Sunday, October 26, 2014

Chris Christie Sets Up Gitmo On The Passaic For His Ebola Quarantine Victims

Imagine you are a health care professional thinking about going to West Africa to help with the Ebola outbreak.

Imagine you will be flying out of and into Newark Airport for your trip.

Imagine this is what awaits you - a mandatory quarantine when you get back:

On Sunday both governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, stood by their decisions, saying that the current federal guidelines did not go far enough.

At the same time, the first person to be forced into isolation under the new protocols, Kaci Hickox, a nurse returning from Sierra Leone, planned to mount a legal challenge to the quarantine order. Despite having no symptoms, she has been kept under quarantine at a hospital in New Jersey, where she has been confined to a tent equipped with a portable toilet and no shower. On Sunday, she spoke to CNN about the way she has been treated, describing it as “inhumane.”
... 

Ms. Hickox spoke out about her treatment in her interview with CNN on Sunday, saying that officials still have not told her what they plan to do next or why they are isolating her since she poses no public health risk as long as she remains asymptomatic.
She also blasted Mr. Christie for saying that she was sick, when it was clear that she did not have a fever and had tested negative for Ebola.
“The first thing I would say to Governor Christie is that I wish he would be more careful about his statements about my medical condition,” she said from inside the medical tent where she has been quarantined since Friday night. “If he knew anything about Ebola, he would know that asymptomatic people are not infectious.”
“I also want to be treated with compassion and humanity, and I don’t feel I’ve been treated that way in the past three days,” she said in the interview. “I think this is an extreme that is really unacceptable. I feel like my basic human rights have been violated.”
Ms. Hickox has retained a well-known civil rights lawyer, Norman Siegel, to challenge the quarantine order and get her out of isolation. In an interview on Sunday, he said the order “raised substantial civil liberties issues.”

She should sue Christie personally.

Let's run through the facts again:

Christie has her isolated in a tent outside the hospital.

There's no shower but there is a Porta Potty.

She's being detained there even though she has shown no signs of infection.

Christie plans to keep her there for at least 21 days.

No word on whether he plans to waterboard her.

New York has instituted a similar mandatory quarantine, other states are following suit.

Imagine again that you are a health care professional looking to help out in West Africa with the Ebola crisis.

Are you going to go knowing when you come back you will be treated like a criminal?

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