<p>The guy who traveled and snuck back into the country with a rare and highly resistant strain of TB is a plaintiff’s lawyer.</p>
<p>His new father-in-law is a physician at the CDC and works as a specialist with TB. The doctor says he’s tested frequently for TB and has never contracted it and the TB at the CDC is treated with the highest levels of biosecurity.</p>
<p>Yet the lawyer with TB traveled to Greece on his wedding (which, one presumes, included the father-in-law) and honeymoon with serious misconceptions about the infectiousness of TB and the resistance of the strain he had, despite being at least advised not to travel by plane.</p>
<p>One assumes he smooched with his new wifey during the honeymoon, too.</p>
<p>What gives? Can there really be no connection?</p>
<p>just heard this on the news
there’s just too many coincidences about the new father-in-law
he’s being interviewed tomorrow morning by Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.
Says maybe he contracted it in Vietnam working at an orphanage or hiking in South American jungles.</p>
<p>Also just heard on the news that the FIL had no say in the travel plans of new SIL. Also, that in “sneaking in” through the Canadian border, his passport was scanned through and his name did come up as someone to be detained. The screener has been “reassigned.”</p>
<p>when and why did he get TB test was it due to symptoms? or to go overseas to wedding?
do you really think he did not consult with the father in law? do you think he got advice on whether to run in italy because he feared for his life??? or do you think there was some advice from dad in law?</p>
<p>do you really think this man can earn a living if he lives in atlanta again? </p>
<p>should we not look at the bigger picture?
22 million illegals with no medical screening coming into our country.
diseases on the rise that had been eradicated: Mumps, polio, TB, Whooping cough, bird flu?
we have had several TB outbreaks at high schools in atlanta this year.</p>
<p>Exactly how are illegals bringing in bird flu? I didn’t know that. It’s all so confusing. I guess we shouldn’t grant amnesty to all those infected illegal birds coming here to steal worms from America’s hard working birds. It’s all so confusing. I say we eradicate all the birds. Let’s not take any chances. Do you think these d— birds are also bringing whooping cough? Did they infect that Atlanta lawyer? The horror. The horror.</p>
<p>All this passing of judgement. I listened to the interview on ABC this morning. His side of the story is not unreasonable. It is not “perfect”, but it is not unreasonable.</p>
<p>He was told not to take the flight back and to turn himself in immediately in Europe. He did not because he felt he would quite possibly die in Europe. So he did what he wanted to do. Understandable that he wanted to come back. However it was wrong and selfish to put others lives at risk.</p>
<p>You want to know how to make it hard to get people with serious diseases to come in for treatment? Treat them like criminals.</p>
<p>TB is not easy to contract. And in this post-AIDS world, people with communicable diseases become pariahs. I remember when my kids were little, and a young girl in another part of NJ had AIDS and the school system tried to keep her from attending school. It was horrifying. When the school was forced to admit her, all the parents kept their kids home. How civilized.</p>
<p>My kids were, at that same time, often accompanying their Dad to the hospital where they played with kids with AIDS.</p>
<p>I don’t take this at face value; I’d like to know more before judging.</p>
<p>If I’d been the border guard and seen the computer warning to don protective gear, I wouldn’t have decided to use my own judgment. Maybe the no-fly order was excessive, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. We had a TB scare in the lab where dh worked in Germany and the child of one of the post-docs died.</p>
<p>Garland,
I agree. While I do not condone what Mr. Speaker did, I have had some experience interacting with the CDC, and they are not an easy organization to work with. If he was waiting for them to coordinate a flight home for him in a private aircraft, they should have kept in close phone contact with him. Silence is deafening. He says he was told that he should go to a hospital in Spain (I believe that is where he was) but that the only hospital that could effectively treat him was in Denver. Then he says he heard nothing from the CDC about the arrangements for a private plane. What would you do?</p>
<p>Yeah, I did. Not interested in getting in any battles:)</p>
<p>I think he was wrong. I wouldn’t want my kid sitting next to him…I wouldn’t want to be breathing the recycled airline air. He didn’t even bother to wear a mask.(my assumption). He could have at least waited to see what they could do for him flight wise.</p>
<p>First infected person quarantined by the US gov’t since 1963 (as reported by comcast news). I’d say it’s a pretty big deal.</p>
<p>How could he have contracted such a serious strain of TB? I cannot find the answer to that question. Also, is his wife not at risk? Of all people, I should think there should be some concern about her condition as well. And, if they were in Europe for a wedding/honeymoon, what about all of the people he was in contact with during those events? These questions do not seem to be answered. Finally, did he make the trip because they had already spent too much money with regard to wedding/honeymoon and could not afford to reschedule/cancel? I cannot imagine going forward with these plans out of the country where medical care can be questionable. I suppose time will answer most of these questions!</p>
<p>I’m less concerned with Speaker’s behavior than the cloud hanging over his new father-in-law.</p>
<p>This was a wedding-and-honeymoon trip that he was on. His new father-in-law is one of the CDC’s top dogs when it comes to TB. It’s not as though he was like any of the rest of us when it come to being dumb-and-happy about TB and assuming that as long as you’re not coughing, you’re not transmitting. It’s not as if he didn’t fully appreciate what it means for him to have an unusual and highly resistant strain of TB…that the CDC says he likely acquired from human contact (meaning someone else has it). At least not unless his father-in-law was playing mute or misleading him.</p>
<p>Speaker had one of the world’s top minds close by. And that top mind is a major stakeholder since you can forget the airline passengers near an asymptomatic TB patient…and wonder about the new wife and the opportunities for him to transmit the TB to her. Maybe he wasn’t concerned about airline passengers because he was feeling fit as a fiddle. But did he protect his wife? And did Dr. Cooksey protect his daughter?</p>
<p>Again…the curious (and, yes, potentially sinister) thing here is the father-in-law who – presumably – was at least around for (and probably paid for) the wedding portion of the trip. What role did he have in (a) Speaker contracting this rare strain of TB; (b) advising his son-in-law before and during the travels; and (c) bringing this asymptomatic person to the attention of the CDC in the first place, before the travels began? You don’t just get tested for TB for the heck of it…when you’re healthy and a trial lawyer. Or did it come to light through a blood test for a marriage license?</p>
<p>@ notre dame AL: I cross-posted, but: YES! Those are all weird aspects of this case. I wonder if the father-in-law is the one who had spent too much money and didn’t give expert or prudent guidance to Speaker even though the father-of-the-bride is one of the world’s top TB experts.</p>