The woman's legal saga dates back to January 2022, when the health department resorted to court orders to try to get her to treat her deadly infection—or at least prevent her from readily spreading it in the community.
A reminder of the oft overlooked social component of health issues.
Threatening people with bodily harm is not as bad as actually harming them, but it’s still both illegal and immoral. Swinging your fist at someone’s face but stopping just short of actually hitting them is generally also considered assault.
I think most people don't interpret it that way. It's just shorthand for "You are free to do whatever you like -- until you start hurting other people, and then your freedom argument stops working."
The fact that she refused all contact with authorities seems to indicate that part of the problem is how many fists have ended up in her face before this incident.
I would like to point out that if the trend of authorities not being trusted (and frankly, of authorities behaving untrustworthy) doesn't reverse, the number of undetected cases will multiply to the point that force won't be an option.
From what I gather, she's so sick that it's possible the infection is interfering with her thinking. Whatever her tragic backstory, history of trauma, instances of injustice, she's currently a threat to public health and I think most people will feel the authorities are in the right to detain her at this point.
Just because your foot is a part of your body, doesn't mean you get to kick people. If she wants to have untreated TB voluntarily, she should take reasonable precautions to not infect others.
This says nothing about her stated reasons for not wanting treatment. Is it anti-vax, is it a dislike of medicine, (paranoid) disbelief of the diagnosis, religiously motivated, or something else?
I am glad she is caught, but wondering why this happened at all.
Tacoma is just north of a big military base, which probably accounts for some of it. As much as I loved my time in the military, it was pretty noticeable that the neighborhoods surrounding military bases tend to be rough.
Renaissance is the right word. Parts of it are becoming true gems, but a lot is in flux and not everything is coming up. It's a very exciting and fluid time in the area.
I stayed in Tacoma once when every single hotel/motel room in Seattle was taken. Just thought I'd mention it as this sub-thread makes no sense anyways.
I've not been to Tacoma, so just taking a guess - Gary, Indiana is a dying/dead industrial town in the Midwest. I believe it was known mainly for steel mills when it was at its peak. These days it's mainly the butt of jokes about the smell of the town. The smell is a very real thing. If you drive through it, there is a very odd industrial smell that permeates the entire town. I used to drive from Chicago to near Detroit on a regular basis, and I could always tell when I hit Gary because of the sudden change in smell. But as far as I know, not much of note has come out of Gary, Indiana in decades. Wikipedia describes it like this:[0]
Like other Rust Belt cities, Gary's once thriving steel industry has been significantly affected by the disappearance of local manufacturing jobs since the 1970s. As a result of this economic shift, the city's population has decreased drastically, having lost 61% of its population since 1960.
Previous articles stated that 1) she is an immigrant, 2) English is not her native language, 3) even when provided with a translator she seemed to lack the mental competence to understand her medical condition.
I don't think that's a Tacoma thing. That's just a person in a bad way that's difficult to help.
What I keep wondering is if the authorities can find her family or anyone that could assume legal guardianship for her and get her treatment. She's going to die of TB because she doesn't understand she's that sick. She clearly had acquaintances that were willing to drive her around. Is this a case that no one is willing to come forward for her?
Update: Her son is at least trying to follow up:
> On May 1, a person who identified himself as the woman’s son called the Health Department, according to court filings, and asked if his mother had missed her hearing and when the next hearing would be held. The next hearing is scheduled for June 23.
I would have to go back and find another article, but her public defender thinks she's not competent to understand what is actually happening. In the times she has been in court, she has mostly complained about the amount of papers and summons she has received, and has threatened suicide if they keep sending her letters/serving her paperwork. Her communication has been described as "erratic" so there may be something mental health related going on here that is preventing her from actually understanding the seriousness of what is going on. I will update this post when I find the article in question.
"Tofflemire’s filing stated, “She has not acknowledged the existence of her own medical condition. Because counsel is bound to represent the respondent’s stated interest, a guardian ad litem would be able to provide representation of her best interests, which are not currently clear.
A guardian ad litem is defined by Washington courts as “an individual appointed by the court to represent the best interests of a child or incapacitated person involved in a case in Superior Court."
The filing added that when “the respondent has joined proceedings, she has spoken out of turn with rapid, disorganized speech.”
It noted, “She has primarily focused on how she dislikes papers coming to her home, and not the import of the process in which she finds herself. She has repeatedly threatened suicide in relationship to papers being served upon her home.”
I'm curious why this comment is dead. This is useful information, especially with the edit and link. Is there some kind of political dimension to this story I'm unaware of?
Bad past behavior. Their comment wasn't flag-killed, it was dead on arrival but can be vouched for (presumably you did). When comments show up [dead] (no [flagged]) it's usually some moderation (auto or manual) action that caused it. [flagged][dead] is the result of user flagging.
They can reach out to dang and appeal it (looking briefly through their comments since then I didn't see anything quite like that one that caused the initial ban, but it was a cursory check).
Yeah agreed, odd to not even address that when it's no doubt the first question anyone would have here.
From another article[1] it sounds like psychological issues:
> [The woman's attorney's] filing stated, "She has not acknowledged the existence of her own medical condition. Because counsel is bound to represent the respondent's stated interest, a guardian ad litem would be able to provide representation of her best interests, which are not currently clear."
> [ . . . ]
> The filing added that when "the respondent has joined proceedings, she has spoken out of turn with rapid, disorganized speech."
> It noted, "She has primarily focused on how she dislikes papers coming to her home, and not the import of the process in which she finds herself. She has repeatedly threatened suicide in relationship to papers being served upon her home."
The US (especially California) basically made it illegal to provide mental health care unless the patient is currently requesting it.
This creates a catch-22 where people that have previously-undiagnosed mental health conditions are denied access to basic healthcare. Worse, even if you were previously certified insane (e.g., for paranoid schizophrenia or manic depression) and have temporarily recovered, it's extremely difficult (impossible?) to sign away your future self's ability to decline medical care, even knowing that you would only do that because of a mental health relapse that makes you unable to care for yourself.
A large percentage of the crazy homeless people you see when walking outside in bay area cities fell into that legal trap (according to workers at our local emergency mental health facilities).
I guess the above now applies to regular health care, since they've decided that imprisoning this woman indefinitely for being sick and unable to care for herself is more compassionate than putting her through a round of antibiotics.
I'm not sure what this even means. "certified insane" is not a thing, and if it were, there are many people who suffer from manic depression who lead otherwise fairly normal lives.
second, in California, a person can be involuntarily held if they are deemed a risk to themselves or others. This is typically done in a mental health facility.
third, you can't really force treatment on anything in the united states, if someone refuses care, the hospital can't just keep you there against your will. Are you advocating for the return of institutionalization?
The bar _should_ be high, but it's too high in California. You can quibble with the imprecise wording above, but in practice the law makes it basically impossible to hospitalize people with severe mental issues against their will. If you ever have to deal with this with elderly relatives, you'll quickly discover that you're essentially powerless no matter how bad it gets.
edited to add: to be super clear: you don't want to make it easy for people to abuse the elderly, which is why the bar has to be high, but there must be a way to compassionately help someone who actually needs help. And there basically isn't.
> but in practice the law makes it basically impossible to hospitalize people with severe mental issues against their will.
This is very literally not the case. In California, hospitals 51-50 people all the time. It's an involuntary 72 hour hold and the criteria for meeting it is not high at all. A professional just has to deem you are a danger to yourself or others. That's the bar, and it's easily met for healthcare providers.
I have more than one family member who could totally do this, and not all of them are religious anti vaxxers or are diagnosed as mentally ill or anything. In fact, I am a little surprised so many HNers see this behavior as unusual.
I think that would go from legitimate news reporting to whatever it's called when you just want an excuse to luxuriate in hating someone.
Maybe she's a worthless drunk shitbag, maybe she's just not all there and doesn't believe or really understand the problem.
I don't think it matters too much except when I want to use it as ammo. If she was religious, and I am not, awesome vindicating example for my side I can pull out the next time I want one.
Well I don't like how much I would like that, so I don't think it's very valid, and maybe it's correct that they don't go all "let's lift up this rock and gawp at the ugly bugs all crawling around in there".
Maybe they have no choice. Maybe the police and hospitals carefully don't disclose anything like that for exactly that reason.
I think it is possible to report someone's stated reasons for something incredibly stupid without judgment. In fact, compassion depends on listening to what people say about themselves.
It also matters for judging how the system treats someone.
Typhoid Mary did not have many symptoms and did not die of typhoid. This woman might be ignoring her condition but it is obvious to others. There's definitely room for comparison, and also contrast.
Mary did not claim to believe she did not have an infection. That's a very odd twisting of the English language. She did not believe she had the infection, full stop. It's also worth mentioning that complying with the law at the time meant she was unable to earn any income, so her options were basically to break the law or be in an institution. Given the history of US institutions I think most of us would have made the same choice.
She had been isolated on a quarantine island (near Ellis?) in a cabin. She was a highly social person and was going stir-crazy. So she escaped.
Not so much an issue about Mary as it was her treatment. That treatment could not end well. But back then there was very little money to deal with such cases.
Well, "she claimed she did not believe she had an infection" is more correct, since we don't know what she believed, only what she claimed. It's possible she did believe she was infected and used incredulity as an excuse to continue spreading it.
Or anyone who's ever worked in the food (and adjacent) industry and gone to the health department for a TB test. It's pretty commonly referred to as TB across the US.
Yes. Obviously people here see TB in the context of a Terabyte constantly instead but TB is normal nomenclature for Tuberculosis.
For example nobody ever says “Tuberculosis skin test” they say “TB skin test”’
Yesl For literally most people considering its one of the most virulent diseases in human history. To not know would be a indication of incredible lack of knowledge of the history medicine and science.
I'd guess familiarity with that abbreviation depends on age. In the 70s TB (and the abbr.) was still fairly common. I grew up in a town with a press. Apparently the paper dust increases the risk for the workers to catch TB. I remember mobile screening units parked in front of that company periodically.
In the 90s my roommate's girlfriend was thought to have caught it (her roommate had a bad cough, probably TB then, but I don't know the details), which earned us both an "invitation" by the ministry of health for a screening. We were ok, she recovered during a stay in a sanatorium over summer (afair, it turned out not to be TB but some kind of embolism), don't know about her roommate.
It's commonly known, which, at least in the context of Game Theory, is different from "common knowledge". (At least in Game Theory, common knowledge means that everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows... until you reach the bottom of infinite recursion... and then the usual infinite stack of turtles.)
We allowed her to run around spreading for another year and a half and captured her...at her house. They could have had one officer hang out outside her house while she was at the casino–or you know at the bus stop where she gets off on her way back from the casino–and quietly pick up her 18 months ago.
It is intentionally hard to get all the details in place to pick someone up. Having someone pick her up is easy, there are many police officers who can do it (though most wouldn't know how to use the right protection to deal with someone with TB). However having a process in place to ensure that someone like that is picked up quickly, while not allowing evil people to abuse the process to pick on an innocent person is very hard.
That process is a judge and a court order, the ability to appeal such an order, and the due process surrounding and 90 days is a sane time frame to complete the task from refusal to treat to being picked up. It took longer than that just for them to send a cop out to pick her up after an arrest warrant was already issued after that due process had already run during which there were surely countless deputies cruising around or parked strategically to issue speeding tickets.
You are making excuses. There isn't any. Our government is just bad at a lot of what it does. Lazy and laggardly execution or processing of orders doesn't increase due process.
I have a massive issue with restraining people who have committed no crimes.
Just in way of an example, what evidence do we have that she committed a crime (outside of avoiding treatment, and then avoiding imo illegal detention)?
As far as I see it’s been 2-3 years she’s been out in public, likely longer with TB. Do we have any evidence it spread to others?
I’m highly skeptical of the science around TB because of cases like this.
We have laws that let people commit suicide, we sell alcohol (a known toxin), and why do we care if someone’s sick and doesn’t want treatment?
To put another way, I like to the think of the government as “we the people”. Would I be willing to restrain someone at gun point for being sick? Nah, that’s crazy.
Such a high probability that in 2-3+ years there’s zero evidence she spread TB.
There’s a reason TB isn’t an issue any more… we have dramatically improved health, smoke dramatically less AND have effective antibiotics. TB kills how many people in the US? Oh right… less than strep, do we lock up people with strep? Of course not.
13 million people today in the US have latent TB. Effectively, their body fought it odd and isolated the bacteria. We don’t lock them up. What evidence do we have that this person has an active case AFTER 2-3 years?
If her case was latent and she wasn't a danger of spreading the disease, my understanding is that her lungs wouldn't be so ravaged that they look like she has late stage lung cancer under an x-ray. And others have pointed out your 2-3 year number is weird and not terribly accurate as well.
The case is from 2021 (ruling Jan 2022) meaning her rejection of treatment had to be prior to that. She had to have TB even before that. It’s fair to assume she got it mid-2021 or earlier
We care because we spent centuries dying of TB and aren't interested in starting again. "Questioning the science" maybe makes you feel smart, but in this case you're also questioning the history as well as common sense.
Your kinda arguing my liberty ends when I catch a cold that scares you…
You see the problem?
Indefinitely detaining people without proving they hurt someone is not really something that’s supposed to be done.
In this case; there was no evidence presented that they spread TB. There are 13 million people with TB in the US and the vast vast majority aren’t undergoing treatment nor are they detained. It’s often in a dormant form, but even when it isn’t many many people go untreated.
This is why this case is a bit … much? I do get she had a trial, so there was due process, but im criticizing the judge here because the facts don’t back the judgement
TB is quite a bit more than just "a cold that scares us".
How many people do you want her to have the opportunity to infect while we wait for definitive proof that she was the source of infecting at least one of them?
> im criticizing the judge here because the facts don’t back the judgement
BS. Your false belief that TB isn't infectious and deadly is distorting your view of the judge and his ruling. You're wrong; the judge and the epidemiologists are right.
When someone's carelessness and disregard becomes a danger to others, yes. The mindset that TB isn't transmissible or a significant threat, when carrying it, yes that person is a threat to others. Continue dismissing, but it's a foolish take.
> I’m highly skeptical of the science around TB because of cases like this.
This is a legal / law-enforcement story. How does is possibly affect your views on the science.
> We have laws that let people commit suicide, we sell alcohol (a known toxin), and why do we care if someone’s sick and doesn’t want treatment?
None of those are communicable, as you know.
> To put another way, I like to the think of the government as “we the people”. Would I be willing to restrain someone at gun point for being sick? Nah, that’s crazy.
It really sounds like you're questioning the communicability of tuberculosis...
> This is a legal / law-enforcement story. How does is possibly affect your views on the science.
No evidence of spread was presented. Meaning, although there’s claims this spreads easily, no one appears to have caught it in years? Unless there’s something weird going on, you’d think they’d be pointing out all the people she got sick
We don't have to have evidence that she spread it to anyone to know that TB is easily spreadable and to know that she was doing things that can spread it.
This is why we have laws against drunk driving, rather than waiting until after a drunk driver hits someone. For exactly the same reason, courts do have the right to order people confined when they present a serious risk of contagion, rather than first demanding proof of contagion.
> As far as I see it’s been 2-3 years she’s been out in public, likely longer with TB.
That's not what the article says. It says this:
The woman's legal saga dates back to January
2022, when the health department resorted to
court orders to try to get her to treat her
deadly infection—or at least prevent her from
readily spreading it in the community. "The
Local Health Officer ordered [the woman] to
self-isolate and treat; which she declined to
do. [The woman] has not complied with such
efforts, has discontinued treatment and is
unwilling to resume treatment or voluntarily
self-isolate," court documents from January
2022 read.
She is literally a walking biohazard. She got her due process, lost, and then ignored the court order. From the article it sounds like she can still refuse treatment but she can't keep being a risk to the public.
Edit: And to your point about "no crime," reckless endangerment is a crime. Defying court orders is a crime.
If you read more about the case you'll see this isnt some principled stand about liberty or disagreement about the science of the disease but actually a mentally unwell person endangering themselves and others. You attempting to make a point about freedom on her back is, I might say, ghoulish.
I wouldn’t say ghoulish - I can fully understand the reaction, especially going solely off the linked article.
However, piecing together more of the case over time, it appears just as you said - very much not a case of individual liberty but one of genuine health concern.
By all accounts, it appears law enforcement has tried to allow this person her personal sovereignty in many ways while still keeping track of her to ensure she doesn’t endanger others.
That it got to the point it has, is not due to some authoritarian overreach, but rather due to a series of flagrantly contemptuous actions that were defying law enforcement and putting others at risk unnecessarily.
The law linked makes no mention of TB. That's a nice blank check for a "health officer" to jail anyone while they wait for the courts. Was it used during the COVID lockdowns?
People who have consciously had sex while not undetectable, and without disclosing their HIV status to their partners have been prosecuted for it. And rightly so in my opinion.
It's a crime to have unprotected sex with people if you know you have an STI and do not disclose it to your partner. The essence of this crime is that by purposefully exposing your partner to a serious illness, you are "assaulting" them. This is essentially what this lady is doing to the people she is breathing around.
She also had a hospital visit because she was a passenger in a car (therefore not isolating) and she avoided disclosing her active Tuberculosis infection to the staff. They had to take chest X-rays as part of her accident-related treatment and the infection was so bad that they initially thought it was severe lung cancer. (Described in the linked HN article)
Given the public health risk and her continued flaunting of the isolation/treatment requirement, I'm surprised this went on for so long. We'll never know how many other people were exposed, from casinos to other hospital patients and everyone else she passed along the way without exercising even basic precautions. Wild.
It makes me happy to see other people make rhyming typos. I do it all the time, and wonder if I'm going senile. Maybe we're all headed that way on the same boat, but at least I'm not alone.
I went overseas many years ago and came back with a positive TB test but no symptoms, aka latent TB. I was shocked at how seriously it was taken (I mean, rightfully so, still surprised). If I remember correctly it was a daily pill and a mandatory immovable weekly trip to the state health department office for a checkup/questionnaire. The pill was for 9 months and the questionnaire was for a year. Really wild stuff.
I wonder how long she would have continued living for? This is a terrible situation to find yourself in I’m sure. I wonder how many people are out there in the same situation but flying under the radar!
Kind of bizarre to make this big of a case over one woman. TB is possibly the most widespread infectious disease in the world. It's the leading cause of death from infectious disease after COVID-19. One quarter of the world's population has a latent TB infection.
An active TB infection is basically less dangerous to the general public than a person with active COVID-19. In both cases, elderly and immunocompromised people are the most at risk, and there are vaccines for both, though we stopped giving kids the TB vaccine in the west. But a person with active TB will usually infect only about 10-15 people in their lifetime, whereas COVID-19 is much more infectious.
I didn't mean "in the USA", I meant globally. Many countries have over 90% of the population infected with TB. In the USA it's 33.4 million people infected with TB.
I'd say this is the most likely reason. Mental illness, especially dementia, is a widespread problem that US society cannot address due to so much emphasis on individual liberty. Our current and previous presidents are fine examples of how far someone can go when the balance of power is tilted towards enablers. I wouldn't want to advocate for restricting someone's rights, but the widespread negative impacts of someone's personal choices are why our legislation is increasingly following utilitarianism philosophy. This cultural difference is why groups like the WHO and the UN are being relied upon to side-step the free-for-all/free-fall that is the USA.
On top of that, there is, perhaps not surprisingly, not a good track record of mentally incompetent people being treated well once forcibly institutionalized. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by other patients and staff, neglect, deplorable conditions, etc. I think there is definitely a need for a solution for those who are truly unable to survive in civil society, but the state has not historically been good at implementing that.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadA reminder of the oft overlooked social component of health issues.
I'm also a huge believer in "Your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins."
Threatening people with bodily harm is not as bad as actually harming them, but it’s still both illegal and immoral. Swinging your fist at someone’s face but stopping just short of actually hitting them is generally also considered assault.
I would like to point out that if the trend of authorities not being trusted (and frankly, of authorities behaving untrustworthy) doesn't reverse, the number of undetected cases will multiply to the point that force won't be an option.
The people she's exposing to TB have no way to choose to avoid her. She's forcing a dangerous illness on them without their knowledge or consent.
She was given a choice to stay at home and she decided to go out and endanger others instead.
I am glad she is caught, but wondering why this happened at all.
Like other Rust Belt cities, Gary's once thriving steel industry has been significantly affected by the disappearance of local manufacturing jobs since the 1970s. As a result of this economic shift, the city's population has decreased drastically, having lost 61% of its population since 1960.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary,_Indiana
I see Gary also had paper plants, but I think it also had a ton of other industrial activity.
I don't think that's a Tacoma thing. That's just a person in a bad way that's difficult to help.
What I keep wondering is if the authorities can find her family or anyone that could assume legal guardianship for her and get her treatment. She's going to die of TB because she doesn't understand she's that sick. She clearly had acquaintances that were willing to drive her around. Is this a case that no one is willing to come forward for her?
Update: Her son is at least trying to follow up:
> On May 1, a person who identified himself as the woman’s son called the Health Department, according to court filings, and asked if his mother had missed her hearing and when the next hearing would be held. The next hearing is scheduled for June 23.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/us/washington-tuberculosi...
EDIT: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article272657405.h...
"Tofflemire’s filing stated, “She has not acknowledged the existence of her own medical condition. Because counsel is bound to represent the respondent’s stated interest, a guardian ad litem would be able to provide representation of her best interests, which are not currently clear.
A guardian ad litem is defined by Washington courts as “an individual appointed by the court to represent the best interests of a child or incapacitated person involved in a case in Superior Court."
The filing added that when “the respondent has joined proceedings, she has spoken out of turn with rapid, disorganized speech.”
It noted, “She has primarily focused on how she dislikes papers coming to her home, and not the import of the process in which she finds herself. She has repeatedly threatened suicide in relationship to papers being served upon her home.”
(Emphasis mine)
Bad past behavior. Their comment wasn't flag-killed, it was dead on arrival but can be vouched for (presumably you did). When comments show up [dead] (no [flagged]) it's usually some moderation (auto or manual) action that caused it. [flagged][dead] is the result of user flagging.
They can reach out to dang and appeal it (looking briefly through their comments since then I didn't see anything quite like that one that caused the initial ban, but it was a cursory check).
From another article[1] it sounds like psychological issues:
> [The woman's attorney's] filing stated, "She has not acknowledged the existence of her own medical condition. Because counsel is bound to represent the respondent's stated interest, a guardian ad litem would be able to provide representation of her best interests, which are not currently clear."
> [ . . . ]
> The filing added that when "the respondent has joined proceedings, she has spoken out of turn with rapid, disorganized speech."
> It noted, "She has primarily focused on how she dislikes papers coming to her home, and not the import of the process in which she finds herself. She has repeatedly threatened suicide in relationship to papers being served upon her home."
[1] https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article272657405.h...
This creates a catch-22 where people that have previously-undiagnosed mental health conditions are denied access to basic healthcare. Worse, even if you were previously certified insane (e.g., for paranoid schizophrenia or manic depression) and have temporarily recovered, it's extremely difficult (impossible?) to sign away your future self's ability to decline medical care, even knowing that you would only do that because of a mental health relapse that makes you unable to care for yourself.
A large percentage of the crazy homeless people you see when walking outside in bay area cities fell into that legal trap (according to workers at our local emergency mental health facilities).
I guess the above now applies to regular health care, since they've decided that imprisoning this woman indefinitely for being sick and unable to care for herself is more compassionate than putting her through a round of antibiotics.
second, in California, a person can be involuntarily held if they are deemed a risk to themselves or others. This is typically done in a mental health facility.
third, you can't really force treatment on anything in the united states, if someone refuses care, the hospital can't just keep you there against your will. Are you advocating for the return of institutionalization?
edited to add: to be super clear: you don't want to make it easy for people to abuse the elderly, which is why the bar has to be high, but there must be a way to compassionately help someone who actually needs help. And there basically isn't.
This is very literally not the case. In California, hospitals 51-50 people all the time. It's an involuntary 72 hour hold and the criteria for meeting it is not high at all. A professional just has to deem you are a danger to yourself or others. That's the bar, and it's easily met for healthcare providers.
I have more than one family member who could totally do this, and not all of them are religious anti vaxxers or are diagnosed as mentally ill or anything. In fact, I am a little surprised so many HNers see this behavior as unusual.
Seems like quite the challenge, compliance wise.
Maybe she's a worthless drunk shitbag, maybe she's just not all there and doesn't believe or really understand the problem.
I don't think it matters too much except when I want to use it as ammo. If she was religious, and I am not, awesome vindicating example for my side I can pull out the next time I want one.
Well I don't like how much I would like that, so I don't think it's very valid, and maybe it's correct that they don't go all "let's lift up this rock and gawp at the ugly bugs all crawling around in there".
Maybe they have no choice. Maybe the police and hospitals carefully don't disclose anything like that for exactly that reason.
It also matters for judging how the system treats someone.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
This women seems to have full on TB.
Not so much an issue about Mary as it was her treatment. That treatment could not end well. But back then there was very little money to deal with such cases.
I've only heard of it as tuberculosis in the local media, not sure if health practitioners would call it TB though.
Korean https://storage.googleapis.com/healthinfotranslations-pdfdoc...
Chinese https://www.sfcdcp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Active-ch-...
Hindi https://www.mass.gov/doc/tb-medicine-instructions-hindi/down...
I'd guess familiarity with that abbreviation depends on age. In the 70s TB (and the abbr.) was still fairly common. I grew up in a town with a press. Apparently the paper dust increases the risk for the workers to catch TB. I remember mobile screening units parked in front of that company periodically.
In the 90s my roommate's girlfriend was thought to have caught it (her roommate had a bad cough, probably TB then, but I don't know the details), which earned us both an "invitation" by the ministry of health for a screening. We were ok, she recovered during a stay in a sanatorium over summer (afair, it turned out not to be TB but some kind of embolism), don't know about her roommate.
You are making excuses. There isn't any. Our government is just bad at a lot of what it does. Lazy and laggardly execution or processing of orders doesn't increase due process.
Just in way of an example, what evidence do we have that she committed a crime (outside of avoiding treatment, and then avoiding imo illegal detention)?
As far as I see it’s been 2-3 years she’s been out in public, likely longer with TB. Do we have any evidence it spread to others?
I’m highly skeptical of the science around TB because of cases like this.
We have laws that let people commit suicide, we sell alcohol (a known toxin), and why do we care if someone’s sick and doesn’t want treatment?
To put another way, I like to the think of the government as “we the people”. Would I be willing to restrain someone at gun point for being sick? Nah, that’s crazy.
But to be around other people, knowing or should knowing that she is causing a high probability of harm to others IS a crime.
There’s a reason TB isn’t an issue any more… we have dramatically improved health, smoke dramatically less AND have effective antibiotics. TB kills how many people in the US? Oh right… less than strep, do we lock up people with strep? Of course not.
13 million people today in the US have latent TB. Effectively, their body fought it odd and isolated the bacteria. We don’t lock them up. What evidence do we have that this person has an active case AFTER 2-3 years?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/661344/tuberculosis-deat...
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tuberculosis/...
https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/general/tb.ht...
It's best if people don't get infected with it to begin with
Antibiotic resistant TB is exponentially scarier to me than COVID.
And, yet, an article from 3 days ago calls it a global health threat and notes that a million people die from it annually.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/5/30/23738607/tuberculosis...
You see the problem?
Indefinitely detaining people without proving they hurt someone is not really something that’s supposed to be done.
In this case; there was no evidence presented that they spread TB. There are 13 million people with TB in the US and the vast vast majority aren’t undergoing treatment nor are they detained. It’s often in a dormant form, but even when it isn’t many many people go untreated.
This is why this case is a bit … much? I do get she had a trial, so there was due process, but im criticizing the judge here because the facts don’t back the judgement
How many people do you want her to have the opportunity to infect while we wait for definitive proof that she was the source of infecting at least one of them?
> im criticizing the judge here because the facts don’t back the judgement
BS. Your false belief that TB isn't infectious and deadly is distorting your view of the judge and his ruling. You're wrong; the judge and the epidemiologists are right.
This is a legal / law-enforcement story. How does is possibly affect your views on the science.
> We have laws that let people commit suicide, we sell alcohol (a known toxin), and why do we care if someone’s sick and doesn’t want treatment?
None of those are communicable, as you know.
> To put another way, I like to the think of the government as “we the people”. Would I be willing to restrain someone at gun point for being sick? Nah, that’s crazy.
It really sounds like you're questioning the communicability of tuberculosis...
No evidence of spread was presented. Meaning, although there’s claims this spreads easily, no one appears to have caught it in years? Unless there’s something weird going on, you’d think they’d be pointing out all the people she got sick
This is why we have laws against drunk driving, rather than waiting until after a drunk driver hits someone. For exactly the same reason, courts do have the right to order people confined when they present a serious risk of contagion, rather than first demanding proof of contagion.
That's not what the article says. It says this:
Edit: And to your point about "no crime," reckless endangerment is a crime. Defying court orders is a crime.
However, piecing together more of the case over time, it appears just as you said - very much not a case of individual liberty but one of genuine health concern.
By all accounts, it appears law enforcement has tried to allow this person her personal sovereignty in many ways while still keeping track of her to ensure she doesn’t endanger others.
That it got to the point it has, is not due to some authoritarian overreach, but rather due to a series of flagrantly contemptuous actions that were defying law enforcement and putting others at risk unnecessarily.
Detention, isolation, quarantine, and treatment are all subject to due process and overseen by the courts.
In fact both are sections of https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=70.28 titled "CONTROL OF TUBERCULOSIS".
yeah and HIV positive people having sex are next!
Another person linked to the WA law that makes it possible to jail a person for being sick. I'm surprised laws like that are on the books.
If you are under a treatment regime, and have an undetectable viral load it is basically impossible to spread HIV. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undetectable_%3D_Untransmitt...
People who have consciously had sex while not undetectable, and without disclosing their HIV status to their partners have been prosecuted for it. And rightly so in my opinion.
TB is extremely dangerous, airborne, and if it's the antibiotic resistant type...completely incurable.
The worst thing about the overreaction to COVID is it made people lose trust in health authorities and right fully so.
But trust me AB resistant TB is scary shit.
This saga has been going on for a long, long time. At one point she was even caught going to a casino to gamble: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/woman-with-untreated...
She also had a hospital visit because she was a passenger in a car (therefore not isolating) and she avoided disclosing her active Tuberculosis infection to the staff. They had to take chest X-rays as part of her accident-related treatment and the infection was so bad that they initially thought it was severe lung cancer. (Described in the linked HN article)
Given the public health risk and her continued flaunting of the isolation/treatment requirement, I'm surprised this went on for so long. We'll never know how many other people were exposed, from casinos to other hospital patients and everyone else she passed along the way without exercising even basic precautions. Wild.
I feel like this is the punchline to a great doctor joke but just needs a setup
I say this as someone who only speaks English.
An active TB infection is basically less dangerous to the general public than a person with active COVID-19. In both cases, elderly and immunocompromised people are the most at risk, and there are vaccines for both, though we stopped giving kids the TB vaccine in the west. But a person with active TB will usually infect only about 10-15 people in their lifetime, whereas COVID-19 is much more infectious.
One untreatable TB infection causes 15 new ones and those 15 new ones cause 15 new ones each?
In a pandemic population size macro sense that's huge and exponential.
In 2021, there were 10.6 million people infected, and 1.6 million died from it.[2]
[1]: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/tuberculo...
[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...
Doesnt seem like the relevant factor for this person in particular.