Nancy Snyderman Apologizes for Violating Quarantine

NBC News medical reporter and Princeton resident Nancy Snyderman appeared on the Today Show this morning and apologized for violating a quarantine back in October.

Snyderman sais she failed to appreciate how frightened Americans were of Ebola. The veteran medical correspondent spoke with Matt Lauer before reporting on her first story in a month and a half.

NBC kept her off the air after she and two crew members left her house, where they were supposed to be observing a 21-day quarantine after covering Ebola in Liberia. She and her crew drove to a restaurant in Hopewell Boro to pick up a take-out order for lunch and were spotted by some Planet Princeton readers.

The news that she violated the quarantine angered many viewers, who called for her to step down from NBC. More than 2,000 comments were posted on her Facebook page, but she did not respond to any of them. Snyderman and NBC were quiet about the protocol violation for a few days before Lauer read a statement on the air from Snyderman.

Today Snyderman told Lauer that she was sorry for scaring the community.

“Good people can make mistakes,” she said. “I stepped outside the boundaries of what I promised to do and what the public expected of me.”

Several readers posted negative comments on her Facebook page again today after the apology, saying it came across as arrogant and condescending.

You should have resigned,” one woman wrote. “I have lost all respect for you. You obviously think you are above everyone else because you wear two hats.”

Another reader said the apology today was “a non-apology.”

“She’s basically was saying it was still appropriate for her team to lie about and break their voluntary quarantine agreement because they knew they were safe and their only mistake was in being `insensitive’ to the implied ignorance of people in rearing they could spread the disease,” wrote another reader. “The core issue is one of trust. She and her team promised to remain quarantined. It didn’t matter after that if she had a 100% certainty of her health status, she had an obligation to abide by the quarantine or publicly dispute it.”