An American exposed to the deadly hantavirus while on a cruise from Argentina said on Monday that she was not being allowed to leave a federal quarantine unit in Nebraska.
Sounds bad, right, except for the part that this mutation of the virus is apparently spread human-to-human, an unhelpful little detail.
U.S. officials had earlier suggested that those affected may be able to quarantine at home. From the same article:
“At some point, they may be able leave their medical centers to continue quarantines at home, depending on how they are doing,” Capt. Brendan Jackson, a C.D.C. official, said in a news conference last week after the passengers arrived in Omaha and Atlanta.
But this passenger, Angela Perryman, wanted to isolate not at her home but at an Airbnb in Florida:
Ms. Perryman is a U.S. citizen who currently lives in Ecuador, she said. She has a home in South Florida, where she was trying to leave to isolate at an Airbnb. Ms. Perryman said she had been told that the government would provide transportation, so that she wouldn’t expose people on a commercial flight.
This seems nuts to me. She has a “home in South Florida” but will stay at an Airbnb. Can you imagine the owners of the house? What, someone with hantavirus is staying at our place!? Heck, no!
I was sympathetic to her argument until reading that line, since no part of an staying at an Airbnb equates to home, however nice some of the places are.
Leave a Reply