cough, cough i'm suing

It's outright weird that the moron who went to Europe for his wedding despite being asked NOT to travel because of his drug-resistant tuberculosis turns out to be the son-in-law of a TB researcher called Robert Cooksey at the Center for Disease Control. The fact that the traveler Andrew Speaker, who then flew to Canada and drove across the border to elude quarantine, turns out to be a LAWYER is much less surprising.

Speaker's law firm specializes in personal injury law. You know, ambulance chasing. It would be quite ironic if one of the passengers on his transatlantic flight were to sue him for mental distress caused by wondering whether they had contracted his nasty strain of drug-resistant TB.

This odd case also highlights one fact quite well: it is hard for a democratic society to stop somebody just for being sick. Another nail in the coffin of the idea that an influenza pandemic could be stopped cold just by restricting travel. You think we don't have enough troops in Iraq to stop the insurgents? Just try keeping residents of a city like New York quarantined in their apartments.