Mary Mallon, “the most dangerous woman in America” was born in Ireland and later worked as a cook for wealthy families in New York. She was the first known carrier of typhoid fever in the USA, and although without any symptoms, she was still contagious and continued to spread the disease to at least 53 persons (who spread it to others), three of whom died. It is thought she infected 50 others who died but it could not be determined since she changed her name so often. She refused to stop working as a cook and was confined to a hospital where she died 20 years later.

Mary worked as a cook from 1900 to 1907 in New York City area and within two weeks of her employment, residents developed typhoid fever. Then she moved to New York City where members of the family for whom she worked developed fever and diarrhea, and the laundress died. Mallon then went to work for a lawyer; she quit after seven of the eight people in that household became ill. She took other positions in Long Island, and left a trail of infection everywhere. She always resigned when family members became ill.

She was identified as “typhoid Mary” in a 1908 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Later, in a textbook, she was given the moniker of “Typhoid Mary.”

She was approached by a typhoid researcher who asked for urine, blood, and feces samples but she refused and charged him with a large, sharp craving fork. He absconded quickly, and when he did a study of her employment it revealed that seven of the eight families she cooked for had contracted typhoid fever.

The New York City Health Department sent Dr. Josephine Baker after Mary and Baker took five cops and an ambulance. Mary lunged at her with a large fork but was finally restrained and taken into custody. She was held in isolation on a small island in New York City’s East River for three years. In 1910 she was released after promising to stop cooking and to take hygienic measures. She got work as a laundress but that paid less than cooking, consequently, she changed her name to Mary Brown and went back into the kitchen and continued to infect innocent people–people were paying her to infect them!

In 1915 she caused another outbreak while cooking for a hospital in New York City under her alias, Mary Brown. Twenty-five people were infected and two died. In March of 1915 she was arrested and returned to the island where she was confined for the rest of her life.

Mallon was the first asymptomatic typhoid carrier known to health officials and denied to her death with pneumonia at age 69 that she was a carrier. She declared that she never had typhoid fever and was never sick, and never had any symptoms. Since she was asymptomatic the city and state officials had no policy to handle such cases. Her autopsy showed evidence of live typhoid bacteria in her gallbladder.

Typhoid Mary did not have a right to privacy because she was a threat to society. Ebola, HIV, and typhoid carriers fall into the same category. When I interviewed Notre Dame law professor Dr. Charles Rice for my book, AIDS: Silent Killer!, we discussed the rights of infectious people. “This is a public health issue. Doctors are not protected by the privacy shield.” When dealing with a fundamental right, Rice said, “Restrictions must be justified by a compelling state interest and it must be the least restrictive method available.”

The state has a compelling interest in protecting the public through identifying, listing, tracing, and, if necessary, quarantining possible Ebola carriers. No one can be positive about Kaci’s health–not yet.

Kaci recently returned from working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and refused to be quarantined saying that it violated her civil rights. She must think her right to ride her bicycle for a few days is more important than the rights of others to stay alive! A Maine judge agreed with her and on Oct. 31 ordered that since she is being monitored by health officials she cannot be detained. The judge said that because she has no symptoms, she is not infectious! I didn’t know lawyers, even judges, had medical training. Of course, even the “medical experts” don’t know who’s on first–or second.

Kaci wrote an op-ed piece for the Dallas Morning News after returning from Africa suggesting that fellow health workers coming home from Africa might face a “most frightening quarantine.” She did not explain how quarantine could be frightening.

It is criminal to expose innocent people to a deadly virus, especially until all the facts are in regarding all possibilities of contracting it. Those who permit, preach, and prescribe the right to privacy for infectious health personnel are guilty of patient abuse, child abuse, malfeasance, dereliction of duty, and stupidity–and there’s no cure for stupidity.

The public welfare must take precedence over a right to privacy. My conclusion is that Kaci is a spoiled, self-centered schnook who is trading on her admirable 30-day service to Ebola victims for her undeserved fifteen-minutes of fame.

However, quarantine is not a game and it’s a shame for this dame to use it for fame. I pray she never gains fame as “Ebola Kaci.”

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY  Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

The bubonic plague cut its way through the Far East to Italy, then to the rest of Europe. It is believed that Genoa merchants transported plague in their cargoes of spices, nutmeg, jewels, and silks. In Siena, 75% of the people were cut down like grain before the scythe, and about 75% also died at Pisa. As described in the Cronica Senese of Agnolo di Tura, “Father abandoned child, wife, husband, one brother, another….No one could be found to bury the dead for money or for friendship.”

We are observing some of the same reactions regarding Ebola as health officials keep changing the narrative. The indecision of the “experts” is fueling the plague. First it is not airborne then it is airborne according to German doctors as reported in the Oxford University Press. The CDC agreed yesterday that Ebola can be contracted by a sneeze! The incubation period is 21 days, then 31 days, and some say 40 days. It seems health officials don’t know whether they are pitching or catching.

The virus can survive “a few hours” on an object and a “few days” in body fluids although now we are told at least one Ebola strain can live 50 days especially on a glass surface. It is not easy to catch, yet health workers dress in personal protective equipment (PPE) and still get the disease. Health workers are refusing to care for the dying and some are refusing to bury the dead in Africa. Even some U.S. health workers refuse to honor quarantine and spineless officials refuse to require it.

It seems Larry, Curly, and Moe are handling the Ebola threat with understandable results: Death is the result of ineptitude, incoherence, and incertitude.

The poet Petrarch, called the “Father of Humanism,” reported about the effects of the plague on Florence: “We go out of doors, walk through street after street and find them full of dead and dying, and when we get home again we find no live thing within the house! All having perished in the brief interval of our absence.”

George Astor wrote, “Almost half of Europe died from the Black Death between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.” The Black Death (bubonic plague) raged into Paris in June of 1348, and about the same time, it ravaged up and down the valleys of the Rhine and arrived in England, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In 1360-61, 50% of the people in many Polish towns died! Lubeck, Germany saw 80,000 of its people swept away by the plague. In 1477-78, 30,000 died in Venice; 18,000 died in Vienna in 1542. London saw thousands die each week in 1563, 1592, and 1599. Spain was lashed by the plague in 1596-1602, when half a million people died! In 1603, when James I came to the throne, 38,000 people died in London; almost that number died in 1653.

Then the great plague lashed London again, and more than 68,600 died out of a population of 460,000. It all started slowly in London. Just before Christmas of 1664, two men died in Drury Lane, with a few additional deaths during the remainder of the winter. The next few months were months of beautiful weather in London, but not for people! As the temperature climbed, so did the death toll; however the town officials refused to admit the numerous deaths which is the charge made about Ebola. The rich and well connected began to flee the city. The College of Physicians left the city by the last of June, and the politicians and King Charles II fled in early July.

In the last week of August, over 7,500 people died, and the dead carts rolled through the streets each morning picking up those who had died during the night. The dead were taken to church cemeteries where huge holes had been dug and where the dead were thrown. Infected people threw themselves into the pit, and sought to bury themselves since death was so sure and dying was so painful. The plague spread from London to the rest of the country, and then disappeared after 1667.

By 1679, 76,000 people perished in Vienna and 83,000 in Prague during 1684. Moscow lost 57,000 people to the plague as late as 1771. In the mid-1800s, the bubonic plague raised its ugly head in China and skipped across the country. Almost 100,000 people died in Canton. It showed up in Bombay (30,000 deaths) and Calcutta in 1896 and in Japan and the Philippines the following year.

In 1899, the Black Death visited Hawaii, Central America, and South America. The next year saw it in Cape Town and San Francisco. Plague paid a visit to Egypt and Singapore in 1901. Bangkok played an unwilling host to the plague in 1904, Java in 1910, New Orleans in 1914, and Florida in 1922. About ten million people perished of bubonic plague between 1903 and 1921! Since then, it has only shown up periodically and has been contained, but the Black Death is on every continent of the earth at this very moment!

The preceding litany of deaths could be a portent of what the world faces if Ebola gets out of control or Muslim terrorists carry out their threats. No sane person thinks they are playing games. It is not demagoguery to suggest that the earth could become a mass graveyard!

If major disease, disaster, and death visit America I’m afraid we will see the same results witnessed in the past. Few seemed/seem to fear God or man. Honor was/is a forgotten concept.

And Larry, Curly, and Moe continue their silly, senseless, and stupid antics playing “doctors”!

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

Reasonable people will argue that, in times of emergency, extreme measures must be taken for everyone’s good; however, there is always a problem. When extreme measures are taken “for the present time,” some of them persist after the danger is past. There are many examples of that in our history. So we must ask questions and demand answers from the authorities.

There is no doubt that new, intrusive laws would be passed (or implemented) that would restrict our freedoms. There could be mandatory vaccination (if one is discovered) but what if you think the shots would be far worse than the risk of getting the disease? What if you refused the shots? If an Ebola outbreak happens in your city, you may be quarantined. What about your travelling job? What about seeing your children in another city? Will you obey a law that restricts public meetings such as church services, weddings, and funerals? If so, for how long?

Liberia’s president wants to confiscate private property to provide land to make public graveyards but people are resisting. She has also cremated more than a thousand Ebola victims although it is contrary to their culture and deeply held beliefs. Moreover, she has required journalists to get any Ebola-related story approved! Would Americans be compliant with such laws?

What will happen when a physician, dentist, nurse, undertaker, etc., refuses to handle an Ebola victim? Will they be prosecuted for discrimination? Many health workers will decide that they would rather be “tried by 12 than carried out by six.” There is opposition in Spain by 200 health workers and at LaGuardia Airport 200 airplane cabin cleaners walked off the job Wednesday evening. Will such protestors be prosecuted if this disease escalates?

Ebola is galloping across Africa and will probably be in every nation on the continent by the end of the year. One cause of the Ebola spread that no one has discussed is the African truck drivers who visit prostitutes along their cross national routes. Even if a man has survived EVD, he can still infect a woman for seven weeks following his recovery according to WHO! Most of our politicians and physicians (who are often politicians) are hoping, maybe even praying (!) that Ebola won’t explode here. Hoping won’t do anything to protect us from a plague and praying will only help if we follow God’s provision to combat it. Wringing of the hands won’t do much good either.

Consider that in A.D. 189, a great plague (thought to be smallpox) attacked the Roman Empire and 2,000 people died each day in Rome. Rome was in trouble at that time with internal strife, debased currency, encircling barbarians, and demoralization of the populace. Those complex problems were made infinitely worse by 2,000 deaths daily. The labor supply was dwindling, military campaigns were stopped or hindered, day-to-day business operations were paralyzed, and production of food almost ceased. The weakened Empire was grinding to a halt. I’m afraid that is the process in Africa as I write.

Liberia’s Ambassador to the United States confirmed in an interview with the BBC that his country is “close to collapse” as a result of this unprecedented Ebola outbreak. That’s the way it has always happened in the past. People panic, lose or quit their jobs, live from one day to the next, no hope for the future, no confidence in public officials, no concern for others in the same circumstances, and turn to crime to sustain themselves. Look for many African nations to collapse in a few months. The city of New Orleans had that very experience.

In 1878, a deadly plague started along the Gulf Coast of the U.S., almost wiping out some towns. It caused horror and fear wherever it hit. It slowly worked its way up the Mississippi River to New Orleans, killing the poor and prosperous, ignorant and intelligent, and city-folk and country-folk alike. Its name was whispered in awe: yellow fever.

New Orleans in 1878 was a prosperous, proud, and prissy city. Cotton was king, food was an obsession, dueling was common, and gambling was rampant. The wealthy lived in opulent, antebellum homes nestled along the Mississippi. Everyone knew that yellow fever was working its way north along the river, and everyone knew it was deadly; however, New Orleans officials and the media told everyone not to worry. Things would be all right. They wanted to believe that, but had no reason to believe it.

When the fever hit New Orleans, it was the worst plague to lash across the face of the city in its history. More than half of the inhabitants were killed and in fact, the city lost its charter and was not an official city until 14 years later. Public officials dallied, dawdled, delayed, and denied the danger thinking they were too smart, sophisticated, and special for such a thing to happen to them. It happened. Officials refused to take the warning seriously and everyone paid for it.

New Orleans may be a prototype of America when massive biological terrorism or a dangerous, deadly disease lashes the face of America from sea to shining to sea. Ebola is already here conveyed from Africa and officials are reacting in ineffective, even senseless ways. We must realize that we are not so smart, sophisticated, and special that such a thing could never happen here. Moreover, we must take immediate steps to prevent the worst case consequences.

It is only wise to plan for the worst, not the best. We should refuse to admit any tourist into the U.S. who has spent any time in any African nation unless he or she is willing to be quarantined for 21 days. Those travellers should be detained before they arrive in the U.S. All U.S. military, medical personnel, and government officials returning from Africa should be quarantined for 21 days. Frankly, all U.S. military troops should be returned immediately.

It should be assumed that the disease can be contracted through coughing and sneezing. A peer-reviewed study by German doctors published in the Oxford University Press reported Oct. 9 that they found that a patient showing no symptoms of the disease “can still transmit a virus like Ebola by air if droplets containing the virus are transmitted to another person by a sneeze or cough.” (Emphasis added.)

We must react as concerned, committed, and compassionate people who have the facts, rather than as people have historically reacted in times of distress, disease, and death.

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY  Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”