Everyone has heard about the Atlanta attorney who traveled to Europe and back with a potentially lethal and contagious case of tuberculosis.
I can’t imagine how many people he came into close contact with on his seven flights to get to his honeymoon and back. Not to mention taxis, hotels, train stations, airports, etc. It boggles the mind.
It reminds me of the book The Stand by Stephen King. The epidemic starts with one man who flees quarantine and travels across the country spreading his disease. But I digress….
Maybe he didn’t realize how deadly the disease is ….
There are some defending Mr. Speaker who say he didn’t realize the seriousness of his disease. I’ve read comments on blogs in which people say there’s no reason why he would have been aware of his father-in-law’s work. He certainly wouldn’t have been that well informed about tuberculosis just because his father-in-law is a tuberculosis specialist. After all, how much do you know about what your relatives do.
My answer to that is that if someone has been TOLD they have a lethal form of tuberculosis and they happen to have a relative who is an expert in the disease, wouldn’t you read up on it and/or ask the relative about it?
Moreover, if he weren’t aware of the danger, why did he take so many precautions in his recent travels. I don’t mean precautions not to infect other people, but precautions not to get caught. He’s obviously not a stupid man. He avoided detection by flying into Canada rather than into the U.S. directly.
Then there’s the father-in-law ….
Another part of this story that boggles the mind is the fact that Andrew Speaker had tuberculosis which is a rare disease in the United States. Not only that, he had a rare and potentially fatal and certainly incurable form of the disease. Top that off with the fact that he contracted the disease at some point while engaged to marry a woman whose father is a tuberculosis specialist for the Centers of Disease Control.
I know, I know, everyone saying that’s just a coincidence. I’m just saying it’s a coincidence of astronomical proportions. I’m just saying ….
Here’s more to the story ….
I have a feeling over time we will be hearing a lot more about this story.
Speaker - Cooksey engagement announcement.
Tiara sparkle to A Lovely Infidel. She also has Speaker’s bio as his law firm has shut down their website for the time being.
Common Sense by Common Folk calls it selfishness.
Gateway Pundit has a photo and information from Speaker’s interview with Diane Sawyer this morning.
“I’ve lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn’t want anyone to feel that way. It’s awful.”
Andrew Speaker Tuberculosis Patient & International Traveler
That kind of sounds like it’s all about ME - ME - ME!, doesn’t it?
Unbelievably and yet not at all surprisingly the ACLU is outraged that Speaker’s rights are being trampled on by requiring him to be quarantined. As always with the ACLU, the individual’s rights are more important than the rights of society as a whole.
Just when I wrote that there would be more to the story - there IS more to the story. Raven at And Right So writes that the Greek Government says the wedding Speaker put so many people at risk for didn’t happen.
Meanwhile, questions arose as to whether the wedding even took place. The mayor of the island of Santorini in Greece, Angelos Rousso, told The Associated Press: “There was no wedding. They came for a marriage but they did not have the required papers.†He said the couple stayed in a hotel for three days and then left.
Everything you might want to know about TB. (Thanks, Raven!)
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Andrew Speaker
Sarah Cooksey
Thanks for the link Beth!!
Oh, great! I had no idea the ACLU had gotten involved. A personal injury lawyer and the ACLU - this should turn out just peachy.
Thanks for the link!
this self-absorbed , selfish twit, who seems to have found his soul mate in the questionably new mrs.speaker, should be quarantined for a long time, if nothing else than to not to subject the rest of us to such a poor excuse for a human being, let alone a drug resistant disease, which he was completely aware of, despite all his protests to the contrary.
BSC: Of course he was aware of it! He just wanted to get back to the United States for treatment regardless of the danger he put others in. He was afraid for his life if he were hospitalized in Italy. His ‘wife’ as much as said it. Complete selfishness. I imagine he’ll be quarantined for quite some time.
Actually quite interesting is the possibility he got this rare form of the disease by contact with such a bacterium in his stepfather’s lab. Multiply resistant mycobacteria just don’t grow on trees you know.
The ACLU’s position is no surprise. Since when were they ever concerned with public safety?
BSC: I’ve heard he might have contracted it doing charity work in Vietnam. But I agree that it’s an interesting possibility that he came in contact with it through his father-in-law’s lab ….
Actually TB is not that rare. It just doesn’t get much press. And there are no coincidences - or so I’ve heard.
BSC: Yes, I’ve heard that too. I’ve got a theory (of course!) but I’ll keep it to myself seeing as he’s a personal injury attorney
TB resistant to all known forms of treatment was very unlikely contracted outside the healthcare arena. Either he has been treated before or got it from someone who has had extensive treatment. That’s where the “got it from the lab” theory came from.
I’ve read many comments about Andrew Speaker. Yes, I understand that he’s done a very dangerous thing, putting thousands of people in danger. This cannot be forgiven but it can be understood. I’ve noticed that none of the comments have noted that this man was traveling to his own wedding.
Perhaps this was a great love and in the history of all the foolish and criminal things men have done for love, this is hardly one of the worst. It does not mean that love excuses crime or foolishness. I’ve found this SCI-FI book called It Is Not Too Late at itisnottoolate.com that talks about biological war and this type of spread of infections. In the end, even as we blame him, we have to also understand him.
you all cannot understand until you have been through it. i think you would have done the same thing. this canadian lawsuit is absolutely ridiculous. have any of these passengers even tested positive for tb? and if so, who’s to say they didn’t catch it elsewhere? it is not that easy to catch tb…just being on an airplane with someone who has it is not likely to result in infection. and the doctors said he had a low tb count in his sputum. he was not spewing forth a multitude of tb bugs. leave it alone, people.
Andrew Speaker is a weapon of mass destruction and should be treated as such. Any actions necessary to contain this threat are justified.
Further, his premeditated actions of boarding an airliner with ANY strain of TB qualify him for first degree murder charges if anyone affected by him dies.
Extenuating circumstances may justify unusual certain actions in certain cases, however, this is clearly not one of them. There is no justification for placing other peoples lives in jeopardy when satisfying one’s own needs.
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