising since the US public health and medical systems are so disparate and uncoordinated. All sorts of authorities and organizations are getting involved, each with their own protocols, many of which are made up on the fly as a result of panic and political pressures.
That’s just the way it is - bad for public health though.