Hey the guy took a gamble, he knew he'd been exposed to Ebola what did he have to lose? Survival rate of Ebola patients in Liberia is somewhere between 25 & 35%. He could afford it why not fly to the US where the current survival rate is 100%? Jail time is still better than death. I suspect we'll see a lot more of this if the US doesn't put major travel restrictions in place.

(10-02-2014 06:47 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  Liberian culture is very different from our own, so all he has to say is that he didn't know he had Ebola, so he trusted the doctor's opinion.

Law cant expect him to self diagnose.

If he hadn't lied to Liberian officials, if it weren't part of the exit process, you'd have a point... but he did. By doing so, he intentionally avoided detection. He knew there was a risk and he intentionally avoided detection of that risk. The issue wasn't, was he from Liberia... The issue was, was he in contact with someone who had it... and he was... and he knew it. I can't think of a good analogy, but it's like leaving your bag unattended at a crack house, and then intentionally avoiding the x-ray machine at the airport because you know someone MIGHT have put something in your bag... but you haven't looked... and then arguing that you're not guilty because you didn't know FOR SURE that someone had put a knife in your carry-on. Really? So why did you avoid the x-ray?

So yes, if the Liberian officials weren't specifically looking for it and/or if he had answered truthfully and they let him go anyway (essentially giving him a clean bill of health) you can't expect him to know better than those officials.

but that isn't what happened. In fact, the 'excuse' given (attempting to push the blame to the hospital registration people) that they specifically told them twice that he was from Liberia actually argues that they KNEW that he was a risk for Ebola, and I guess expected that the registration desk in Dallas would know that this created a special issue and/or that he lied to the Liberian inspectors.

The fact that the US doesn't screen for things like this makes sense given that they should've been screened already. But it does complicate the situation if it were to come to the point of prosecution in the US. If they did have that screening for passengers coming from Africa, then there would be some basis to prosecute him.

(10-02-2014 01:10 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Why isn't the US prosecuting him?

Threatening people with arrest, job loss, or other penalties simply because they contracted a disease is a VERY bad idea for public health.

(10-03-2014 10:48 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(10-02-2014 01:10 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Why isn't the US prosecuting him?

Threatening people with arrest, job loss, or other penalties simply because they contracted a disease is a VERY bad idea for public health.

Not as bad as not prosecuting someone for lying about their possible exposure to enter the country and then not revealing what he should have suspected was a reasonable possibility to the doctors when he started to get sick.

That's a snarky response... but the fact is he's NOT being prosecuted for contracting a disease, but for lying about it. It's similar to what we do in response to other communicable diseases. It's not illegal to get sick, but it's illegal to not take reasonable precautions/put others at risk when you have reason to suspect that you could be sick.