Doctor Without Ebola Quarantined by Vermont Police State Action

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

15 November 14

 

“No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….”

~ Amendment V, U.S. Constitution

s this what our Constitution expects? Faced with an unusual situation that may require some sort of special handling, the first thing the government does is break the law and trample constitutional rights.

That’s what New Jersey and Maine and several other states did reflexively in response to imaginary Ebola threats in recent weeks. And it also happened more quietly in Vermont. Or as the governor phrased it, “We’re trying to do this the Vermont way.”

When a state decides to exercise its authority without regard to facts or law, the first thing it demands from the citizen-victim is unquestioning compliance. Sometimes, coming from self-important governors like Chris Christie or Paul LePage, that demand is loud, bullying, and incoherent. And when faced with principled opposition, such lawless governors are left with egg on their faces in court.

In Vermont, equally lawless state coercion has been quieter, subtler, and deadly bureaucratic, complete with threatening paperwork that omits cogent reference to the state’s obligations, and to every citizen’s rights. Vermont governor Peter Shumlin embraced Vermont’s way of lawless state coercion when he said, less than truthfully, at an emergency news conference October 28: “… if, with this situation – or any other individual – the health department deemed it necessary to establish involuntary monitoring, we have an ability to do so by an order of the commissioner.”

That is an example of classic Orwellian Newspeak right out of “1984,” as it neatly avoids telling the truth without actually lying. Acting Health Commissioner Tracy Dolan made the same false claim. Shumlin and Dolan gave the absolutely false impression that the health commissioner can issue a lawful health order on her own authority. She cannot. If she tried to do that, she would be breaking the law, and they both presumably know that – or they certainly should, as a requirement of their jobs. More importantly, the governor should be actively protecting due process of law, not acting passively in panic, hiding behind a bureaucratic charade when faced with figuring out what to do with a Vermont doctor who went to Guinea and Sierra Leone, for a personal investigation of the Ebola outbreak there, and then came back to the U.S. healthy. Three weeks later, he’s still healthy.

Screened by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), he was found to be symptom-free. No one claims he came into contact with anyone with Ebola, and he claims he did not. Never mind, reality didn’t matter to authorities in high panic mode in Vermont. For reasons they have yet to explain, they adopted a coercive, illegal approach to this Ebola-free doctor, an approach that would also leave him free of his civil rights.

Peter James Italia earned his MD in the Dominican Republic in 1987

The curious, but unlucky doctor is Peter James Italia, who was unemployed and living in Rutland, Vermont, in the summer of 2014, as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was growing in intensity. (As of mid-November, according to the WHO (World Health Organization), the death toll had passed 5,000 and there were more than 14,000 people known to be infected; conditions were apparently improving in some parts of Liberia, but not elsewhere.) Dr. Italia claims no special expertise in Ebola treatment, but said he was “quite familiar with infection control procedures, disease transmission and isolation protocols as I have considerable experience and training as a doctor in dealing with and treating patients who have been placed in isolation due other serious infectious diseases.”

Asked why he decided to go to Guinea, he wrote [unedited]:

The simple answer is that I saw too many red flags popping up everywhere, esp where the CDC and the WHO and the US gov were involved. I felt that they were being too naive in their dealing with the Ebola virus and too slow in their response to the epidemic itself.

I found their rhetoric to be not only meritless but totaling misleading. And it was these kinds of actions that were going to place the Amer public, as well as the rest of the world, increasingly in harms way due to the Ebola virus. And I felt very strongly that things would only continue to get worse. I therefore decided to go to West Africa to do some investigative reporting on the Ebola epidemic firsthand.

Dr. Italia does not claim to be a professional reporter and he was not apparently linked to any news organization when he was in Guinea and Sierra Leone. While there, he filed two brief reports, written in diary-style, “with major TV networks in the US, England and France, incl NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, BBC and France24, but no one acknowledged me” (as he wrote on Facebook October 15). He had arrived in Conakry on September 27, after filling out customs forms in Algeria and Guinea on which he stated that the purpose of his trip was to investigate Ebola. He had a 30-day roundtrip ticket on Royal Air Maroc and paid for the trip from his savings account. His earliest Facebook post from Africa on October 1 reads in its entirety:

Greetings from West Africa! I have arrived in Conakry, the capital of Guinea to join in the fight against the spread of the Ebola virus and to help those who have been stricken. On Monday I spoke with the director of the hospital here in the capital. I have been waiting for the past 2 days to see the national coordinator for Ebola to get permission from the government. Because I do not have a medical license, those international organizations helping here in West Africa such as Doctors Without Borders and Samaritans Purse would not help me. This has made things quite difficult for me.

Furthermore, not traveling with a group is rather dangerous since this is a third-world country. It simply is not safe for one to travel alone here, especially a foreigner. Yet here I am out of necessity because of the terrible way I have been treated in the US because I did not graduate from a US medical school to the point that I can't find work. Nobody gives a damn about me or all my accumulated knowledge and skills from many years of hard work. Nor the fact that I am a good doctor. What in the hell is wrong with people? Why have I been treated this way? And still despite everything I am also here because of a deep desire to help people. Maybe it is here that I will be able to put my medical/surgical knowledge and skills to work again.

Finally, if I don't hear soon from the Ebola coordinator, I plan to leave the relative safety of the capital and make my way to where Guinea borders on Sierra Leone ­– the so-called frontier.

Vermont officials freaked out over the doctor’s visit to Ebola country

Meanwhile, back in Vermont during early October, deputy state’s attorney Christina Rainville in Bennington County (next door to Rutland County) was apparently looking for Dr. Italia to appear as a witness in an ongoing case. In 2013, Italia was a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Peter Campbell-Copp, who was found guilty of setting up a ponzi scheme that duped would-be authors into paying him a total of more than $100,000 for publishing books that were never actually published. Campbell-Copp was sentenced to six months in prison. Italia, who was one of the defrauded authors, has since published at least two books.

According to one self-serving account, Rainville found Italia’s Facebook page and “discovered Italia was in Africa.” She then “became concerned for his safety.” So of course she first called the U.S. Marshall’s office, where a deputy more sensibly told her to report on Dr. Italia to the Vermont Health Department. Rainville’s activity reportedly led to some unspecified “federal-level investigation” of a man who was already presenting himself to the CDC in Guinea and otherwise living in plain sight. Dr. Italia was staying at the Riviera Royal in Conakry, a high-security hotel compound, surrounded by a wall and comprising 74 air-conditioned rooms, a restaurant, swimming pool, spa, casino, and other amenities. (Rainville was not available for comment. The health department did not respond to inquiry.)

A more credible account from Dr. Italia indicates that Christina Rainville was indeed interested in his testifying in ongoing proceedings against Peter Campbell-Copp, but she did not get in touch with him directly. As Dr. Italia wrote: “I never got anything from Christina, but I got an email from The Victims Advocate, Tammy Loveland, who knows me from the first case. They were looking for potential witnesses. I was the one who told Tammy that I was not able to testify because I was in West Africa.”

In any event, Vermont’s response was beginning to creep out of control. Rutland mayor Christopher Louras first emailed Dr. Italia on October 15. That day Dr. Italia had posted his first media report on Facebook, in which he wrote in part:

I recently visited the border of Guinea with Sierra Leone in the south along the main route connecting Conakry with Freetown.

Life goes on as usual in the rural towns of Guinea in the south that lie near the border of Sierra Leone as people go about their daily business. Children can be seen running about and playing. Adults wait by the roadside to sell their goods to passersby while others just sit idly by and watch. I tell the people I speak with that I am an American doctor. I ask about the Ebola virus and if there are any sick people in town. I am told that many of the small rural hospitals are nearly empty.

There is a basic fear and distrust of the government here in Guinea and of outside (western) medicine in general. Like many other third-world countries, the population as a whole tends not go to the hospitals; they will however visit the local medicine man. The Ebola epidemic has only seemed to heighten these feelings. “Where is the medicine?” I am often asked by some of the townspeople with regard to the Ebola outbreak. “The medical supplies, the help?” I have no good answer for them.

Panic and ignorance, more contagious than Ebola

Mayor Louras said he had only become aware of Dr. Italia in July, “during a landlord-tenant dispute, then again on Oct. 15, 2014, when advised by Bennington [state’s attorney] office that he was in West Africa actively seeking to treat Ebola patients.” The Rutland mayor said his intent had been to confirm that the doctor was in Africa and to find out when he was coming back. (Governor Shumlin, at his October 28 news conference, suggested that the FBI had also been involved.) The mayor’s first email to Dr. Italia said, in part:

We are following the Ebola crisis both in the U.S. and abroad and are formulating appropriate local response strategies.?Is there any information you have gleaned from your trip to date that you can share with us that would be of use to our planning?... Are you having any success finding a clinic that will work in partnership with you?

Dr. Italia replied the next day, noting that he had not hooked up with an organization yet and that he would have suggestions for Rutland soon, adding, without more specific detail: “I can tell you that the response to date re the Ebola epidemic has been just as inadequate and unsure here as to what you see going on in the US. Believe me when I tell you that this disease is much more contagious than the CDC has portrayed it.”

Mayor Louras wrote back the same day, describing local Ebola anxiety:

I am disappointed (though frankly hardly surprised) to learn that that the contagion is much more aggressive than CDC is communicating. Concerns throughout the local emergency management community as well as the local medical community are high. The level of engagement, and thoroughness of answers and advice from the CDC is somewhat alarming.

For example, from a municipal standpoint we have questions about the viability of Ebola outside its human host (think wastewater/sewer infrastructure), there is no information available re: if precautions are or are not necessary when a category A agent is may be present if a sewer main were to rupture 300 meters from the hospital….

In Guinea, Dr. Italia went into the field along the Sierra Leone border

On October 19, Dr. Italia posted his second, much longer but no more specific media report on Facebook – an excerpt:

I just got back from another trip to the border of Guinea with Sierra Leone…. This time, however, I crossed over the border illegally into Sierra Leone to see what I could find out about the Ebola problem there…. I came across a motorcyclist who said he could take me across the border on his motorcycle. Sounded like a plan if I wanted to get across the border even if it was illegal since I was all out of ideas. So we crossed into Sierra Leone on his motorcycle.

At the first village we came to in Sierra Leone, the villagers were immediately upset by our being there. I explained to the elders that I was an American doctor there to help with the Ebola problem and that I was on my way to Freetown. They demanded that we pay them money for them to let us pass. We refused to give them any money. We were finally allowed to pass.

The same thing happened when we got to the next village. Again, I told the people there that I was an American doctor and asked if anyone in the village was sick. Again, we were asked to pay money. Ironically, they also accused us of potentially bringing Ebola into their village from Guinea, when it was clearly the people in their own country, Sierra Leone, that they should have been more worried about. They also accused us of being there for other nefarious reasons, not having anything to do with Ebola. Again, we refused to pay any money.

Instead of letting us pass, they called the police. So, we were taken by the police to the local police station, where we were detained for several hours, questioned and then released separately. I was taken back to the border crossing by a customs official and told to return to Conakry.

Having made no more progress than this in more than three weeks in Guinea, Dr. Italia vented his frustration in another email exchange with Mayor Louras the same day:

My medical credentials have been verified by both the Fed of State Med Boards (to which Vermont belongs) and the ECFMG. I have trained and taught in US hospitals. Yet, because I graduated from a medical school in the Dominican Republic, I have been treated as an undesirable and prevented from being able to pursue my med/surg career at every turn. I am far from being stupid. In fact, I have written 2 books. In the first book, I describe an entirely new calculus method, and in the second, I describe how I aided seriously ill and dying patients at major US medical centers….

I need for the record to be set straight now so I can go back to my med/surg career and not be treated as an undesirable for the rest of my life. I am willing to assist you and the city of Rutland re Ebola. However, I was really hoping to hear from the major news media by now and maybe somebody who was willing to help me for a change.

Authorities on two continents make their presence felt

Two days later, the doctor posted on Facebook that “the hotel manager has told me the police are looking for me. I haven't heard from the major TV networks.” The next day he posted, with both prescience and despair:

Hmm, no police...yet! My return flight to JFK is tomorrow night. Maybe I can get out of here without incident. But then my real problems only begin.

Rejected and ignored for too long now by society – as my firsthand reports on the Ebola epidemic here in West Africa having been completely ignored by the news media and everyone else only goes to show once more – I will be homeless and forced to live on the streets. I think DEATH would be a better alternative than to keep living like this.

Responding to this post the next day, Mayor Louras expressed exaggerated sympathy and asked a question related to his primary agenda. The full email:

Clearly you are extremely distressed. You have my sympathies and you are not alone in your anguish. The CDC has proved itself to be entirely incompetent and ineffectual in battling this latest public health crisis. Your reports do in fact appear to be ignored. Are you continuing your mission to combat Ebola? Or are you still planning to return to Rutland?

At the airport for his flight home October 23, Dr. Italia was not allowed to board his Royal Air Maroc plane. At the ticket counter he was told that he was on a “no fly list,” with no further explanation. The next day his Facebook post included:

So, I was forced to return to my hotel that I had just checked out of only hours earlier. All this, despite the fact that I have not been sick nor have I been around or in contact with Ebola patients during my investigation into the scope/severity and the handling/management of the Ebola problem in West Africa. I have contacted the American embassy to apprise them of my situation…. [emphasis added]

Still in Guinea on October 26, Dr. Italia posted a desperate message on Facebook that said in part:

American Doctor Wants Work
Note: Please like this post and share it.
Help!!! If there is a hospital anywhere that wants to hire me, please let me know ASAP. I've
been a very vocal critic for some time now of the CDC’s and WHO’s handling of the Ebola epidemic….

I tried to do something GOOD for everyone’s sake. You’d think that people would at least notice, that maybe someone would care. Apparently not. I’ve received not one ounce of recognition for all my efforts, not even a simple thank you from anyone – not that any of that matters now. But apparently someone did notice (and perhaps retaliated?) because I ended up getting stranded here in Guinea with no flight out and without any explanation as to why. Now I see why I can’t get work in the US….

Vermont sets ambush for the doctor who doesn’t have Ebola

As it turned out, he wasn’t stranded. The American embassy in Conakry managed to get him a seat on a Brussels Airline flight. No one explained to Dr. Italia why he had been on a “no fly list” or whether it was some other glitch. He sent an email titled “Maybe Flying Out Tonight” to friends, including the Rutland mayor, saying: “As it stands right now, I hope to be leaving tonight at 6:45pm. I change planes in Brussels and arrive at JFK tomorrow afternoon at 2:05pm. If I don't have a problem at JFK, then I can take Amtrak to Rutland on Tuesday, I guess….”

Responding with what seems like guilty foreknowledge, Mayor Louras deadpanned in total response: “Thank you for reaching out. I hope your travels go smoothly at this juncture. Please keep me in mind if you have further updates.” [emphasis added]

Once on the plane, Dr. Italia’s travels were indeed smooth, made smoother still by the kind handling of the CDC and, later, the gentle predations of Vermont law enforcement and health authorities. Smooth, as it turned out, was not really a good thing. At JFK, two security officers met Dr. Italia at the plane. As he reports: “They quickly escorted me to the health and safety office at JFK, where I was briefly detained for temperature screening and questioning.” He described it as “completely routine,” with minimal personnel present: two CDC screeners and two security officers, but “I wasn’t told anything by anyone.”

What had apparently been going on behind the scenes for some time was hinted at in The New York Times of October 26, the same day Dr. Italia left Guinea. A long story exploring panic and pandemic, quarantine and the Constitution, ended with these less-than-entirely-accurate paragraphs apparently about Dr. Italia, though he’s not identified:

And the virus has presented at least one unusual challenge for law enforcement agencies, senior American officials said on Sunday. They described how agencies had urgently investigated a man who wrote a bizarre post on social media that he was going to try and contract Ebola in Africa and then return to the United States.

According to senior American officials, the man traveled to the West African country of Guinea in the past month in the hopes of working alongside humanitarian assistance organizations treating patients. The organizations quickly determined that the man had no medical expertise and was acting strangely, and they turned him away

Even though his Facebook post indicated that he was mentally unstable, mentioning a time machine at one point, a multi-agency investigation was launched that involved the F.B.I., Customs and Border Protection, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Guinea, C.D.C. officials interviewed the man and took his temperature several times, and determined that he showed no signs of the virus. The C.D.C. had no legal ability to hold the man and he is not in the custody of American or Guinean authorities there, American officials said Sunday.

By Sunday night, officials said they do not believe they can stop him from returning to the United States, but said federal authorities would be closely monitoring him when he arrived, likely in the next several days.

It’s not that we were trying to prevent him from returning, we were just ensuring that he didn’t pose a health risk to other travelers,” said a senior American official. “When we determined that he didn’t pose a risk we had no issue with him flying home.”

Times’s hatchet job based on anonymous (and unreliable) sources

The “bizarre post on social media” about contracting Ebola and returning to the U.S. does not appear to exist, at least in relation to Dr. Italia, nor did the Times provide anything close to a persuasive source for its existence. Basing the casual slur of “mentally unstable” on the mention of time machines is no more justified than attributing mental instability to those who deny climate change or evolution, or those who believe in resurrection or life after death.

But what’s critically important in the flawed Times report is the ultimate respect for law demonstrated by the CDC and other U.S. officials involved. Letting an Ebola-infected person fly with other passengers, even if within his legal rights by some anomaly, clearly poses an ethical dilemma in which the better choice seems clearly to protect others at the temporary expense of the infected person’s possible rights. And having concluded in this case, within a reasonably brief time, officials said, “When we determined that he didn’t pose a risk we had no issue with him flying home.”

That response, civilized, measured, responsible, and effective, turns out not to be “the Vermont way.” Unnamed Vermont authorities, but quite likely including the governor and the acting health commissioner, chose to act outside of any legal authority and pressure others to do the same. State spokesperson Nancy Erickson wrote: “I won’t speak to the decision-making process that led to how the Health Department chose to meet him.” Hence, when the CDC had finished clearing the healthy doctor at the airport, there were a Vermont sheriff and a Vermont public health nurse on hand, ready to do something, it’s hard to imagine what, since they were both outside their jurisdictions and they had no warrant, health order, or other simulacrum of legal process. But they got lucky.

Dr. Peter Italia is, by all accounts, a very good natured person, and so, when these unexpected caretakers invited him to come with them back to Vermont, he did so, apparently with little hesitation or apprehension. Little has been revealed about that several hour drive from JFK to Rutland in an unmarked sheriff’s patrol car, but it ended with Dr. Italia being housed in a public accommodation, a Rodeway Inn in Rutland, under armed guard.

“The subject of quarantine was never mentioned at the airport nor during the whole trip back to Rutland. The word quarantine was first mentioned once I was inside the motel room and the public health nurse pulled out some papers and told me they were quarantine papers for me to sign. At no time did anyone offer me the opportunity to speak to an attorney or advise of my rights,” Dr. Italia wrote.

In Vermont, “voluntary” quarantine is enforced under duress

So Dr. Italia was persuaded to subject himself to a “voluntary” quarantine, which he agreed to while in the sheriff’s custody and without the benefit of counsel. And everyone involved knew – or should have known full well – that he was not sick with Ebola, he was not sick with anything, and he posed no risk to anyone.

Presumably Dr. Italia was induced to sign a profoundly deceitful Vermont Health Department form titled “Agreement to Voluntarily Comply with Quarantine.” The first dishonesty of the document is the conceit that compliance is voluntary in any true sense. The form includes a deliberately dishonest intimidation paragraph at the end, where it states with Orwellian accuracy that “the Vermont Commissioner of Health can issue an emergency health order for quarantine, pursuant to the authority vested in the office of the Vermont Commissioner of Health” by statutes then cited. And in Dr. Italia’s case, the first thing the form requires is affirmation of a falsehood: “You have been exposed to Ebola ...”

Then the form adds: “If you fail to comply with that emergency health order you can be subject to civil or criminal penalties that may include fines and/or imprisonment pursuant to” other cited statutes. That should be enough to intimidate most people, regardless of how improper an order is.

Metaphorically if not legally, this constitutes a fraud on the public. Vermont doesn’t show you the statutes themselves, the state just threatens people with the statutes. And the state has the worst motive for concealing the statutes, because the statutes require the state to follow due process of law and to make some effort to prove its case.

The controlling statute, which Vermont governor and acting health commissioner effectively lied about, is section 126 of Title 18 (Health) of Vermont Statutes [18 V.S.A. 126] that applies to any health order that is not accepted “voluntarily,” as would have been the case if the healthy doctor back from Guinea had simply said, “No.”

Vermont had no likelihood of obtaining a legal health order

Then the state would have been required, as the statute says, first to “prepare a notice of intent to seek a health order, setting forth the health officer’s reasons to believe a health order should be issued.” The state of Vermont gave Dr. Italia no notice, of anything. It is all but impossible to imagine any health officer being able to justify a health order in this instance without committing perjury.

But the statement of intent is only the beginning of the state’s burden. Next the state is required by law to provide both supporting evidence and “a statement of procedural rights available” and to serve both “on the person against whom the health order is sought.” In the case of Dr. Italia, there is no supporting evidence. And a statement of procedural rights is like a terrifying prospect to the state.

And even that’s not the state’s entire burden. The person against whom the health order is directed has the right to a hearing, albeit “held before the issuing authority.” Even that creates a catch-22 of the Health Dept. sitting in judgment on itself: “... at such hearing, the person against whom the order is sought shall be given an opportunity to rebut the allegations and demonstrate that no health order should issue.”

A related statute [18 V.S.A. 127] allows a health officer to issue an emergency health order, effective immediately, “when necessary to prevent, remove, or destroy an imminent and substantial public health hazard, or to mitigate an imminent and substantial significant public health risk.” In this instance, no such risk existed, at least not in the minds of people who were thinking clearly.

And even under this statute: “The health officer may issue an emergency health order only after preparation of a written statement of reasons stating the need for an emergency health order together with the supporting evidence and a statement of procedural rights available under this section.” And after that there’s still an opportunity for a hearing within 5 business days.

Dr. Italia was unconstitutionally deprived of his liberty

After his night at the Rodeway Inn, Dr. Italia was moved to a remote house, where he was isolated with two law enforcement officers on guard outside. Public health nurses visit him twice a day to check for symptoms that have yet to appear. The nurses wear no special protective gear and have had no special training for this quarantine. As the doctor wrote: “I feel quite well…. I remain symptom free as I have been all along – and just as I had expected I would…. I'm in a safe, secluded, undisclosed location. I have been asked not to disclose my location, so I cannot discuss it. Everyone is making sure that I am comfortable, fed and well taken care of.”

Rutland mayor Louras declined to answer further questions relating to Dr. Italia’s care, condition, or future, among others. On Facebook, the mayor fully embraced Vermont’s lawless sham this way: “The City applauds the efforts made by the State to keep public health and safety in the forefront, while guarding against unnecessary panic.”

A search of Governor Shumlin’s website for “quarantine,” or “Dr. Italia,” or even “Ebola” turns up NO results.

Most Vermont media dropped this story once the “mystery” of the anonymous quarantined man was revealed. Other than Senator Patrick Leahy’s mild concern (which didn’t last) about the use and misuse of quarantines, the issue of state abuse of power has been largely ignored (with the exception of Vermont Free Press, which wonders if Ebola is a “false flag” operation).

A few days before he was due to be released, Dr. Italia wrote:

I don't think anybody should be comfortable with being forced into "voluntary" quarantine. I think it's wrong to treat anyone in the manner that I have been treated. Moreover, there was absolutely no valid scientific reason at all to force me into quarantine in the first place – I was never around or in contact with Ebola patients.

This is the sort of abuse of power that would not be tolerated in a free country.

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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.