For those of us in Houston and heard about the potential case with the Rice University research employee --
My Mom called me a couple days ago and started telling me about it, before any public stories came out. Because it's a personal childhood friend of hers from high school (they are in their 60s now), and have kept up a bit over the years.
Some of the non-public details surprised me and I think is worthy of discussion. The general story is:
But like wtf is this??? This is already after several days. I would have expected the US to have much better response logistics than this or cared more.
So yeah what they're saying publically right now is true... there are no *confirmed* cases of coronavirus in Houston yet. But that's because they don't even give a crap to immediately do tests and isolate people with direct contact!
In one way that's a negative to all the freedom we have. In more militant countries (actually even Taiwan which is a very free country), she and her husband would have been on lockdown. Wtf
My Mom called me a couple days ago and started telling me about it, before any public stories came out. Because it's a personal childhood friend of hers from high school (they are in their 60s now), and have kept up a bit over the years.
Some of the non-public details surprised me and I think is worthy of discussion. The general story is:
- This person recently came back from a group trip to Egypt, part of which included a week-long cruise on the Nile. On the cruise boat, there were various other groups of tourists from around the world.
- At some point around the end of the trip, several group members got sick at the same time.
- One of the other group members lives in Taiwan, and they also know each other from high school. After this person got back home to Taiwan and reported her illness, the Taiwan govt isolated and tested her. They confirmed positive coronavirus.
- After my Mom's high school communication/email group heard this, they all told their Rice friend to immediately report it to CDC and authorities here. She was still feeling sick, and unfortunately by this time had already gone back to work at Rice for 1 or 2 days (but obviously did not know the Taiwan friend has tested positive yet).
- The Rice friend directly called the CDC with the full details (and the Taiwan person's positive test), and they told her she did not need to get tested at this time.
- She also called Houston hospitals for treatment of at least the bad flu-like symptoms (because her husband also got sick and is feeling pretty bad), and the hospitals said don't come in and to self-quarantine after hearing the details.
- None of them even wanted to test her for a few days, and they did not even try to track down everyone she has been in direct contact with to isolate everyone.
But like wtf is this??? This is already after several days. I would have expected the US to have much better response logistics than this or cared more.
So yeah what they're saying publically right now is true... there are no *confirmed* cases of coronavirus in Houston yet. But that's because they don't even give a crap to immediately do tests and isolate people with direct contact!
In one way that's a negative to all the freedom we have. In more militant countries (actually even Taiwan which is a very free country), she and her husband would have been on lockdown. Wtf
