This is the face of a left wing terrorist who is in league with Obama and the CDC in a plot to infect Americans with ebola! That is the view that has spread around right wing web sites. They are eagerly waiting for her to come down with the disease so that the plot can be revealed. This is the extent to which a public health issue has become a political football.
Kaci Hickox is tough. She stood up to Chris Christie and she is now standing up to the State of Maine.
Maine nurse defiant over state's request for further Ebola quarantine
A nurse freed from an Ebola isolation tent in a New Jersey hospital declared on Wednesday the she will not comply with a quarantine request imposed by state officials, saying the policy is not based on science and infringes on her civil liberties.
“I don’t plan on sticking to the guidelines,” nurse Kaci Hickox told the Today show from her home in Maine. “I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that have been forced upon me, even though I am in perfectly good health and feeling strong and have been this entire time completely symptom-free.”
Hickox said she would sue the state of Maine if officials did not lift home-quarantine orders by Thursday morning. One of her attorneys, New York City-based Norman Siegel, told the Today show that they would wait for Maine authorities to physically apprehend her before taking legal action.
“They have absolutely no justification to quarantine Kaci, and if necessary we will fight to obtain her freedom,” said Siegel.
I have not been able to find much in the way of background information about Hickox and her life before she was catapulted into the media spotlight. The above picture appears to have been taken when she was on an earlier volunteer mission. The people in the picture look more Asian than African and she has a different hair style that she does at present. My impression is that going to West Africa was part of an ongoing commitment for her. Her determination to stand up to politicians trying to impose medically unnecessary quarantines is not just about her personal comfort and convenience, but an effort to encourage other health care professionals to volunteer.
Much of the partisan squabbling that goes on in US politics is just plain silly and is fanned by the media to feed the 24/7 news cycle. That model is being applied to this situation. In this instance I find that seriously irresponsible. We don't have medical professionals debating the basic scientific facts about ebola. They are in strong agreement about the conditions that lead to actual infection. Yet medical facts are being treated as ideological opinion. Anybody who participates in that gross distortion must be vigorously opposed.