Ha-- I was just thinking about posting this. "I'm a well-educated, successful, intelligent person" just kills me. Christ, what an asshole.
1 - Ha -- and I almost titled this post "Christ, what an asshole".
"A man who tried to break up a fight between his two nephews ended up being stabbed with a pitchfork by one of his nephews, police say. All three men were drinking in their mobile home in the 1200 block of Paseo Derecho around 10 p.m. Sunday, when the two cousins began arguing over who was older."
From what I heard about this on the radio yesterday, it's not clear that he understood how dangerous the strain of TB he had was. Also, they failed to make it clear to him that they actually were trying to get him home from Italy. So from his perspective, they said something like "you might be infectious, please don't fly home, you may well die here in Italy, sorry."
So, he could be an asshole, or the CDC could be assholes. Based on my previous experience of asshole-determination when you're talking about (a) some down-on-their-luck individual vs. (b) a Bush-era federal agency, I am definitely going to withhold judgement for now.
I can see a garden fork, but who keeps a pitchfork in their mobile home, except as some sort of country decorating scheme? iow, wha..?
Eh. When he was in the states, he was told they 'preferred' that he didn't fly. I wouldn't be surprised if this weren't poor communication.
5: Maybe it's more common in Texas?
What a great way to start a marriage-- hey, honey, I've got the consumption!
He was initally advised against flying. CDC people determined which strain he had while he was in Italy; they informed him and told him to report to Italian health authorities. He should have known that "the whole solitary confinement in Italy thing" was to prevent the spread of the disease. Complete asshole.
5 -- also, "who is older" seems like a pretty wacky basis for an argument with recourse to cutlery.
Wait a minute... They were having an argument over WHO WAS OLDER? In my social circle this argument is usually ended pretty quickly by a comparison of birthdays...
8: How romantic -- it'll be just like La Bohème!
when the two cousins began arguing over who was older
Classic.
In my social circle this argument is usually ended pretty quickly by a comparison of birthdays...
Possibly the problem was that they were both older than 10 and wearing shoes.
Maybe the sentence is incomplete -- "when the two cousins began arguing over who was older [, Nat "King" Cole or B.B. King]" -- as there was no jazz encyclopaedia handy to settle the matter, it developed into fisticuffs.
Much as it appeals to me to subscribe to Sifu's take on Bush's Bizarro Ameripalooza, I think anyone who goes from "the CDC is telling me I have a nasty variant of TB" to "so I'm going to fly overseas and kiss the person I love and hang around partying for a while then fly Czech Air to evade the no-fly list" is either an asshole or a complete idiot.
You know, I bet JP3 is sitting there drafting an addendum to her insurance post noting that all those other assholes who took the conscious risk of flying with some guy who had TB were just asking for it. Right? Right?
pitchlery. Tynes are pointed but don't have any edge. I know a lot of Texas is grassland, that rural life has made mobile homes very common, that inside/outside boundaries are hard to maintain, particularly in the absence of a someone primarily housekeeping, and that tools left outside are subject to theft. Maybe the bad blood has other sources, etc.
Where do I volunteer for solitary confinement in Italy?
17 -- I reckoned "cutlery" was incorrect and someone would steer me straight; but M-W does not like "pitchlery". Any other ideas?
16: well, he didn't know he had the nasty variant before he flew. He also hadn't been contacted by the CDC, just local health authorities.
I just feel like we don't know the whole story. This seems, even if the guy did act like an asshole on some level, like it could very easily be the CDC's fuck-up, and they're using the guy as a scapegoat. I mean, if they had assured the guy they would get him back home, he wouldn't have flown, right? If they were going to do things on a voluntary basis they kind of had an obligation to secure his cooperation.
Also, nice no-fly list, champs.
Sifu, you're a goddamned bacterial apologist.
20: He knew before he flew back; the CDC contacted him in Italy. That's why he evaded the no-fly list by coming through Canada.
23: yeah, before he flew over, I meant.
But, really, you can evade the no-fly list by coming through Canada? Doesn't anybody else see a problem with that?
I dunno, this guy certainly made a decision that fucks up a lot of people's lives, and might kill people, and for that he should rightly be criticized. But he's one guy, preparing for his wedding, getting conflicting information from multiple government agencies about a potentially fatal disease he's contracted. I have a lot more sympathy for him that I do for the massive, well-funded federal agency that is supposed to be specifically preventing this kind of thing from happening. This is the first quarantine since 1964. I don't know why anybody would assume that this is anything but incompetence on the part of the CDC.
3: In a similiar case in Brazil, a poet observed that "our murderers are suffering from a drastic shortage of motives".
The CDC strikes me as an example of a good bureaucracy which hasn't been degraded too much by Bush, though he's tried, I think. This particular case strikes me as good practice by the CDC. It doesn't have the marks of Bushism.
The guy seems like a grade A jerk.
TB is less virulent than a lot of diseases, but anything incurable and fatal is scary.
26 -- that line was cut from the American release.
I don't know why anybody would assume that this is anything but incompetence on the part of the CDC.
Maybe because they know something about the CDC and about drug-resistant TB. Budget-cutting and anti-tax demagogy have seriously weakened the US response to the resurgence of a disease that we came very close to eliminating. The bureaucrats were doing a great job while they were able to.
Your knee-jerk anti-government blather speaks very ill of you.
Your knee-jerk anti-government blather speaks very ill of you.
Maybe people could slow the rate of calling other commenters, esp. those with good history here, out for their various violations of the One True Truth? OTOH, Sifu, if you don't think that this guy should be shot (OK, maybe not shot, but something), it's because you're a Nazi.
Mmm. I don't usually end up at a knee-jerk anti-regulatory position, but restricting someone's movements as part of a quarantine is weird these days: it just doesn't happen often. I don't know how well the necessity of obedience was communicated to this guy, but I don't think he's all that much of an asshole for thinking that if the travel restrictions were trivially easy to avoid, that they weren't all that serious. (I think he was wrong, and I don't have any real reason to believe the CDC screwed up; I just think that "Screw that!" is a normal reaction to being told that you can't fly home given that we aren't accustomed to being given such instructions for health reasons.)
"Budget-cutting and anti-tax demagogy have seriously weakened the US response to the resurgence of a disease that we came very close to eliminating."
This is what I meant. I was blaming the CDC as shorthand for blaming the Bush administration for fucking up the CDC. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Well-meaning career public health bureaucrats are obviously mostly laudable.
As far as this dude, I'd really want to know what misinformation he had available when before making a judgement. Sure, you don't get on an airplane when you have TB, but who knows what the situation was. Maybe he made an error that was regrettable, but understandable, given how confusing his situation was, or maybe he's a stone douche. I just don't think we can tell that yet.
I think if CDC tells you you could become Patient Zero in the Next Great Pandemic, "Screw this!" is not an appropriate response. We should subject the lower part of his body to extreme heat, and the upper half to extreme cold. And televise it.
30: oh, that's okay. John can call me out any time he wants.
"Well-meaning career public health bureaucrats" s/b "Willing pawns of the powers that be".
33: right, but we don't actually know what they told him: "you have a very rare and dangerous strain of TB," vs. "if you get on an airplane you will infect people with a virulent disease that may very well kill hundreds or even thousands of people."
Expecting him to understand what the first one means, when he's agitated and has been given contradictory information doesn't seem incredibly fair to me.
33: Yeah, but did they tell him that, or did they just tell him he wasn't allowed to fly home because he was sick? It's an extraordinary request to make of someone, and disobedience is understandable if they didn't give him extraordinary justifications for it. (Oh, he's still wrong, but I don't think all the way to 'Christ, what an asshole,' status.)
36, 37: Exactly what communicable diseases did you two Typhoid Marys spread, and was it in concert or was it independent of each other? And do I need to update my anti-virus program?
39: you might want to get that Chlamydia test we were talking about, Tim.
Sifu, the man in question is clearly suffering from something worse than infectious TB: a massive sense of enwhitelement. Stop defending him.
I just think that "Screw that!" is a normal reaction to being told that you can't fly home given that we aren't accustomed to being given such instructions for health reasons.
Especially reasons of public health. We're much more accustomed to being told not to do things because they're bad for our own health, which seems much more blow-offable. Still, a little thinking about how oh, people generally are advised to avoid going to the hospital if they can help it so they don't get nasty resistant TB, and that sort of thing, might have been illuminating.
But didn't he say himself, "I'm a well-educated, successful, intelligent white person"?
42: Wouldn't it be great if it was Ludicrous?
42: Please. Talking the way he did, even if he isn't white, he's white.
Hi, my name is Pwnifred Pwned O'Pwnly.
45 -- doesn't he spell his "name" Ludacris?
Well, he will have to wait to find out whether he's truly been a successful disease vector, in addition to being a well-educated and putatively intelligent one.
"Enwhitelement" should be reserved for instances of specifically white entitlement, not entitlement generally. Anyway, just saying "I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person" makes him an asshole, nevermind spreading TB.
Maybe he made an error that was regrettable, but understandable, given how confusing his situation was, or maybe he's a stone douche.
I'd be able to make up my mind about this really really quickly if I found out he'd been sitting next to me on a plane, when he'd been told twice that he had a dangerous form of tuberculosis. You can give someone tb by breathing on them, even if you're very well-educated and successful.
Look, if you think (or know) that you're on a government no-fly list because of illness, you know that they're worried about spread of the illness. And if you seek to avoid the no fly list on "Screw that!" grounds, you have made the decision that you're comfortable with the risks to someone else's life.
This seems like a much clearer case to me than, for example, a woman not disclosing that she has AIDS before she has protected sex with a man.*
*My recollection is that AIDS transmission is lowest from female to male, then male to female, then male to male. But that I guess that woman I met in the heroin den could have been lying.
One thing the guy may not have known is that MDR has a mortality of 80%. On the other hand, it's not very virulent at all.
Two major factors in the rise of MDH TB are weak health programs and individuals failing to follow medical advice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-drug_resistant_TB
On airliners there's a special problem because of the recirculated air. Under some circumstances (if he was coughing a lot) he might have exposed everyone on the plane.
mortality of 80%
So he may have flown to Italy for totally altruistic reasons -- wanted to get married before he died, so his widow could get the benefits and considerations from which she would otherwise be cut off.
Yes, okay, obviously if he infected you with TB you will not be predisposed to like him. And obviously that line about being well-educated and successful is lame. But really, I'm surprised at the venom being directed at the dude rather than the agency that completely failed to keep him from doing something so monumentally stupid. How can we judge his actions if we don't know what he was told? For all we know some dumbass local health official told him it was okay to fly. For all we know he went to a bible college where they taught creationism and so he doesn't believe in drug-resistant strains of TB. For all we know he has a prescription to Depakote that ran out in Italy and he got all nuts. For all we know the CDC official in charge of dealing with him insulted his grandmother. We basically know nothing. All I know is that the CDC fucked up, and this one guy might or might not be an asshole.
For all we know he went to a bible college where they taught creationism and so he doesn't believe in drug-resistant strains of TB.
Now there's a truly sympathetic mitigating factor!
I agree that the CDC fucked up by not forcibly quarantining him. That is, if it would have been legal to forcibly quarantine him.
As I think about this, why was it so important that he not fly, as opposed to having contact with people where he lived? Just the "don't fly" part doesn't seem terribly sensible on public-health grounds - anyone he met in public might be flying somewhere. It seems like he noticed that this so-called quarantine was half-assed and treated it as such.
60 Might have been tough for the CDC to do that in Italy.
He had T-fucking-B, and knew that when he got on a plane (outbound). That's unacceptable.
On the other hand, he got what he deserved for that: drug resistant T-fucking-B.
The idle rich, haughty disease vectors...is there anyone you people won't defend?
61: close quarters and recirculated air.
60: he's forcibly quarantined now, so apparently so.
He says himself that he doesn't understand why they didn't quarantine him before he left. Again from his perspective, they told him it was sort of okay for him to fly to Europe, probably okay for him to fly around Europe, but not okay for him to fly home? If I didn't know the full story of what was happening at the CDC, that would sound pretty retarded to me, too.
64: Note that he probably is white, and he's from the Atlanta area, so LB and ST have passed into the Last Frontier: defending Bush voters.
This seems like a much clearer case to me than, for example, a woman not disclosing that she has AIDS before she has protected sex with a man.*
Those both seem like pretty clear-cut cases to me.
69 gets it right. (even more than usual)
Yet, no one here is commenting on the fact that, during his 11 day stay in Europe, he apparently took an additional 5 flights. Could he not find a city worth staying for more than 2 days?
42, 52: Neighbor, please. Well-educated, successful people of color don't as a general rule operate under the delusion that being well-educated and successful means they're immune to inconvenience.
In other words, what 46 said.
24
"... This is the first quarantine since 1964. ..."
TB quarantine is fairly common. See this for example.
Neither is anybody commenting on the fact that the CDC apparently thinks those flights were perfectly okay.
both seem like pretty clear-cut cases
You mean the woman and the man are both cut? Because female genital mutilation increases the frequency of HIV transmission between opposite-sex partners.
Wasn't he told not to fly home specifically because they determined that he did in fact have TB? As opposed to the earlier recommendation that he not fly because they weren't sure?
Anyway. If he is supposedly intelligent, educated and successful, he surely should have been smart enough to realize the danger of TB. Like he wouldn't have googled it after being told he might have it? Seems to lean towards arrogant, self-absorbed asshole.
73: "It is the first time since 1963, that the CDC has issued an order for a patient to be quarantined. Usually, such decisions are left to the states, but this case involved international and interstate travel, so the federal government stepped in."
(Source for the assertion in 75)
This is a case where a liberal and a socialist would tend to disagree. I tend toward the socialist side.
We might have jumped to conclusions, but based on what I've seen, the guy seems like a sort of pigheaded scofflaw. The possibility of a CDC screwup is there, but the CDC general does as good a job as it's allowed to do, and pigheaded scofflaws are thick on the ground in these United States.
54
"This seems like a much clearer case to me than, for example, a woman not disclosing that she has AIDS before she has protected sex with a man.*"
How about a man with AIDS having unprotected anal sex with multiple other men? Are such people ever quarantined? Why not?
It also looks as though the CDC did the best it could given its slight authority, and that the guy consistently ignored what they said.
And to repeat, air is repeatedly recirculated on airliners, so he endangered hundreds of people.
82: not to the point where those people are being tracked down and given TB tests; they're only looking for the passengers from the rows immediately in front of and in back of him. Even that is just for the transcontinental flights.
I'm switching sides. The speed with which people will condemn a person they do not know on the basis of facts that are not well-established is shocking. Shocking! I strongly suspect that Emerson's animus is motivated primarily by the violation of the No Relationship marriage ban than by the violation of the travel ban.
And I just realized that this guy is probably a goner, so, you know, my sympathies.
80: I dunno. I've been hit with enough confusing medical advice in the last month to dial up my "Fuck y'all" response very close to full activation. So, while his actions appear assholish, I'm not at all prepared to discount a total bureaucratic cluster-fuck in mis-communication.
"Well-meaning career public health bureaucrats" s/b "Willing pawns of the powers that be".
I know my defense of bureaucrats is predictable and knee-jerk, but I'm not willing to call all of them "willing pawns of the powers that be". I think lots of them are very unhappy unwilling pawns, trapped by the fact that they're well trained in a narrow field and there are only half a dozen jobs for virulent TB transmittal experts in the country and the other five are full and they'll lose their pension if they go and the kids are in school in the neighborhood and they thought it couldn't possibly last more than four years, and besides, if they go too, who will be here to fix it when the next administration comes in? The ones I know are much closer to "Well-meaning career public health bureaucrats" and they are even sadder about the way their field has been gutted than the general public.
86: I note that the Nazis also had bureaucracies.
87 is a violation of Godwin's Law.
84, 85: Woo! LB and I are hell of reenacting Twelve Angry Men.
88 is a violation of Farber's Law.
88: Not only that, but the Nazis themselves were known to violate Godwin's Law on a regular basis, making it even more offensive.
Err, to be clear, as Megan might not have seen the other thread, #87 was meant as a broad joke.
54:
HIV transmission is lowest from female to female.
95: That's why I only share needles with lesbian junkies.
Public health is one of the great triumphs of government, and most of the people I've known or have known of who were involved in public health were dedicted, competent, and right. They get flak from budget cutters, and anti-bureaucratic wingers, and nobody-tells-me-what-to-do jerks.
Furthermore, a post-antibiotic age is a real possibility, and most of the steps that could be taken to prevent it, minimize it, or slow it down are not being taken. Agribusiness just got a new antibiotic approved for animal feed.
We've got AIDS already. Ebola sort of washed out, but chicken flu is still on the move. Resistant TB and staph are controlled so far, but who knows about the future? These are the kinds of things that start small and get bigger, and while they're small people tend to blow them off. (Randy Shilts "The Band Played On" is has a lot to say about that regarding AIDS.
95: Are there any epidemiological films available? I thirst for knowledge.
I agree with all of 98, yet stand by my contention that we don't know enough yet to judge.
A lot of the women-in-prison films have epidemiological passages.
Pam Grier stars in "The Big Bird Flu," coming this summer.
Err, to be clear, as Megan might not have seen the other thread, #87 was meant as a broad joke.
I didn't connect it to the other thread, but did assume it was a joke. Thanks for reassuring me, though.
The big problem TB control people have is that such a high proportion of people with TB are homeless drug addicts and winos who aren't together enough to take their meds long enough to kill the disease off, but just help develop resistant strains. The effective programs actually (IIRC) paid them money to take their meds, or sent people to their homes every day to hand deliver their dose. It was very labor intensive.
So now this guy, "well-educated, successful, and intelligent" acts like a street junkie and blows off the public health people. In my book, his intelligence is a point against him. You don't expect much of street junkies (whom you normally already despise anyway.)
It may be I read the story wrong, but I interpreted it to say that he defied the public health people twice, the second time being the more serious Seemingly the first time they didn't know he had the resistant strain. The fact that the followed him to Italy indicates that they were very serious the second time.
I don't understand why this thread didn't end at 88, but I'd just like to interject: Ebola sort of washed out
Can I get a "whew?"
I'm not down with the diseases that make you bleed from the nipples.
I'm not down with the diseases that make you bleed from the nipples.
Like breastfeeding?
I forget if I mentioned this back when Unfogged was looking for a pet political project, but we really need more advocacy for banning antibiotic use in animals and other things that could end the antibiotic era. It doesn't seem to really be on the Democratic party's radar.
Do you want $30/lb beef? Really, do you? Because that's what we're going to have if you really want to prevent bacteria from becoming resistant to everything and causing tens of thousands of deaths a year.
108: going to be a hard sell as long as Iowa's the first primary, I bet.
banning antibiotic use in animals
Banning prophylactic antibiotic use, more specifically, ja?
I'm good with that -- that one's an issue that gives me the creeps and a half.
107: Ah yes, of course. I should have said diseases that make ME bleed from the nipples.
And yeah, prophylactic antibiotic use is worth getting the creeps+ over.
111: Problem is, prophylactic antibiotic use is a symptom of a broader cause. You can't feedlot cattle on field corn withough medical help, and you can't cram them together that close w/o antibiotics.
Going after the particular industrial methods might be more productive.
If you read the article Ogged links to in 76, he's claiming that his trip back to the US was because he didn't trust Italian medical care and was sure he'd die if he didn't get treated by The Best Health Care System On Earth in the US of A. Risking other people's lives and spreading the disease to multiple geographies in the process. I think he's hoping that he'll come off as sympathetic if he claims his motivation was self-preservation but I think he still comes off as a jerk because of how little he seemed to value other people's lives in the equation. (Improving my chances of survival by X% is worth risking Y lives.) He's a one-man trolley problem.
Problem is, prophylactic antibiotic use is a symptom of a broader cause. You can't feedlot cattle on field corn withough medical help, and you can't cram them together that close w/o antibiotics.
Absolutely.
And 105+115 is what gets me about this whole thing. Defying the CDC multiple times and then insisting you have some right to sneak back into the US because that's the only country you trust with your medical care (despite defying their authority!) makes you an asshole.
Italian medical care is JUST FINE. (for the record)
64: Apparently, those who call out other commenters for their various violations of the One True Truth.
118: In retrospect, I'm a little dubious about it. We had Sally on a trip to Florence with us at 13 months, and she showed up a day into the trip with a fever and a bunch of red spots with a pimple-like head on them. An Italian doctor said "Chicken pox, give her acetominiphen and don't worry about it." And so we did and we didn't, and the vacation was perfectly decent.
And then when we were enrolling her in school, she needed a blood test to prove she'd had chicken pox, and it turned out she hadn't. So we still don't know what she had.
But I suppose I can't damn the entire Italian health care system on the basis of one misdiagnosis.
At least, being back in the US, he'll be easy to sue, right?
Hm, that sort of resonates with my experiences with European health care in general: non-interventionary, reassuring, decent, and not particularly determined to climb every mountain or test every symptom. It sounds like a rather reasonable misdiagnosis, though.
Oh, it looked exactly like chicken pox to me too, and she never got very sick, and she was fine. It was just a little disturbing -- you mean my beloved toddler had Italian Mystery Pox!!11!one! in retrospect.
Seriously, though, isn't it obvious that the whole thing was the guy's fiancee/wife's fault? Bridezilla and all that?
it turned out she hadn't
Or maybe didn't still have the anitbodies? Is that possible?
Could be, I don't know. If there were any well known goat molesters reading this (Ned?) they might know.
I was diagnosed with chickenpox twice as a kid. The first time was very mild and I suppose must have been a misdiagnosis. The second time was no fun at all.
She should be seropositive throughout childhood and adolescence if she really had chickenpox primary infection.
Not being a doctor, I don't know what other diseases cause symptoms similar to chickenpox, so we should assume it was the one transmitted by mites.
My son got chickenpox when he was 22 or so and looked like the night of the living dead. No permanent effects, I hope -- his fertility has been verified, unfortunately.
This is pretty much a classic case of "freedom doesn't include the freedom to shout fire in a crowded theatre", IMHO. Of course, my view may be affected by the fact I live next to Heathrow Airport, and the bastard just had to bring us his successful, intelligent bacterium.
I'm a criminal lawyer in Canada, and I have to say that I think he could (and damn well should) be prosecuted here for putting his fellow passengers at risk.
Oh, and I also love this line:
"This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary confinement in Italy thing."
In other words, "I can't believe they have an armed guard to keep me in solitary confinement just because when I was supposed to do it voluntarily I didn't"...
he could (and damn well should) be prosecuted here for putting his fellow passengers at risk
Commies, the lot of you.
"he could (and damn well should) be prosecuted here for putting his fellow passengers at risk"
Commies, the lot of you.
Well, I suppose that should be fellow *travellers*, then...
The implication from this guy's classic line is that unsuccessful, not-particularly-bright types should have armed guards outside their doors in such a scenario, but smarties who are pulling down the big money are exempt. It's rare to see such a bald-faced appeal to classism these days.
no one here is commenting on the fact that, during his 11 day stay in Europe, he apparently took an additional 5 flights
Holy crap, I was coming down on the sympathetic side until I read that. Now I think he was doing it on purpose.
Well, if people are going to accept limitations on their freedom for the common good, the trust thing is important, and that's in short supply lately. For instance, there's a plan to monitor the behaviour of gay men in London so as to limit the spread of HIV:
The new scheme would require thousands of volunteers to converge on bars and clubs to obtain intimate details of gay men's sexual behaviour, in order that safe sex 'lapsers' can be ranked according to risk, recorded on a database and only then given information which is deemed appropriate.With no evaluated pilot of this initiative, and no evidence that supports it as an effective strategy, HIV charities fear it could undo years of work and alienate many men who do not want to access services in this way.
I'd say schemes like that would be very effective in helping people to get in touch with their own latent sense of entitlement.
Re 136: in English speaking countries generally, social mobility is down and inequality is up. Class is in.
Another vote for asshole. You don't just innocently fly into Toronto to avoid the no-fly list by accident.
Though, having just learned that he has a potentially fatal and incurable illness, it seems likely that the guy's ability to think with great clarity may have been a bit impaired. The "well-educated, successful, and intelligent" line bugged me, too. But I can also imagine that, if I were in a foreign country and learned I was terminally ill, I would likely feel strongly tempted to get back home by whatever means necessary.
Even if class is in, flaunting it like this guy did (a) is never in, and (b) is probably a good sign you're not in quite so high a class as you like to think you are, anyway.
i had a really good experience with the Italian health care system: free x-ray to determine hairline fracture of my knee, free examination, and the doctor even asked me what i preferred then put me in bandages instead of a cast so i could continue to walk (gently) to get around. all this for a non-EU citizen.
and the French health care system is fantastic - heads above than the US in my experience (and I've had exceptionally nice US health care).
i think health care is particularly an area in which what you're used to seems like what's right to you. and yet, the US version tends to be subpar.
NB: free emergency care to a non-EU citizen with no insurance
Oh, I shouldn't have badmouthed Italian doctors -- I was entirely happy with the care we got for Sally until finding out about the misdiagnosis, and that was harmless. The process of getting in to see someone was absolutely painless, which was weird from an American point of view.
In a related note, my insurance company just denied me coverage for a routine blood test for some strange reason. Looks like I'll be spending a few hours on the phone.
Oh, and the cost for this routine blood test? $330.
132: If anyone catches TB from him and dies, I could see negligent homicide. Otherwise, what crime has he committed? Violation of a lawful order or something?
149: Reckless endangerment would be my guess.
149: making the no-fly list look even more ridiculous.
Since he's going to die, apparently, there's no point in prosecuting him.
150: Fuck, there go my chances of passing the bar.
Since he's going to die, apparently, there's no point in prosecuting him.
Hmm, that sounds like a loophole that would apply to a lot of people.
Where do you get that he's gong to die?
There's only something like a 30% cure rate for his type of TB. He may not die quickly, but he's in a fair amount of danger.
Doesn't the strain of TB he has has something like an 80% mortality rate? I thought I saw that somewhere.
SomeCallMeTim is a advanced, sentient bacterium, commenting from Andrew Speaker's lung.
There you go again, ogged, with your modernist notion of progress.
Sorry, not sure why the rest of that comment got cut off.
SomeCallMeTim is a) advanced, sentient bacterium, commenting from Andrew Speaker's lung b) retarded.
c) less than the nominal amount by a power of the discount rate, because of the time value of Hitlers
Yeah, but the high mortality is also because it's usually not diagnosed until the later symptom-showing stages. I read that since they caught it so early for this guy, he'll likely be OK.