Sheriff Joe is my hero...

"...There is a HIV-infected guy here who deliberately had unprotected sex with dozens of women, and several are now positive for the disease...'

Makes him shootable if he comes at me threatening to bite/spit/whatever on me, or anyone else...

what cracks me up is this guy saying "I was 26 and didn't know any better." Hmm.. adult at 18, he'd (legally) better know better!

Plus, if he's only locked up for roughly 9 months, is 27 that much smarter?

Your comparison of this case with Mary "Typhoid Mary" Mallon is valid. About a week ago I caught a program on PBS about her case. She simply could not or would not understand how she could possibly be a carrier without herself being ill. When a doctor tried to explain it to her she went after him with a large serving fork! She was incarcerated for a time, and then released on her promise to never work as a cook again. She broke that promise and sparked another deadly outbreak. This time she was locked up for 20+ years until her death.

Hi, Jim. Yes, he's in the secure ward at the county hospital, but the thing is, he's being treated like a prisoner in solitary confinement. He/his ward is under guard. He has no windows, is never let out of the room, has to use bath wipes for personal hygiene because they won't let him go to the showers, and had his TV, radio, computer, phone taken away. He has no visitors, but it's unclear if that's because they aren't allowed or because he just doesn't have anyone to visit him.

Ever see the episode of the TV show 30 Days where the host volunteers to be put into prison for a month, including solitary confinement? He was in solitary for only 72 hours, but even in such a short time, he really noticed how it messes with his mind by the end of the 72 hours. This poor Daniels guy has been by himself roughly 8-9 months like this! Remember, he's not convicted of any crime. He's a patient in a hospital. At least in Typhoid Mary's time, there were entire hospitals set up for quarantine, so Mary Mallon could interact with other people, walk around, look out the window, etc. (Not that I would want health conditions where entire hospitals are necessary for quarantine purposes, of course. )



I agree. I was just making the point, based on the limited information in the original news story, that there was the possibility that he was locked up rather..."unfairly" is the only word I can think of at the moment. I mean, based on the original article we were referring to in the original post, it wasn't clear if he really clearly understood the need to wear a mask, was he ever warned and given another chance to comply before being locked up, etc. But after reading some more articles, it's pretty clear that he understood the instructions, was told more than once, but still didn't comply. So, I agree, for the public's sake and his own sake, detention and treatment seem warranted.

I certainly hope this guy has a good attorney or one in his state hears about his story and tries to help him. Speaking as an attorney myself, assuming that your descriptions of the treatment and conditions that this man is being held under are correct, it could very easily be argued to be cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of his civil rights. I am NOT saying that he should be free to walk around in public to contaminate everyone else however I know death row felons that have more rights and liberties than this man is being shown and this guy has never been convicted of a crime. For that matter, most of the GITMO detainees have more rights and liberties than this man.

He isn't isolation. He sees a medical team that is trying to find a better facility to move him to, but no one who is better equipped to house him wants to take him. They have him in an isolation ward that was designed to contain patients that were circling the drain, not someone who might live for a couple of years, so it wasn't designed with cuddly commodities in mind. He's probably straining that facility's decontamination capabilities as it is.

As for cellphones, anything transmitting may interfere with the care of other patients. Iso rooms are usually part of or next to the ICU. If someone's life support gets screwed up by this yabo's cellphone, who's responsability is it? I don't know when the last time you were in a hospital was, but if you look around you'll see that in most of them, cell phones are banned for that very reason.

And the one thing I haven't heard is who is paying for this? BCBS or another major insurance provider who pay about 70 cents or less on the dollar? No. Medicare/Medicaid who pay about 26 cents or less? No. If had all the stuff that people seem to want him to have, it's coming out of your pocket as a tax payer. You want to pay his bills? Make a donation.

I was curious about being quarantined at home with TB, and I found a brochure about "home isolation" from my very own Orange County public health agency here.

You'll note that special high efficiency filtration systems are NOT required. The brochure advises you to open your windws and get good ventilation, but that's it. Notice that the brochure does NOT require care givers or the patient to wear a mask at home around each other. As I was saying before, TB is not a terribly infectious disease, relative to something like influenza. Of course, the risk is still there, and in the case of crowded conditions like a prison or health care setting, then the consquences and risk of multiple people getting infected (especially with a drug resistant strain) outweighs the relatively small risk of spreading it. However, in the home setting, the expense and hassle of using multiple masks a day outweigh are generally thought to be too high a "cost" compared to the protective benefits to the single care giver, like a spouse.

Actually, doing a bit more digging, I was surprised to find that there is almost no evidence that high filtration ventilation systems significantly reduce the risk of spreading infectious TB. Interesting. Theoretically, it should, which is why it is done, but it hasn't been proven yet. In general, what seems to be shown to increase your risk is time spent in the same room, or being in a poorly ventilated area with someone with active TB. As far as official recommendations go for a TB isolation ward, a ventilation system that can do nine air changes an hour, venting to the outside, is optimal, but filtration is not required.

Anyway, read this brochure and then think about what Mr. Daniels is going through. Yes, he knowingly appeared in public without a mask and he does have a dangerous, drug resistant strain of TB and for that, he should be forced to do certain things to protect the public. But it's not like he had Ebola or smallpox, and it's not like the movie Hot Zone where everyone in your neighborhood drops dead with blood gushing out of every bodily orifice within a few hours either.

By the way, extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) is not synomymous with "incurable". It varies by individual set of circumstances, of course, like whether powerful antibiotics are available, but best case, roughly a quarter to a third of people with active XDR-TB disease can be cured. So, Mr. Daniels could walk out in public again some time down the road.