Ebola: Judge Belatedly Orders Family Quarantined in Dallas

This story just keeps getting worse. Dallas Judge Clay Jenkins “requested” that the family of Thomas Eric Duncan not leave their apartment — the same one he stayed with them in — to avoid exposing anyone else to the Ebola virus.

They left anyway.

Judge Jenkins has now ordered them to stay home or face prosecution.

The family of the Texas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan have been ordered to stay in their home after violating official’s initial request not to leave.

“There were violations of the request to not leave their premises,” Dallas judge Clay Jenkins said of the breach that prompted the Texas Department of State Health Services to order the quarantine.

Duncan was staying with family members in Dallas when he became ill and is now confined to an isolation unit at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. His family members, including five school age children, were told to remain at home.

The order came as authorities track all the people who Duncan is believed to have come in contact with since his arrival in the U.S. The circle of people who have come into contact with him has grown rapidly from 18 Wednesday night to 100 today, according to Texas health officials.

At what point are officials going to figure out that the selfish gene is governing behavior? The family have an understandable desire to live, but that desire is placing many many others at risk. Democrat Judge Clay Jenkins should have quarantined them from the moment that the Ebola diagnosis was official, and not waited until after they jumped his “request” to stay.

Now Jenkins is working on “relocating” the family, according to CNN. To where?

(CNN) — The quarantined partner of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan should be moved with her family out of the Texas apartment where Duncan became sick with the virus and where his sweat-stained sheets were still on the bed, the Dallas County director of homeland security said.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, also director of the county’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said officials are working on that relocation after Duncan’s girlfriend told CNN of being forced to live with distressing living conditions.

Jenkins acknowleged “some hygiene issues” in the apartment.

“I would like to see those people moved to better living conditions,” Jenkins told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday afternoon. “We are working on that. I would like to move them five minutes ago.”

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“We have some hygiene issues that we are addressing in that apartment,” Jenkins said earlier in the day. “Those people in the apartment are part of Dallas County, and they’re going to be treated with utmost respect and dignity in this unusual situation.”