if a banned passenger can still get on a plane? That is the question that Michelle and others are asking:
An Atlanta-area man ” infected with a rare, potentially deadly type of tuberculosis ” is under federal quarantine at Grady Memorial Hospital with an armed sheriff’s deputy outside his door following his odyssey on international flights, including some to smuggle himself back into the country.The globe-trotting tale of the man, his fiancee, their wedding and honeymoon abroad ” and conflicting recollections of what he was told about his disease and whether he could travel ” culminated Tuesday with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing an international health alert.
The CDC is working with airlines to contact passengers who took two transatlantic flights ” a May 12 Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris and a May 24 Czech Air flight from Prague to Montreal ” to alert them that they may have been exposed to extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis…
…The man says he and his bride were in Rome on their honeymoon when they got a message to call the CDC. The CDC official said that they needed to cancel their trip and return home and that the CDC would call the next day with travel information. The patient says he and his wife canceled plans to move on to Florence the next day as they awaited the CDC’s instructions.
The next day, instead of giving the couple travel arrangements, the man said a CDC staff member told him he’d need to turn himself into Italian health authorities the next morning and agree to go into isolation and treatment in that country for an indefinite period of time.
“I thought to myself: ‘You’re nuts.’ I wasn’t going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged,” the man said.
The man said the CDC told him he could not fly aboard a commercial airliner with his disease. “We asked about the CDC jet and they said no, there wasn’t funding in the budget to use the jet,” he said.
Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Cetron told The Associated Press: “He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back.”
CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency was considering sending the CDC’s jet to Italy to retrieve the man ” when he disappeared and didn’t meet Italian health authorities.
“We’re sitting in a hotel room in Italy and we’re looking at each other and we’re on our honeymoon and the authorities are coming in hours,” the man recalled. They made the decision to run.
To evade the no-fly list, which they assumed only involved jets bound for the United States, the man and wife flew into Canada and drove a car into the U.S. At every check of their passports, he said they feared being caught, but weren’t.
Mark makes a great point in his piece, Government Can’t Contain One Guy, But MSM Believes It Can Keep Tabs on 12 Million:
So the government couldn’t keep track of one person, which it knew was infected with, as Dr. Johnson described it, “the worst kind of TB, called extensively drug-resistant TB because it’s resistant to first- and second-line drugs.”
Yet the credulous MSM apparently believes that the same government will be capable of doing the following with regard to 12 million people currently in the country illegally, over the course of the 13 years it could take for them to complete the “pathway to citizenship.”
- Collect a $1,000 fine carry out a criminal background check [within 24 hours1!]
- Collect an additional $4,000 fine for purposes of issuing a green card.
- Administer English competency tests.
- Verify that the applicant left the U.S. and filed his application in his home country,
- Determine that the applicant has demonstrated merit based on the skills and attributes they will bring to the United States.
Can anyone really believe this? Why has the MSM failed to make the connection? Why is the MSM quick to allege the government’s incompetence in the TB case but willing to believe in its omniscience when it comes to immigration?
Trackposted to Right Pundits, Perri Nelson’s Website, Azamatterofact, DeMediacratic Nation, guerrilla radio, Webloggin, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, The Florida Masochist, Colloquium, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Pet’s Garden Blog, Blue Collar Muse, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Another TYPHIOD MARY and the ACLU will sue to demand his imediate release becuase the ACLU is a terrorist aid group:mad:
I hadn’t even gotten as far as the ACLU snowy….I was thinking about the fact that the government wa in charge of tracking 1 man and failed, yet somehow they can track 12 million illegals?
Gosh…a personal injury attorney who places his own fun ahead of serious health risks to others….who’da thunk it? Congratulations Andrew H. Speaker of Georgia…you win the “I’m the freakin’ center of the universe award” this week.
Please meet Al Gore on the rotunda on the southeast parking lot of Denny’s in Nashville, TN. He will turn over the sash and tiara. If he gives you any lip about giving up the goods…tell him you’ll breathe on him.
How is this situation not equivalent to traveling on an airline with a biological weapon? Seriously, if a terrorist were willing to detonate himself, why not just infect himself with a deadly, contagious disease?
Didn’t I hear something about an increase in airport security a few years back…
He got on not 1 BUT 2 airplanes, rented a car and came through Canada to the US…his Father-in-law works for the CDC and he is an attorney to boot:shock:
And AKD, I see no difference between a biological weapon and him infecting possibly 3+ rows of people….
6. I completely agree. The only difference is that he wasn’t doing it for political reasons. The effect is basically the same. Scary.
This just showcases how much we still need to do in the way of security.
It could be a lot worse AKD, He could’ve had something more contagious or of a higher lethality such as small pox or anthrax. Anthrax and small pox aren’t even that uncommon in the third world. Especially Anthrax. Considering you can be contagious for days before having significant visible symptoms, the epidemiology of that would’ve been disasterous. Small pox in early stages looks like the flu and is highly contagious. Bubonic plague was recently found in rodents in Denver. Isn’t that scary? We REALLY HAVE GOT to do something to improve border security for this country. This new immigration bill is going to make this a lot worse long before it makes it better, if it EVER makes it better.
I wonder how long it’s going to take for the other personal injury attorneys around the world to file suit against this moron? If he gets out of quarantine anytime in the foreseeable future, he can count on having to defend himself against dozens of lawsuits for the nest few years. One would think that a graduate of the US Naval Academy would have more respect for the laws of this country.
The no fly list is a totally joke! “just like the Anmesty Bill”, Bush wants so bad for his real boss’s inside the one world evil. all you see all that is told to you is a great lie.
It takes a few seconds for a credit card to show as valid or not.
I don’t understand why Immigration cannot have the same functionality
Dan,
You ask a political entity to be as efficient as a business? “Shirley, you jest!”
Considering the efficiencies realized whenever a governmental agency is privatized, perhaps privatizing the border and port security might not be a bad idea. It’s worked for prisons. While the postal service does cost more than before, it is at least as efficient if not more so than before and still costs about 20% as any other national postal service despite having to cover a much larger area than most.
I’d like to see them put electronic finger print scanners at all border crossings and border patrol agency field offices. Imagine the number of criminals that would be picked up if every time we picked up an illegal their handprints were scanned into the system for any outstanding warrants or criminal investigations. It would also allow us to know if the person had been arrested or were wanted under another alias.
For all of those who are interested, Grassfire is organizing anti amnesty rallies for a number of cities on the 16th of June.
Frmrartyoffcr the system is privatized into mexico soon all of this will mean nothing when bush makes his last deal with the drug cartels of the third world.