With ten dead in Iraq today and five Britons kidnapped, I was looking for some good news to write about. I didn’t find it. And in what seems like a page out of a science-fiction novel, I found this: U.S. Isolates Traveler Infected with Super-TB.
The United States has isolated a man who may have exposed fellow passengers on two transatlantic flights to a strain of tuberculosis that is extremely hard to treat, officials said on Tuesday.
It was the first time the federal government has issued such an isolation order since at least 1963, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said authorities were trying to notify passengers who traveled aboard Air France 385 from Atlanta to Paris on May 13 and back to the United States from Prague on Czech Air Flight 0104 on May 24.
It caught my attention immediately because while flipping channels this weekend, I happened upon the tv premiere of the movie Pandemic on the Hallmark Channel. It was about the quarantining of passengers arriving at LAX from Australia after a young man died en route. They suspected he had bird flu, but whatever he had, there was no vaccine.
The cast was unusual: Faye Dunaway as Governor of California, Eric Roberts as Mayor of Los Angeles.
Somewhat predictably, one selfish passenger had business he thought so important he managed to sneak out in a baggage truck and proceed to infect others in the city. A drug kingpin being extradited back to America to face the death penalty is also on board the flight and escapes. He mysteriously doesn’t get the disease . Yet he kidnaps someone from the Center for Disease Control to find out what the closest vaccine is and manages to hijack the trucks bringing it into LA. Then (of course) he sells the vaccine on the streets as if it were heroin. Did I mention the redneck who thinks the quarrantine is a Government plot to subvert the Constitution and decides with his buddies to engage in a little vigiliantism? Or the crooked criminal defense lawyer or the FBI agent not afraid to pull a Jack Bauer?
Despite the highly implausible plot and cast of characters, the film raises real questions about the role of Government in the event of a threat of mass disease. As I watched, I tried to envision the progression of circumstances in real life: a passenger infected with a deadly contagious disease for which there is no cure or vaccine, a quarantine of an entire flight, a city’s population panicking, rioting and looting to get whatever supplies are available, martial law…and then what?
Today it’s just one flight and one passenger. But how many did he infect before he “voluntarily entered a medical isolation facility in New York City?” What if you had been next to him and the Government now knocks on your door to involuntarily commit you to an isolation facility for testing? Are quarantines the answer? Is there another way?
And the corollary: Is our Government doing enough and the right kinds of things to protect us from biological threats?
Pandemic will air again this weekend.
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Hi Jeralyn
What my resignation letter would look like:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot…..ymore.html
And you know that the Federal government is totally unprepared, don’t you?
Cough, cough,…
Frankly, as the population of the world is spiraling out of control, a little pandemic now and again is inevitable.
Although one would like something a little quicker, TB will probably sweep across the nation and world. Super, mid-grade or regular, it’s about time some of this virus known as humanity gets knocked off.
There’s time and place for quarantines, and other public health measures to protect a population, but who can trust these guys?
The BushCo administration’s War on Science is seriously endangering our health.
Hi, Jeralyn. Welcome to the lake and by the way I love your blog. This AM after reading about 10 more American soldiers dying on Memorial Day I put on CNN to hear the latest and only heard about Rosie. Somehow I guess Rosie and Elisabeth’s spat wasn’t enough so now the TB scare,
I know I’ve read things about a resistant strain of TB. Is this an even MORE resistant strain? Are we going to return to the days of TB sanitariums?
This scares me as I come from a family of weak lungs. I had a serious lung disease at age 7 that put me in the hospital for over two weeks. I was later informed that the treatment had only been developed a few years prior to my birth. I figure if I’d been born 10 years earlier, I’d have been just another case of “consumption.”
As it is, my mother had TB (amongst about a half dozen other lung diseases). Her treatment then (late ’60s) was bed rest and semi-isolation at home with her own china and silver kept seperate from the rest of the family.
If that guy kissed a chicken were fucked.
Jeralyn, I’m less worried about Super-TB or H5N1 virus than I am our government.
Either illness makes a fabulous pretext for the suspension of our rights. And what timing, too, given that Bush made himself absolute ruler within the last couple of weeks, assuming a natural catastrophe of unspecified nature.
Bush has contributed to the deaths of many individuals both here and abroad, far more than Super-TB or H5N1 combined to date; I shudder to think what he could do with unfettered power.
Elliott @ 5
The sad thing is, this administration is so totally lacking in credibility that you gotta know there will be folks who suspect that such a quarentine would be misused and therfore try to evade it.
I remember my grandfather talking about a quarentine in the neighborhood he grew up in.
It was enforced simply by a notice onthe door. Public Health officials came to make sure you had food and such and doctors made housecalls back then. For everything else, you had to rely on your friends and relatives (banking for instance) and there were rules that essentially said that items could go into the house, but not come out.
This is back in the days when most folks burned their own trash.
My point is, quarentine worked mostly on the honor system. It’s not like they padlocked you in your house and boarded up the windows.
Around the turn of the Century in NYC there was a great epidemic of (I forget what) and people in the slums who could not afford to stay home from work and observe the quarentine were rounded up and taken, like prisoners, to an island in the middle of the East River called Ward’s Island.
The old quarentine hospitals are gone, though a few ruins remain and the most modern building was converted to a psychiatric hospital. But back during the heyday of that epidemic Ward’s Island had hospital wards, Houses for the staff (so they would not spread contagion back into their home neighborhoods) and all the infrastructure of a small town.
It was a germ specific concentration camp.
Just something to think about.
There was movie with Cuba Gooding, Jr. in it one time about some deadly disease and a quarentine hospital and how enemies of the state where “mistakenly” sent to the hospital where they were certain to contract the disease.
I don’t know if there is enough residual faith left that our government deals with us with any honesty for an honor based quarentine system to work. Problem is, I don’t trust this government with a forced quarentine systemat all.
See what happens when a government loses all credibilty? It cannot govern.
Rayne, I couldn’t agree more. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. You would think that the countries that he visited would also be concerned and maybe they will be but googling just doesn’t show that yet.
Yes, XDR-TB is very, very bad news.
CDC is still mostly staffed by people who know what they’re doing, as opposed to the cronyism that has infested many other federal agencies. That’s the good news. The worrisome news is that other than Canada’s brush with SARS a few years ago, the industrialized world hasn’t dealt with a major outbreak of this serious an airborne illness in quite some time. Something like this would expose a lot of the problems with the US health care “system.” Top-flight public health experts we have. A cohesive system where it’s easy for hospitals to communicate and, where necessary, share information, not so much.
Rayne @ 9
See, that’s just what I mean. We are more afraid of how Shrub would exploit such a situation than we are of some serious disease.
How sad it that?
Hey Jeralyn-
Here is the US’s first case of XTB:
Day to Day, April 2, 2007
Robert Daniels is being held in a detention ward at an Arizona hospital because he is infected with a deadly strain of tuberculosis. Daniels refused to comply with voluntary quarantine rules.
As i recall this guy claims he didnt know the extent of his quarantine.
I believe I will frame looseheadprop’s closing line:
See what happens when a government loses all credibilty? It cannot govern.
WOW, that really says it all.
Bush Co tried to rev up a big panic on bird flu last year, but got overtaken by Iraq, Foley, other Republican and Bush Co ineptitude events.
Sorry to sound all tin-foil-hat about this, but these guys only have one thing that has worked for them in 6 years, and that is creating fear in the electorate.
looseheadprop @ 10
PELOSI 2007
A recent case from San Francisco – note that this was related to a person who evidently died of the disease last year.
OT but of interest:
Intriguing. Saying that someone “voluntarily entered a medical isolation facility” after a federal isolation order is a bit like saying someone “voluntarily entered prison” after being convicted of a felony and sentenced to jail time.
The article doesn’t point this out, but TB is VERY hard to transmit. Close, long-term contacts are usually at high risk when someone tests positive, but casual contacts usually aren’t. When someone tests positive for garden-variety TB, we usually check other household members, and that’s about it. Also, most people who get infected, and go on to test postive, will never show symptoms of the disease. The biggest risk is to people with compromised immune systems and people who already have some other type of lung disease. (Some doctors will not even treat patients who test positive but have no symptoms and no signs of the disease on chest X-ray.)
So when are they going to let this guy go? After a year and a half of therapy?
Here’s another depressing thought: If you take ANY group of people from an international plane flight, odds are that a few will test postive for TB, and the standard test won’t distinguish regular TB for the multi-drug resistant strain. So what’s the plan for the people on the plane who test positive, especially if they have no symptoms of the disease and no findings on chest X-ray?
SARS
A Toronto hospital’s experience with SARS in 2003.
Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders dealt with a bio warfare theme. Clancy went once over the legal issues, and had his hero president do what was necessary to save lives, leaving himself open to impeachment should the People and Congress decide he had over reacted. In that book, enough was done to dodge the bullet. One might also think though a situation where the bullet is less easy to dodge.
Thing is, eventually we are going to get an undodgable bullet. Antibiotics have given us a half century pretty much epidemic free. We have over used antibiotics now to the point that a return to ‘normal’ is likely. The bugs are catching up with the technology. The people might well fear the government more than an epidemic, having not seen what a true epidemic can do in our life times.
In Phoenix AZ we have a man who is locked up in a hospital room with this TB and is not allowed to watch tv, read newspapers, no telephone, because he refused quaranteen. So, this man was not the first. This man in Phoenix happend a few months ago. so, it is happening!!!!
if those of us who fear the continuing metastasis of fascism here in the USofA would be heard, we’d say that if a newer, more frightening pretext were thought to be called for in order to tighten even further the liberty of the people, this one is gonna be a dooZZZY!
cuz the complaint that the threat to human well-being will be seen to be far more compelling than the threat to the freedom to travel, or of association, for that matter…
then you got the issue of what do you do to typhoid mary if you catch her?
./
Beware of Directive 51 like I posted about the other day.
This is my last word on this subject. Hope everyone wakes up and smells the coffee before we lose our country.
One of the problems with TB is that the people most likely to be infected (the poor or immigrants) are also most likely to not take antibiotics correctly without supervision. Then they end up with a drug-resistant version that they can (and will) spread.
I understand this is the nightmare of every communicable-disease spec*alist.
bilbo in az @ 23
yeah, i heard about that…
me?
i got a repaired heart…don’t need to be exposed to super-tb…i’d really rather not, thanks…
looseheadprop @ 13
Yeah, and I’m the bird flu freak, just ask my kids. They’re required to wash their hands as soon as they come back from the golf course (goose poop on fairways), no golf balls or shoes or anything else allowed in the house, antiviral sprays for shoes, etc.
But I know what I’m doing — and I have absolutely no confidence that Shrub does.
Need I say “Katrina”?
Antibiotic resistent TB has been in the U.S. for quite a few years. What is really alarming is that there is a directive from the WH that W can declare an emergency based upon his own authority.
My above comment about the first case does seem to be incorrect. ;|
Pubmed
The U.S. data indicated that 74 TB cases reported during 1993-2004 met the case definition for XDR TB
bilbo in az @ 23
After the bad press coverage, they reportedly gave him back his TV and cellphone, and he can now receive books from family members. No writing materials or his laptop for some reason.
George A. @ 25
brotha, a pandemic is precisely the kind of catastrophe for which the Directive was drafted to be applied…
how much you wanna bet wilson (edith) would have cancelled the election of ‘20 if the flu of ‘18-19 had happened a year later?
.
The major depository for multi-drug resistant TB is, I believe, the prisons of Russia and the former Soviet Union, where it is quite common. The man in Arizona was Russian-born who returned to the U.S. after an extended visit.
This is a very serious problem that will get worse (not might). This country, or probably every country, is not prepared to deal with it.
I foresee a time when several problems (weather, biology, social order, food) converge at once. All the more reason to get the grown-ups to grow up and develop strategies based on the humane practice of good reason and compassion and understanding the very BIG picture of social needs.
FWIW, shrub lists “Pandemic flu” as one his national priority policy areas on the WH website
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/pandemicflu/
.. ‘course he also lists Katrina reconstruction and veteran’s welfare as priority areas….
Bush would usurp anything if he thought it would help him in the polls.
I expect to see the administration’s plan to defeat cosmic rays next.
Hmmmmmm….Wolf B. is about to scare the bejeebus out of us…he just used the words “loss of civil liberties”…and “quarantine”….
pandemonium: pandemic encomium
The government apparently admits that they knew about him before he boarded the plane, but he also decided that his personal business was more important. They didn’t know until after the test results came back that it was highly contagious.
Whoops.
I do this often…..imagine Gore is president and this situation occurs. Not only would there be a plan already in place to deal with the danger, but the best and the brightest would be working on a solution.
But, alas, we have Bush.
punaise @ 37
I thought that was a party for Butterstick
You could get exposed to at any time on any subway or bus for the past decade or more. It is not new. Perhaps this particular strain is different, but it is not new. This is diversion and perhaps more.
If only airplane guy had taken a bottle of mouthwash with 3.5 ounces of liquid in it, then they coulda got him.
solai @ 39
I nominate Harriet for Bug Czar
Well, considering the news, it sounds like Baghdad is the real problem today, (much more deadly than TB)!!!
Blub @ 31
I really wish a good investigative reporter would cover this particular case. What little I’ve read about this particular patient implies (but does not outright state) that he was a complete asshole to health professionals, and he was deprived of his television and reading material for punitive reasons. (I do NOT agree with this standpoint, btw.)
This issue could also have a lot to do with trying to push the immigration bill.
I’ve read about it and I am concerned. Someone here said it was more or less standard. But, we’re talking about Bush so nothing can get ignored. I’m waiting for a post on this subject by one of our brilliant hosts. (That wasn’t too subtle was it?)
smapdi @ 42
LOL
I’m choking on pepperjack cheese here…
What’s 122?
That’s the number of troops Clusterfuck has butchered so far this month. The record is 141- so he has a ways to go.
Clusterfuck said that the goal of the surge is to reduce violence- implying that we could measure it’s effectiveness in terms of deaths- the less deaths- the better the surge.
Now he says that- to the contrary- the better the surge is doing the MORE deaths there will be cause the “TERRORISTS” will see that we are winning and fight back harder…
It is becoming perfectly clear that he doesn’t have the faintest fuckin idea what he is tryin to accomplish- or what’s happening as a result of his actions- or how to evaluate ANYTHING- he just flaps his fuckin gums and farts in our general direction.
No wonder the goopers told him recently that someone else will need to speak about Iraq as he has zero credibility with anyone.
How pitiful is that?
I was just listening to Amy…piece on this new doc film, War Made Easy
i’m a vet, usaf, ‘64-68, with a stint in Vietnam. as i listened to it, it made my blood still. i wanna return my “I’m A Murkin” Card…it’s just damning.
.
Btw: the SCROTUS today restricted the right of people to sue for damages under the civil rights act when damages were incurred more than 180 days before the suit was brought.
izzis a great fucking, goddam cunchry or WHAT!
LS @ 46
you’ve been watching Lou Dobbs! ;)
wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 50
it gets a bit soggy when left to stew in its juices
Elliott @ 51
They’ve been flirting with this idea, including the antibiotic resistant TB, entering this country by virtue of infected illegal aliens for awhile. Now that the bill looks iffy, they’re going to make a big deal about this.
OK- Now I’m really pissed. Clusterfuck’s ethanol program was pure politics to get the farm vote- Ethanol doesn’t work- but now THIS:
MEXICO CITY – Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.
The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn
That motherfucker is causing the price of my 100% agave margaritas to skyrocket- this is fuckin WAR!!!
rwcole @ 54
Damn!
Frank Probst @ 20
Typical isolation orders are until the person has shown response to treatment and is no longer infectious to others. This typically takes about 2 months of therapy, although it depends on how extensive the disease is.
That said, public health officials can mandate further orders of detention if the person refuses to take therapy. TB is unique in having the detention trump card, primarily because transmission is airborne.
Regarding your question about how to deal with passengers who test positive, but are unable to distinguish if the XDR TB was what infected them – they would be placed on close follow-up and offered preventative treatment. That is not ideal to be sure, but TB diagnostics stink and are basically from the 1950’s.
Hope that helps.
looseheadprop @ 10
Elliott @ 5
Well said, and that’s exactly the problem. Because when a quarantine is needed, it is /needed/. But there is no capacity to handle a real serious disease outbreak anymore, anyway. We just don’t have the beds, the drugs, the distribution system for food and drugs, etc… The system is running at capacity, or even slightly over and can’t ramp up.
rwcole @ 54
WTF!
Wolf: “Civil liberties suspended”, “CDC taking drastic actions”
Story coming up on CNN.
The HHS started a five week flu leader planning blog. I posted about that as well as the huge problem of having neglected to include professional nurses in planning – anywhere and on any level. The FluWiki is the most comprehensive source for pandemic planning that I’ve found. Moreover, only a few dollars have dribbled into the hands of community-based first responders for training, and most are not equipped and supplied to take care of large numbers of patients. So if those patients even get to the emergency departments of hospitals, because there is so little capacity in the hospital systems, there is no room at the inn to accommodate them. Posted about that, too.
Having been involved in trauma services, emergency care from the hospital side, and general community emergency – preparedness training (even learning how to auto-inject huge suckers of needles into my own thigh in the case of a nerve agent attack), I know just how badly we are – total unpreparedness in each and every aspect of pandemic, natural disasters, bioterrorism, chemical or nuclear attack catastrophes.
The sole person who prepared is Bush – by issuing his take over the country dictator Directive 51 (which would make a good movie title) order. (Posted about that, too)
Here’s a link to an April 6 Democracy Now! segment on the Arizona patient, Robert Daniels, including audio of an interview with Daniels.
Oh, for god’s sake. THIS is how they protect us??? They call the sick guy and say ‘don’t fly commercial’??
Tell me again why people think the republican party is better at protecting us than the dems. Over and over they prove that they are totally incapable of protecting America and yet have the audicity to claim the dems are weak. IMO, the repubs are too busy raiding the treasury to waste time actually governing. Where’s the profit in that?
This is one of the dumbest stories and coverage I’ve seen in a long time. I’m getting some popcorn. What a crock. Shiny object – that is all this is.
LS @ 59
LS, I dropped those channels a while back, my! the world looks a lot different without that noise. It’s a shame, a real 24 hour news channel is a public service.
but I sure don’t miss The Dobbsian World View, for starters…
So where’s the prez today? Takin a well deserved vacation at the Pig Ranch?
I dont see the complicity of BIG PHARMA as a shiny object. The press and pres can make it into one, but the medical/biological problem remains.
Big Pharma = More new drugs = more drug resistance
Big Oil = Climate change = more new-to-us diseases
Elliott @ 64
I can’t stand any of them either. I do keep an eye on what’s going on, but it all sounds like faux news to me. That is why that new documentary upthread called, “War Made Easy”, is so unbelievably amazing. http://www.warmadeeasy.com. This is the URL, but not the link, sorry.
What a waste.
sniff.
I think his JAR will go down again on this news.
LS @ 63
the biggest problem with the missile defense system izzat it cant tell the dangerous bright- shiny-objects from the distracting ones…there’s just so many of ‘em, the defense system, which is limited, basically just shuts down in frustration–keeping the powder dry?
that, by way of a metaphor…
it seems to me that, in terms of REAL dangers to the sovereignty of the people, the occupation of iraq is far more likely to be chaff meant to distract than the threats of pandemic or threats posed by GMOs to the food stocks…’
.
Remember when the anthrax “scare” occured? Bush said that every citizen would have Cipro. I wonder how that’s going?
Laura releasin a new country western song:
Porkin the Prez at the Ol Pig Ranch
rwcole @ 65
He’s in GA the state that I presently reside to talk about immigration. He’s trying to help Chambliss I guess or just talking to small time folk.
Frank Probst @ 45
He may very well have been, but I think his bigger problem was his jailer… Sheriff Joe… who tries to cultivate a national image as the toughest sheriff in the country.. chain gangs and all. Sheriff Joe said of the TB guy that he was locked up in solitary for 9 months because that’s what’s done to ALL Joe’s victims in the prison hospital ward to prevent malingering, and they had no procedure for quarantine situations and so just followed the normal rules. That explanation seems really weak to me, but that’s what Sheriff Joe said in his presser when the story broke in mid April. He said that he would order that the situation be rectified…
solai @ 62
See Chinois’s comment at 12 for an accurate depiction of CDC staff and politics.
They probably could have detained this person prior to her/his flights, but that would definitely would raise the issue of overriding individual civil liberites. There usually needs to be some evidence of patient nonadherence (to treatment, to TB control measures/prevention of spread) before PH officials will detain someone.
Most PH folk are fairly liberal. Most do not invoke detention lightly. Not to mention that detaining a patient is very expensive to do. But that loops back to Chinois’s comment (at 12) about the health care system infrastructure.
And ag-business keeps getting FDA approval to keep giving the newest and dwindling number of effective antibiotics to animals. There is no better way to create super-germs; and business gets a few more cents per pound profit and the pols get their campaign bribes and we get fucked. There is another piece in WaPo today about more MRSA in the community.
JPL @ 72
Oh, well then he’s in the same location as the airplane guy. Maybe he IS the airplane guy?
And there are idiots out there who want to deny medical care to “illegal aliens”, as if their germs will respect anyone’s citizenship or immigration status.
solai @ 62
Let’s see: Cat Stevens is on the Do Not Fly list, but not this guy.
“In Georgia”
Well I guess the lil fucker has ta be somewhere- it was just yer day in the barrel.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I have to say, watching that stupid movie really made me worry more about this.
I also think that knowing Bush is in charge lessens my confidence. I agree with the poster above who said if Al Gore had been elected, there’d be a workable plan in place.
I also worry that our National Guard, if we need them, are mostly in Iraq.
More BS from the VP:
LINK
Jeralyn @ 80
The thing is, the news really does ramp this stuff up and try to scare everybody. A pandemic could happen.
AZ Matt @ 81
Probably just trying to hide the name of the DC Madam.
allan_in_upstate @ 78
you know they don’t want The Peace Train coming ’round here.
They oughta quarantine people afflicted with gooperism- before they give it to someone else.
JPL @ 83
Oh come now, Darth doesn’t need comfort women… his own bile provides him with sufficient entertainment
Blub @ 86
Maybe we’re not talking about Darth. He’s married right?
Jeralyn @ 80
well, at least there’s a silver liing:
when they do come back, and if they have to be deployed to enforce a national quarantine, they won’t have as many scruples against opening fire (not that, if May, ‘70, is recalled, it was REAL high to begin with) to enforce the public health…
‘
AZ Matt @ 81
Incredible. More from the story:
I’m glad that WaPo is tenaciously pursuing this story. Not.
rwcole @ 85
it’s a genetically transmitted disease I think
But my dear, I am a countryclub republican…I have my own airplane, wouldn’t think of flying in one of those overcrowded, foul-smelling, Oxygen defficient, contaminated commercial flights…Not for a billion bucks….
allan_in_upstate @ 89
that is remarkable!
sheesh
Rayne @ 9
Is this maybe the reason that there doesn’t seem to be any real rush to the exits in the administration?
I mean, maybe Rove’s math tells him that a public health emergency coupled with soldiers in the street and the newly adduced powers of the idiot-in-chief trump free elections.
This little gem has been around since 2001:
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/bt/MSEHPA.pdf.
Not to mention that the Defense Department has said its personnel will help out in case of an emergency. In New York City, federal teams are already “in reserve” in One Police Plaza.
While we’re bemoaning the fact that the Democrats sold us out on Iraq, the junta is taking all the necessary steps to moot the elections.
Blub @ 90
i gowt bettah….
Where did the patient go in Europe? They said Paris and Prague but googling only shows the extreme concern to be here. Why is that?
Darth gave up conventional sex years ago- but he never goes ANYWHERE without his inflatable doggie friend Ricky.
Question 1: If they knew about this weeks? ago, why are the “Murican” people just now hearing about it?
Question 2: O.K., who swiped my roll of tin foil? I *really* need it back!
JPL @ 95
If only he had flown on one of those polonium-210 contaminated British Air 767’s,
maybe he would have been cured.
allan_in_upstate @ 98
hrmph. speaking of inexplicable diseases, did they ever figure out who was mailing weaponized anthrax in October 2001? That story conspicuously disappeared without any explanation whatsoever. Brilliant follow-through there by the American free press….
There are geniune threats to public health from contagious disease, and there are potential threats that are magnified all out of proportion in order to make money for people, ie, avian flu. Our family among others made a lot of money off the avian flu scam. Proud? No, but I did invest these profits into my program in Russia. I’m kind of an anomaly, “read into the program” as an MBA but retaining my viewpoint as a humanitarian. The conflict is painful. And they wonder why I drink. You want to scold me go ahead. I am a traitor even to reveal these things.
Matters of life and death are why I work at the children’s hospital in Russia. Today is the birth day and death day of my brother. I am trying to save lives and work for peace. I fear I am one war behind. We do what we can.
In the book, DeLay criticizes Gingrich for, among other things, conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.) “Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment,” DeLay said. “You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets about your own adulterous affairs.” He added that the impeachment trial was another of his “proudest moments.” The difference between his own adultery and Gingrich’s, he said, “is that I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference.” He added, “Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.”
http://www.newyorker.com/repor…..table=true
The correct link from james @ 93 should be
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/bt/MSEHPA.pdfJPL @ 95
{{{{{{{{Egregious}}}}}}}}}
Sorry about the link in my post…it leads to an error page.
Just Google MSEPHA; there is a slew of information on a program that has been in the works since way before 11 September 2001.
james @ 104
it was just that period added at the end.
I read what I can on personal and community preparedness. Over and over I pick up that we can really only rely upon local government and ourselves. Cities were ranked a few months ago in one of the papers- Im thinking USA Today- on their response plans to a pandemic, and infrastructure already in place to help. NYC and some other metros ranked surprisingly higher than other places I would have thought would be better.
And, for the record, if I’m in Europe and the CDC calls and says not to fly commercial, it would be helpful if they helped me out. Because, right after they say ‘you have a fatal disease w/ no cure’….well, I’m not sure I’d be thinking too clearly.
Wonder if Libby Libby Libby on the Label Label Label is gettin nervous about jail?
While the super drug resistant strain(s) of TB are to be taken very seriously, TB is still a relatively difficult disease to be sufficiently exposed to for it to result in infection. I caught a little teevee news during lunch and saw these bobble heads talking about the guy who, on his way from Canada south throught the US must have bought gasoline at a station (gasp!) or bought food and touched something (double gasp). In reality, the likelihood anyone ‘caught’ his TB under that kind of encounter is very low. The CDC should take it seriously and take the proper measures, but there is no need for public panic.
TB is a great example of an infectious disease that is best contained when treatment (TB tests and medication for a positive test) is not limited to those with health insurance or even citizenship.
By treating a person with TB, whoever they are, you save in morbidity and money by orders of magnitude by addressing it and preventing the spread.
Damien @ 4
Lordy, Damien. You volunteering for an infection?
Milan River @ 106
A couple of times recently I’ve seen public service ads suggesting citizens should put together emergency preparedness kits. “We’ve sucked the marrow out of the bones of the emergency services, so you’re on your own” being the subtext, I guess.
Thanks Busted.
People often wonder, why don’t those who see what’s happening come forth and spill all? Because (a) no one believes them (b) they will be vilified. Oooh, those are great motivations to risk one’s personal situation.
This is all down here in EPU land so that my situation is recorded for history and hopefully not at the cost of wrecking my work in Russia.
Why don’t people come forward? Good God, marriages, homes, families, young children, safety, happiness, prosperity, all to be balanced against the prospect of coming forward, being in the newspapers, and having all the negative consequences with no one believing you. And then it’s all for NOTHING.
I’m semi anon because my ability to work here will be diminished when others view me as the newest target for propaganda destruction. I’m small fry. I can only imagine the courage it takes to be a Comey.
I’m putting together a reading list for Libby in jail. One is about communicable diseases- another is about putting prisoners in cages with bears. Anyone have other suggestions?
Doc. Murphy has a new post up!!!
But what about Rosie, that “Survivor” chick, and the whales in California? I wish you people would pay more attention to the important stuff.
Back in the early 90’s we had over a hundred cases in the US of drug resistant TB among AIDS patients. Because of immune depression, those with AIDS or HIV are much more likely to contract TB if exposed, and because drug resistant TB is most likely to occur where patients are inadequately treated (Directly Observed Treatment with drugs over a period of at least 9 months) if you have interaction between an immune compromised population, and an Active TB subject — you have a hell of a problem on your hands. TB is spread through the air — anyone in a confined space processing the same air is a potential victim, and if TB is drug resistant, the new subject acquires the drug resistant variety. What applies to people with AIDS/HIV also applies to other immune compromised folk — organ transplant cases, those getting chemotherapy, and any number of other reasons immunity can be depressed.
Back in 1990 we had such an AIDS patient in Minneapolis, advanced AIDS and drug resistant TB. I had to learn all about it because the service organization for people with AIDS that I helped operate in those days was a partner in his treatment program. To stay out of an institution, he had to agree to monitoring, and quite specialized treatment requirements. The DOT — directly observed treatment was available to him daily, and he had to comply with being available to the public health nurse to take his pills while she observed. He had to agree to remain in his apartment without guests or visitors at all times. His food was delivered to him daily, with a bin on his porch being where he received it — the delivery person could talk with him at a distance of 6 feet through a doorway. If he had to travel anywhere, it had to be in a medical van designed for a seperate internal air supply — he was not permitted to shop or attend any public events — doctor’s appointments were about it. He certainly would not have been allowed in a plane or any other kind of public transport. It was either live like that — or have the court send him to an isolation institution. I knew about this one case — but apparently we had five all of whom were traced to this source. We had a full blown meeting of all the AIDS service organizations plus all the medical personnel called by the County Health Department to walk us through the whole regime, and to provide medical ed on TB, largely because TB at that time was considered an old disease and no one paid much attention to it anymore. Sadly it is about, it is highly contageous particularly among the immune compromised, and the cost of treatment is between 1 and 200.000 per patient.
How did “our guy” get TB — he went on a vacation to South Africa to see an old lover. He brought it back with him.
Sometime after this we had a case on Air France, someone who had worked in a Russian Prison, not knowing he was infected (TB is epidemic in Russian Prisons) flew from Paris to the US, and passed the disease to nine others near him in the plane cabinet. Two were not caught and they died — the others had to take the kind of treatment outlined above. We have had other cases where US Prisoners have been treated in Community Hospitals and because then did not have vents that moved air out of the facility, but rather circulated it — 22 other patients got TB and had to be treated as outlined above. We probably have a lot more of this in prisons, but we are not testing for it.
The politics of this have much to do with Reagan, and virtually nothing to do with Bush. Before 1980 we appropriated funds every year for county level Public Health TB survailance programs, and when they caught something, treatment but treatment under court order. Reagan eliminated the funding, and only two counties in the US to independently fund a continnuning program — my county and NYC. The loss of the TB funds — which kept up the public health lab system had a good deal to do with the demise of public health overall.
Back in the bad old days before anti-biotics, TB frequently did end with people living for years in Sanitoriums. Why? — they were contagious. Today you can eliminate the possibility of contagious transmission in a few months with the right drug mix — but the drugs need to be taken many more months to eliminate the possibility of re-occurance in a more drug resistant form which is highly likely if the full course of drugs is not followed.
Now I don’t know about other places, but here our client had to sign a very detailed memo making clear that he understood the implications of his illness — and thus the restrictions under which he would have to live if he wanted to stay in his own home and all. That meant the Public Health people had to work with him so that he did understand not only the limitations, but the reasons for them — and agree to them. If the guy in the news thought he could fly in a plane — I think the patient education and agreement bit probably was totally inadequate. We can’t even send someone to Denver to the most advanced TB treatment program in the country in a commercial plane. We have to send them in a med ambulance on a ventilator with a totally closed air supply.
egregious @ 112
Speaking of which, I wonder whether Lockheed will decide that Comey is a distraction
the next time a giga-$ defense contract is up for grabs.
50/50 Gore may run. Olbermann.
George A. @ 25
What is Directive 51? NSPD 51?
Gore on KO now, Pacific.
egregious @ 112
Well so far I haven’t been vilified, however no one believes me and thinks I’m nuts.
I haven’t seen much discussion on Directive 51 which I commented on the other day. It won’t really take much to declare Martial Law with a TB outbreak now would it? Or any other type of so called emergency that Der Fuehrer Bush sees.
Oh well I’ll just quietly crawl back into my hiding space and stay safe for a little while longer.
God Bless all.
Fucking opus dei
struck again todei…
waSf
(we are So fucked)
rwcole @ 113
Tell him to have safe sex and use a condom.
God Bless.
Elliott @ 102
Thanks, Elliot; I misplaced a period in copying the site.
We should all be aware of how everything is falling into place for the wrong people.
If Bush was so concerned about being prepared for highly pathogenic avian flu why did we not request sufficient stocks of tamiflu from Roche before the rest of the world was in the queue ahead of us?
The answer is that the other countries of the world have leaders who are truly more concerned with the health of their people than the criminals running this country into the ground.
egregious @ 100
i can imagine the conflicts those ambiguities create for you…
i do not mean it at all demeaningly that you are captive of noblesse oblige…
i, for one, am glad to know such ambivalence is possible.
i’d buy ya a drink…(or twist ya one, if that’d be your preference…)
As a long time lurker, I actually found this place through the progressive and very compelling public health blog Effectmeasure (http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure). I started out my once casual interest in public health and Bush’s dismantling of our public health system and my concerns grew as I got caught up in the SARS debacle as I was about to make an ill timed trip to the People’s Repblic of China with my young daughter who was born in Hunan Province, just as quarantines were being put into place for foreigners leaving the city of Changsha, where she and I were headed. That picqued my interest in the mess that is our public health system and it led me to learn about the developing medical mystery that is the highly virulent, lethel H5N1 virus. I’ve been following DemfromCT’s pieces on Kos and check the FluWiki often. I don’t consider myself a fearful or paranoid person but if we’re hit with a public health emergency, I have no faith in our government as LHP pointed out. I expect the worst.
I’m grateful that I found the Lake however I got here. However, I’ve spent the last year and a half, quietly, little by little, socking easily stored food away (and stored water too) and arranging for our best shot at survival if the shit hits the fan. This H5N1 strain might be a likely pandemic candidate and the possibility of a novel virus developing to which our herd, the human species, has no immunity for is a simple, natural occurence for mother nature. For me and my daughter, packing food and water away is just another kind of insurance for a hazard easily as likely to occur as other hazards we typically buy insurance for, like car, house, etc. Plus, it’s a challenging exercise trying to game, in advance, how one would survive if one had to hole up (”social distancing”) for 3 months or longer should our food delivery systems, travel, the grid and communications systems be down for an extended period of time. After watching Katrina unfold I believe we’ll be on our own if we have a pandemic and I’m sad to conclude that our administration will surely bungle the response-in fact I believe they already have. Those trigger happy idiots are itching to get their hands on just such a crisis to declare martial law and use some of those “detention camps” that Halliburton has been building in the US. If there is a pandemic coming to bite our human species in the posterior, Bush’s frightening pandemic plan calls for the use of the national guard to “keep order” here. If half of our Guard is overseas, will Blackwater be deployed here? I’l be it will be.
If nothing ever happens, there will be absolutely no problem eating what we’ve packed away…
I advocate public financing of elections and so called ’socialized medicine’.
unfortunately, i’d have to leave new mexico in order to have a radio station with WASF as a call-sign…
.
rwcole @ 113
Gitta Sereny’s “Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth” :)
Loo Hoo. @ 120
Here is the link again National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
I also left the link to the updated Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act and the Posse Comitatus Act the other day on the Libby Thread.
I really wish one of the legal eagles here would read them and give us there opinion on them. They really look like Bush now has all the same powers Hitler had just before he took total control over Germany.
George A. @ 129
Don’t know if these are the people to trust on this, but Josh Marshall put the question out and got this answer. I’d rather our crew look at it independently.
Personally, I find it kind of creepy.
Drug resistance is a big problem and getting worse. Unclear what to do about it.
Once an antibiotic starts being broadly used by the public, the odds of people not properly taking the antibiotic rise. Shocking how easy it is to get a prescription for antibiotics.
Really doctors should be doing urine/blood tests before prescribing antibiotics followed by a screen after the regiment is complete. If anything is left, a new antibiotic should be used. That second treatment should stop the now resistant strain from spreading.
Unfortunately the life saving techniques for elderly, aids patients, and other immuno-compromised individuals also increases odds of drug resistant infections. The antibiotic just kills most of the bacteria and relies on the immune system (which is no longer overwhelmed) to clean up the drug resistant stragglers. When the patient’s immune system doesn’t work well, the odds of a resistant strain reestablishing itself is much higher.
This is going to sound cold, but really we should restrict a few highly effective broad based antibiotics. Such drugs would only be available in hospitals and only for drug resistant infections in otherwise healthy adults.
If we had done this with any of the previous TB antibiotics, we wouldn’t be worried about a epidemic starting from this incident. But that would have meant some of those prior TB patients would have died without having access to a drug that could have potentially saved them.
Complex moral issue.
egregious:
I keep telling my Russian friends that they need to discourage the teens there from drinking. Everywhere I go there are teens walking around with bottles of beer (not only teens BTW). This country won’t get out from the morass that is affecting some of the younger professionals who can’t find work but who are so despearte to experience everything that western culture holds out to them.
I did have an opportunity to visit a Russian hospital in Petersburg. I fell (I was sober) and fractured my wrist. My friend flagged down a car, took me to hospital where I was xrayed, casted, given painkillers, and sent on my way within an hour. I paid with a credit card which will be reimbursed by my insurance company when I get home.
There’s still too much poverty here…mothers sifting through dumpsters while their kids sit in strollers or dig around themselves.
Good for you helping these kids. Too bad the bizneezmen are more concerned with ripping off the Treasury.
RevDeb @ 131
I’d be interested in knowing if a secret executive order was written the same day expanding the powers in NSPD 51 in ways we’ll never see until it’s too late.
RevDeb @ 131
I’ve seen other posts on this and will link to this one here Allen L Roland.
This is a scary one as we already had the FEMA Executive Orders for the Continuity of Government.
Here is a little from the link I posted above.
It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”
We must not all get lost on item and miss the bigger picture that is unfolding before us.
An outbreak of TB or any other major disaster could lose us our country with the stroke of a pen.
james @ 134
Here’s another paragraph from the link I posted.
Here is Matthew Rothschild’s thorough, cogent and timely breakdown of “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51″ and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ” Blueprints for a dictatorship which includes, of course, classified Continuity Annexes ~ which I am sure cover mass civil unrest and rendition procedures utilizing FEMA and the National Guard ~ which is now completely under control of the president.
Notice the line “classified Continuity Annexes”.
What do you think those could be? Do you trust anything the Bush Administration does? I sure the H*ll don’t.
It’s remarkable how few people here in the US regard the importance of taking an antibiotic prescription to its conclusion. My ex was on antibiotics for a bit and then stopped. When I asked why, she said,” because I started FEELING better, duh,” as if it were just an aspirin or something. I wanted to toss a plate at her.
The miracle of antibiotics has become a victim of its own success in that many ordinary people don’t take their illnesses as seriously as they would or should otherwise.
Er, my mom just flew to London, but not via Atlanta, thank God. Any medical pros out there with info as to virulence of Super-TB on later flights via aircraft ventilation system, surface of tray table, etc?
(not panicking…..yet)
GAL @ 126
Ditto. Your family and mine will be eating a lot of rice, beans, other goods squirreled away now. Shopping for a water purification system at the moment; can’t hurt, might help.
actually so am I. I want to get one of those steri-pen ones since we can use it hiking as well. I find myself daydreaming about solar panels and inverters.
I am not famiiliar with this particular drug resistant strain of TB, but in general TB is not that easy to contract. You have to spend extended time in the same room with a symptomatic person (i.e., coughing regularly, little air cirulation) to be infected. Once infected you may become “latently infected” –too few TB bacteria to develop overt illness, or overtly infected and therefore able to spread the TB bacteria to others.
But as far as Bush’s ability to exploit the multdrug reisistant TB strain and declare “martial law” that is a totally different and scarier matter. Martial law closes the public square including elementary schools where I presume November election poles would normally set up shop…
“polls”, and other obvious typo corrections…
A short story I recommend relating to this particular subject is “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain” by James Tiptree, Jr.
http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/3…..iptree.pdf
RE: Bird flu — That’s likely not to affect us, a) because the virus hasn’t mutated sufficiently to easily attack humans, and b) for the simple reason that we wash our chickens before and after we kill them. That’s pretty much the best defense against the illness.
BushCo got their way on the Iraq Vote, all is well in the Land of Fog.
But soon, soon it will be time.
All Americans should back an Article 5 Convention. People ARE the Government- Time to Remember This.
I recall before Peristroika, reading about the Soviet Disidents in detention in Siberia, who had this uncurable strain of TB, ( In Newsweek or Time or Life MAgazine.) SO when the iron curtain fell, not more than 6 months later…..,what did we do? Rescued them and flew them right to NY within 24 hours………
was there a study, quarentine, or anything like that?
My other objection here………..Dr Martin Cotan, PR face of the CDC, on CNN today…………………said something about EXCORTING ( should be escorting) this sick person………….. How did he graduate from medical school, with out speaking proper english gramer? Does it inspire confidence in YOU that he can’t learn a simple word, and if not how much of the medical training was he able to grasp?????
R U Cognizant
Remember that Bush quietly signed into law a bill that would make him a true dictator in the event of an attack or epidemic. I wonder if he will use this as his excuse to impose martial law.