Brain Cloud

The unidentified man with drug-resistant tuberculosis arrived in Denver this morning, and more details have come out about the information he had before leaving for his European wedding and honeymoon.

When this story broke, all we knew was that some dude with a highly contagious disease had been through several countries on several airplanes, and my first reaction was:

“What an A-hole.”

But now he says doctors suggested to him, don’t travel. He says he had (and still has) no symptoms and the doctors hadn’t confirmed what was wrong with him when he left for his wedding.

At the end of Joe Versus the Volcano, Meg Ryan’s character demands to know why Joe (Tom Hanks) didn’t seek a second opinion for such a dubious diagnosis as a brain cloud.

If you’d planned a wedding and honeymoon in Europe and some doctor told you that you could have this bizarre form of tuberculosis, but you felt fine and had no symptoms, what would you do?

Or, WWQLD?

Tomorrow, the CDC will probably come out with a statement that they expressly told TB man not to travel, throw in a few other contradictory statements, and the journalists will all have to scramble with this new information and deal with it. But in the meantime, I think Queen Latifah would go on her honeymoon, and everyone knows she is not an A-hole.

3 thoughts on “Brain Cloud

  1. JF, I respectfully beg to differ:

    If Queen Latifa had thought for just one minute about her wife, her parents, her friends and loved ones with whom she would surely be in close contact upon arriving in the US, she would certainly have extended her stay in her Grecian island paradise to get properly treated.

    Hollywood despises the paled, diseased look anyways.

    TB Boy is a lawyer who probably felt smug enough to try and flout the rules. Just a hunch though.

  2. I failed to mention: the said lawyer admitted that he found out he had the noxious strain when he was already in Europe and disregarded strong warnings to stay and be treated.

  3. It’s oh-so-easy to pass judgment on what some other poor soul did when not faced with it ourselves. I’ve been sick in other countries–in fact, almost died in Africa. My first instinct was to get back to the US, ESPECIALLY if I might die. I really hate the way the media picks individuals apart during difficult times, second guessing all the way and passing judgment about what SHOULD have been done. It’s an issue between the individual and anyone he might truly have harmed and not the world’s Monday-morning quarterbacking decision —

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