Homeland Insecurity: TB traveler was on government no-fly list
May 30, 2007 at 8:33 am by Andisheh Nouraee in NewsToday, the AJC has an excellent story about a Fulton County man who flew to and from Europe despite being infected with a rare and exceptionally dangerous strain of tuberculosis.
Worthy of another front-page story is the fact that the man discovered an unlocked backdoor into the United States.
The infected man evaded the U.S. “no-fly” restrictions, returning to the United States by flying from Prague to Montreal on Czech Air and driving from Canada.
Did the American keepers of the “no-fly” list tell Czech Air about the man? Did they tell Czech passport-control officials? Did they tell Canadian passport officials? Did anyone even bother telling the U.S. agents on the Canadian border? Who knows?
The precise nature of the screw-up is as yet unclear, but the bottom line is this:
It’s been almost six years since 9/11 and the United States still can’t even stop an American citizen using his own passport from getting on a plane in a friendly country, or stop him at the border.
Other than admiring my shoes, what exactly is the Department of Homeland Security doing with its $40 billion annual budget?
May 31st, 2007 at 9:34 am
While I fully agree that homeland security is really not doing much of a “job” (remember the people that were trying to take out that military base up north? most of them were illegal immigrants); I think the way the media is sensationalizing this single case of TB is ridiculous.
I think that if the real issue is homeland security (which again, I agree with you that HLS is much more of a concern here than the TB), then why isn’t the media focused on it? Apparently, that is one buzz phrase that doesn’t have much to back it up.
Great perspective.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Idiot warning – the following is satire
A Press Release from Andrew Speaker, the XDR TB Idiot;
I would like to address my critics and clarify some misinformation and misunderstandings in this brief statement.
Rather than taking the new non-stop Delta flight from Prague to Atlanta, I decided to fly to Montreal and drive 1230 miles back home to Atlanta. I decided to take the scenic drive, rather than fly, conveniently bypassing no fly lists for US bound flights. That was a TOTAL COINCIDENCE.
It is “insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I’ve cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary confinement in Italy thing.” The fact that my every action circumvented every government regulation in place to prevent the spread of a deadly disease is a TOTAL COINCIDENCE.
My father-in-law said it is really no big deal. He should know because he is a CDC researcher in Atlanta specializing in Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis(XDR TB), but that is a TOTAL COINCIDENCE, just ask him.
“I didn’t want to put anybody at risk,” with my ” rare, potentially deadly type of tuberculosis”, except for the 66 people on the rows near me on the plane, dozens more in airport restaraunts, bathrooms, ticket counters, baggage handlers and people waiting at the departure gate. Oh, don’t forgot about the rental car agent with whom I exchanged pens and papers, the person who received the car when I returned it, the next customer who rented it, the guy who cleaned it before that guy rented it, gas station and restaraunt workers along the route to Atlanta, my new wife, toll booth attendants who may have had direct contact with me while exchanging change or receipts.
Oh, I didn’t mean to endanger EVERY PERSON THOSE PEOPLE COME INTO CONTACT WITH!!!
It was all an innocent misunderstanding. I didn’t realize that having a deadly strain of XDR TB was a bad thing.
Everything I did was intended to protect the innocent people listed above. The fact that it helped me elude government authorities is a TOTAL COINCIDENCE!
“I’m a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person,”. After all, I am an attorney, which, although that would make me aware of the numerous laws I have broken and the obviously deceptive nature of my actions, it is a TOTAL COINCIDENCE.
Sincerely,
Andrew “The XDR TB Idiot” Speaker
July 13th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
The BBC has reported the story of this guy, he’s a selfish idiot who has put lots of peoples’ lives at risk of TB.
He flew from the US to Italy for his wedding there, after being told he wasn’t meant to fly as he had a seriously bad strain of Tuberculosis.
CDC in Atlanta contacted him, telling him not to travel and he must stay in Italy for treatment.
He decided to come back to the US anyway, and went via Czech Republic and Canada to get around his no-fly ban to the USA.
He went to a hospital in Montreal for treatment, and they were shocked to find he’d been travelling by aircraft; so they banned him from leaving Canada, and told their border police to detain him if he tried to leave the country.
He did try to leave Canada, and was let go by a border agent, because ” the guy didn’t look sick ”
The canadian border guard was immiediately suspended from his job, and has now been ‘retired”
The guy with TB idiot is now back home in the US.
8 of the passengers who were on his flights are suing him, for causing them distress. One of passenger has tested positive for TB, and is having further tests to see if he got it from the TB flyer guy.
The TB guy has said” I don’t know why they are suing me. I’m not a trust fund kid, I don’t have any money”
I don’t think they are suing you for money, I think they are suing t you becuase you have freaked them out !
I am shocked at how selfish someone can be!
Has he no regard for other people?.
I have had TB, which I contracted while caring for a friend with AIDS, so I’m particularly shocked at how this guy behaved. Unbelievable !