Man with tuberculosis jailed for not wearing mask – CNN.com
This reads like your typical “wronged person deserves sympathy” prose…
PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) — Behind the county hospital’s tall cinderblock walls, a 27-year-old tuberculosis patient who spent years living in Russia sits in a jail cell equipped with a ventilation system that keeps germs from escaping.
Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime. Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable.
County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors’ instructions to wear a mask in public.
“I’m being treated worse than an inmate,” Daniels said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press last month. “I’m all alone. Four walls. Even the door to my room has been locked. I haven’t seen my reflection in months.”
I’m sure he did nothing to bring on the loss of privileges, right? Act like a criminal, get treated like a criminal… where’s the mystery here?
Though Daniels’ confinement is extremely rare, health experts say it is a situation that U.S. public health officials may have to confront more and more because of the spread of drug-resistant TB and the emergence of diseases such as SARS and avian flu in this increasingly interconnected world.
But why would I feel sorry for someone carrying a killer disease who won’t even take precautions to protect his fellow man? Similar to the way AIDS carriers can be charged and punished for various forms of murder for infecting others, this man is a leaking biological weapon – he doesn’t need to consciously infect someone, he need merely come into contact with a vulnerable person.
“It’s very uncommon that someone would both not want to take treatment and will willingly put others at risk,” England said. “It’s only those very uncommon incidents where we have to use legal authority through the courts to isolate somebody.”
[…]
Daniels said he realizes now that he endangered the public. But “I thought I’d come to a country where I’d finally be treated like a person, and bam, here I am.”
What a moron. He “realizes” he endangered others’ lives, but he expected not to be held accountable? Box him up and ship him back to mother Russia. I’ll kick in for the postage.
Sorry, Bobby – terrible shame you have to have this disease – but that you’d care so little about everyone else tells me you deserve where you are. Locked away.