Quarantined nurse only had a tent, porta-potty and no shower.

[RandySF]

Kaci Hickox, the nurse currently under quarantine at University Hospital in Newark, NJ, harshly criticized her treatment during a phone call with CNN on Sunday.

"It's really inhumane," she told anchor Candy Crowley.

Hickox is the first person quarantined under a strict new policy enacted by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The 21-day quarantine order followed news that a New York doctor who had recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the disease. Hickox was quarantined on Friday after flying into Newark Liberty International Airport from Sierra Leone, where she had been working with Doctors Without Borders treating Ebola patients. She has been placed under isolation since then despite testing negative for Ebola.

"To quarantine everyone, in case, you know, when you cannot predict who may develop Ebola or not, and to make me stay for 21 days, to not be with my family, to put me through this emotional and physical stress, is completely unacceptable," Hickox told Crowley. She added, "I feel like my basic human rights have been violated."

She also sharply criticized Gov. Christie for what she described as a complete mischaracterization of her condition:

"I heard from my mother last night who called me concerned and said, Governor Christie just said in an interview that you were quote-unquote 'obviously ill'. And this is so frustrating to me. First of all, I don’t think he's a doctor. And secondly, he's never laid eyes on me. And thirdly, I have been asymptomatic since I've been here. I feel physically completely strong and emotionally completely exhausted. But for him to say I'm 'obviously ill', which is even a strange thing, that, what does that mean? Someone define that for me, because I think I don’t quite understand what 'obviously ill' means."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/26/kaci-hickox-quarantine_n_6050312.html

[treestar]

1. Why is that?

Where was it, at the airport? A hospital room would seem better.

It was a state of NJ project, so the Christie Administration's idea of quarantine has come out - what if people really did have to be quarantined for some other more communicable disease?

[magical thyme]

8. the tent was in the parking lot of the hospital

After grilling her for 6 hours -- fed only a breakfast granola bar and some water after she'd traveled for as long as 20 hours from Africa -- and refused to answer any of her questions, including why they were doing this to her, they drove her to the Hospital parking lot with 2 ambulances and several cop cars, sirens blaring -- running red lights at high speed.

And then those fucking idiots stuck her in a plastic tent in a parking lot. They took her belongings and left her dressed in paper scrubs in the tent, no running water, a porta-potty, in the parking lot from Friday until Monday afternoon.

[Demit]

2. It was a show of force, a display.

I think it made Christie quite happy to show what he, with the power of the state, can do to individuals. Just another way he could be a bully, and display the utter contempt he has for powerless people. He is sadistic. He scares the crap out of me.

They as much as kidnapped this woman. To make an example out of her. "This is what we can do to you." They left her in a room at the airport for hours. Didn't explain what was happening. Didn't give her anything to eat but a small granola bar. Then they spirit her off & seal her off in a fucking tent, as if she's a prisoner. Not let her wear her own clothes. Put her in paper scrubs! As if she had done something wrong! The actual ebola patient was treated better!

I'd like all the people who are saying Oh yes, that was all proper treatment of her, we're so scared, keep us safe, can't be too careful—I'd like them to contemplate how they would feel if they had been treated in such a sadistic manner, having done absolutely nothing wrong. To be treated with such contempt.

[Brigid]

3. You know the old saying . . .

"No good deed goes unpunished."

[malaise]

4. Wish I could rec this post

Most excellent.

[KingCharlemagne]

6. In order to be and stay a Democrat, I think one must hold a belief in the

fundamental decency of most of the American people, even if that decency occasionally goes to sleep for short or even long periods. When Schwarze-Nazi went after the California nurses, it proved his undoing with Californians. And I can only hope that this shithead's attack upon a nurse will also trigger Americans' decency gene, such that his name is met in the future with the revulsion and grimaces it so richly deserves..

This is a great post and I hope you will consider making it into an original post of its own, as it deserves far wider propagation.

[magical thyme]

9. thank you. I'd also like to see how many of them would volunteer to risk their lives

to save lives in W. Africa -- and to try to contain the disease in order to stop it from spreading here. Only to be treated like dirt on their return here.

[riverwalker]

5. If they quarantine nurses

it should be at a Five Star resort in Tahiti.
Nothing less.

[Kali]

7. The conditions concern me way less that the fact that she was held against her will

THAT is the dangerous precedent. The fear and paranoia that allows people to act like this in the name of "safety" is how we all lose fundamental rights. The ignorance and lack of thinking ability in those who succumb to the fear-mongering by the press and others for sheer monetary or political gain is way more frightening to me than this rare, hard-to-acquire virus.

[riderinthestorm]

10. Don't forget the HIPAA violations as well.

Her right to medical privacy went out the window.

Another scary precedent.

[magical thyme]

11. states have a right to quarantine people even against their will. however, those people have to be

actually be sick, which she was not. And they have to follow some sort of due process, which they did not.

And how she was treated absolutely was important. Everything about this -- from grilling her for 6 hours without telling her why, to not feeding her decent food after a lengthy trip -- was inhumane treatment, and totally unacceptable way to treat anybody, never mind a volunteer doing what she had been doing.

Aide organizations are already having a hard time finding volunteers for this work. This certainly won't help that effort.