(NOTE — Update at the End of the Column)
One of the things that changes you, when you become a parent, is the body of knowledge you acquire to protect your spouse and children including things like knowledge of infectious diseases in public schools. In my case that meant looking at the NY Times saying the following: “…the administration has begun to send the expected 240,000 migrants and 52,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border illegally in recent months in the Rio Grande Valley to cities around the county.” And at headlines for the open border crisis like this by Todd Starnes titled “Immigration crisis: Tuberculosis spreading at camps” which caused me to immediately free associate them with a pair of “Tuberculosis in Public School”, headlines, one local to North Texas in 2011 and the other very recently in California. See this 2011 Consumer Health Daily article from Denton Texas “TB Outbreaks in Texas Schools Show Disease Still a Threat – At least 100 people have tested positive for the respiratory ailment” and this 1 July 2014 article from the Sacramento Bee “Four more students test positive for tuberculosis at Grant High.”
As a Texas parent, this idea of TB positive illegal alien children released to illegal immigrant parents scares the heck out of me from the point of view of epidemiology. In the 1920s TB was the eighth leading cause of death for children 1-to-4 years old. Since then American public health has been so effective in preventing it that the USA no longer has any “herd immunity” to TB.
This “catch and release” illegal alien policy is horrible from the infectious disease point of view in that phlegm or aerosolized sputum that are contaminated with Mycobacterium tuberculosis are active biohazards that have long latent infection periods. This makes “exposure” very easy. The clinical definition of TB Exposure — which I found in a University of Vanderbilt student medical file PDF — is the following:
“A person is considered to be exposed if there is shared breathing space with someone with infectious pulmonary or laryngeal tuberculosis at a time when the infectious person is not wearing a mask and the other person is not wearing an N95 respirator. Usually a person has to be in close contact with someone with infectious tuberculosis for a long period of time to become infected; however, some people do become infected after short periods, especially if the contact is in a closed or poorly ventilated space.”
The Federal Government Hazmat protocol for dealing with suspected active TB cases is as follows:
1. Administrative controls
”¢ “Develop policies and protocols to ensure the rapid identification, isolation, diagnostic evaluation and treatment of persons likely to have TB.”
2. Engineering controls
Ӣ Isolation and
Ӣ Negative pressure room ventilation
3.Personal protective equipment controls
Ӣ N95 personal respirator protection
Questions people and reporters need to be asking their local, state and federal elected officials regards the so-called “unattended child immigration crisis” include:
1. How many Border Patrol Agents, health workers or other support staff at these immigration processing centers have worn N95 respirators in treating symptomatic TB sufferers?
2. How many TB sufferers were also wearing masks?
3. Have those Border Patrol Agents, health workers or other support staff followed a rigorous TB decontamination protocol?
Whether people ask those questions or not, we are going to find out the answers soon, and not just in Texas. Testable anti-bodies to TB infection appear in two to 12 weeks for skin and blood tests and the incubation period for full blown active TB is six months to two(+) years.
TB SCREENING, LTBI AND VACCINATION
While active TB can be found by chest X-rays, screening for latent TB infection (LTBI) can only be found by two tests that screen blood and skin. The problem for screening these illegal alien immigrants is, strangely enough, that they are from countries with wide scale TB vaccinations.
The TB vaccine is called BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin). It is considered controversial because it isn’t “very effective” in countries with a low incidence of TB, like the USA. However, that isn’t the biggest reason BCG isn’t usually given in the United States. Mass inoculation with BCG would remove both latent TB skin tests from the public health arsenal and increase the false positive rates from blood tests because those treated with BCG vaccinations all have the anti-bodies that current skin and blood tests look for. The public health system would lose most of its ability to track the spread of latent TB in the American population. The current public health paradigm of track, isolate and treat TB is about to come to a horrible end for the American public health system.
LTBI AND LETHAL DOSE 5% ISSUES
The real issue with TB positive illegal alien children is what the US Military epidemiologists called the “LD-5 population” back during the days of the Anthrax postal attack after 9/11/2001. In US Military speak “LD” is lethal dose. So a chemical or biological attack that is “LD50” kills 50% of the exposed.
What the 9/11/2001 Anthrax postal attacks proved via the death of one little old lady victim of a wrongly addressed mail — mail that went through a contaminated post office distribution center — was that there is a huge population of “immune impaired” in the USA who would be “LD5” for any infectious disease.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) list of “special consideration” for the treatment of drug resistant TB reflects that “LD5” thought process. The list includes:
Ӣ Pregnant women
Ӣ Older people who have suppressed immunity from diabetes, open heart or other major cardiac surgeries
Ӣ HIV sufferers
Ӣ Or children under 4 years of age
There are ten FDA approved antibiotic drugs for treatment of TB with a core of four drugs listed by the CDC as the “preferred treatment regimes” which lasts 6-to-9 months. Those core treatment regimen drugs include:
Ӣ isoniazid (INH)
Ӣ rifampin (RIF)
Ӣ ethambutol (EMB)
Ӣ pyrazinamide (PZA)
The reason for so many different drugs is that TB is developing resistance to antibiotic treatment. According to the Texas Department of Health Services, TB is classified into three treatment groups — TB, multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB and extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB. The first responds to the ten standard antibiotic drugs, while the last two are less and less responsive to antibiotic treatments.
Multi-drug resistant TB is defined as INH and RIF resistant.
Extreme Drug Resistant TB is MDR plus resistant to any of the following:
Ӣ Any fluoroquinolone; plus one of three following injectable second line drugs
Ӣ Capreomycin
Ӣ Kanamycin
Ӣ Amikacin
The six-to-nine month long TB antibiotic treatment regimes must be followed rigorously, and completed, or the LTBI and the active TB infected will breed more MDR and XDR TB strains.
COUNTING THE COST
A LTBI individual represents a 5% risk of developing active TB in the first 2 years of infection and is at a cumulative 10% risk of active TB over his or her lifetime. The US Army medical community estimates 1/3 of the world population has LTBI, with World Health Organization (WHO) data showing 9.2 million active TB cases and 1.7 million deaths annually.
By way of contrast, the 2010 estimate for the US LTBI population was at 4.2% (11 million people).
That 1/3 LTBI infection number for foreigners means that adding one million new illegal aliens results in 300,000(+) new people with LTBI, or a 3% increase in America’s pool of LTBI people over that 2010 estimate. Some 30,000 of these people will have an active TB in their lifetime, and if we are talking recently infected children, up to 15,000 of that may happen in the next 2-years.
Given the current Federal Judiciary enforced defacto Open Borders policy of “All illegal aliens have the rights of citizens,” it is impossible to enforce, for reasons of Public Health, long term detention for a full directly observed therapy (DOT) course for the TB positive that are harbored in that the 12-to-20 million and growing illegal immigrant community.
The willingness of American citizens to follow TB medical protocols can be shown by the fact that even with LTBI positive US servicemen — who are getting mandatory treatment under color of authority — only 50% complete a full drug therapy course for LTBI. Thus we are certain to see more and more antibiotic resistant strains of TB everywhere.
A collapse of the current non-vaccination based public health standards on TB (See the 1996 article “The Role of BCG Vaccine in the Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis in the United States” in the notes below on the ‘track, isolate and treat’ standard model TB public health thinking) with the illegal alien community will be a huge budget issue for the Border Patrol, healthcare workers, emergency 1st responders, prisons…and increasingly Public Schools serving illegals.
The coming TB epidemic in the illegal population will force the public health system to require complete mandatory vaccination of children, all women planning to have children, healthcare workers, emergency 1st responders and prison populations nationwide for TB as the latent periods for TB will see all prisons and hospitals pretty much contaminated all the time.
The actuarial cost hit on public budget medical care coverage of families of Federal Border Patrol agents and Prison Guards infected with extremely resistant TB from Agent/Guard work related exposure will be mind boggling.
Knowing all the above, you can see why I am terrified.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR
Forewarned is forearmed, so here are a list of “The TB Epidemic is here markers” to put in your social media and RSS feeds in terms of near future events
Ӣ Mass orders of N95 masks by State, Federal or Military health systems.
Ӣ Mass orders of BCG vaccine by State, Federal or Military health systems.
Ӣ Shortages/price spike of the list of 10 standard TB antibiotics
”¢ “Cone of silence” media reporting of TB in public hospitals or school stories that exclude the mention of illegal alien TB sufferers.
Ӣ Border Patrol Agent or health worker families becoming infected with TB from immigrant processing centers
Given the numbers of illegal immigrant children already released by the Obama Administration — and the further numbers it wants to release before President Obama leaves office — the only thing you can say for certain about the coming TB epidemic is that it is inevitable.
UPDATE 12:30pm –
I have been watching some of the comments over on the American Thinker article quoting my column regards the Center for Disease Control and why it isn’t acting more swiftly regards the TB threat.
I am going to point everyone to this book by Thomas S. Kuhn so you can understand their inaction —
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
Kuhn’s key point is that the only way that scientific paradigm change happens is over the dead bodies of those that hold the obsolete paradigm, while those that replace them hold the new scientific paradigm.
The CDC is made up of scientists just like the ones Kuhn described, scientists who have fought TB one way their entire careers and cannot think outside that paradigm.
They are so hugely locked into the existing “track, isolate and treat standard TB public health model” that they cannot acknowledge the reality that President Obama’s mass importation of unscreened for TB illegal alien children has already destroyed their life’s work.
My intent in writing the column was to provide “The Hand Book for the Coming TB Epidemic” for parents and public employee union shop stewards in the Border Patrol, Public Schools, and other State/Local Health Care/emergency 1st responder communities to give them all a template to push the transition from the “made obsolete as a result of stupid public policy” — See Obama’s DACA executive orders — “track, isolate and treat” public health model to a mass vaccination model.
Public employee unions have a huge dog in the fight against this coming TB epidemic and the Open Border policy that is creating it. Telling them how to avoid watching their children suffer a tortured agonizing death from TB is serving the general public’s interest as well as the unions.
I owe my 6-year old, 2 year old and 2-month old children that much and more.
Official TB Sources For Column:
TB Statistics
The Big Picture
https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/idcu/disease/tb/statistics/
Tuberculosis (TB) Treatment
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/treatment/default.htm
Treatment for TB Disease
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/treatment/tbdisease.htm#2
Treatment of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/treatment/drugresistanttreatment.htm
LTC Jamie Mancuso MD, MPH, “Tuberculosis in the US Military” Sept 15, 2010, Program Director, Preventive Medicine Residency Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.wrair.army.mil/Documents/TropMed/11-Mancuso-MTb-WRAIRTropMed.pdf&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ei=DlW9U8b8EcfJ8wGOsIGIBw&ved=0CCYQFjAC&sig2=grJBbk7-1M74eazs6-ptVA&usg=AFQjCNGkfjzLR0y3rrxsF9CEbNxPonGtUA
“The Role of BCG Vaccine in the Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis in the United States” A Joint Statement by the Advisory Council for the Elimination of Tuberculosis and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, April 26, 1996 / Vol. 45 / No. RR-4
www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr4504.pdf
Tuberculosis Among Nonimmigrant Visitors to U.S. Military Installations
http://dx.doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-12-00297
Tuberculosis, Tuberculin Skin Test, and BCG Vaccine, Military Vaccine Agency, 1 March 2007
www.vaccines.mil/documents/1042mip-tuberculosis.pdf
It’s a problem wherever large numbers of uninspected third worlders are admitted to advanced countries. We certainly have it in Britain. Australia has (or has had) defences – a former colleague of mine, of Indian origin, was denied a visa because his X-ray showed he had had TB.
“Cones of silence”
We now assume, correctly, without discussion that the government will lie to the public about life and death issues for its own political protection.
The inevitable question: Are Obama and his minions malicious or stupid?
Pst314–I think the answer to your question is both-heavily weighted on the malicious aspect.
Thought experiment: How will the blame the Republicans for the epidemic?
Somewhere in cyberspace lies the evidence. The Richard Windsor accounts. The money trail. The logistics for the massive 2000 mile jaunt. Pamela Geller hit the nail on the head when she used the term “malicious subversive”.
Re: “Are Obama and his minions malicious or stupid?”
I reject these false choices – both!
Starting next flu season hospital employees will be required to get the seasonal flu shot or wear a mask during flu season. With the introduction of these decease carrying children I don’t think that will matter.
“Inside sources believe that Iranian scientists have already developed some “gems,” and are in the planning stages of possible ways to institute their use. Bio-warfare is definitely a part of Iran’s future plans.”
http://guardianlv.com/2013/06/bio-warfare-in-iranian-plans/#SlFw6eTA6qvITvfW.99
Lex,
This is president Obama’s “Typhoid Maria” open borders policy in action.
This TB epidemic won’t be affecting just middle class Republicans who have to use public schools that the ruling elites disses on a regular basis.
The upper class professional women that rely upon illegal labor domestic help for childcare will soon see their kids get MDR or XDR TB, because of this Obama Administration executive order driven public health collapse.
“Inside sources believe that Iranian scientists have already developed some “gems,” and are in the planning stages of possible ways to institute their use. Bio-warfare is definitely a part of Iran’s future plans.”
http://guardianlv.com/2013/06/bio-warfare-in-iranian-plans/#SlFw6eTA6qvITvfW.99
>>How will the blame the Republicans for the epidemic?
They wll use the Democratic Party “Pinky and the Brain” answer — They will blame Bush.
“I reject these false choices – both!”
I agree. Amazingly, there are “liberals” who actually believe that open borders are useful as a way to force the West to have its “fair share” of poverty, disease and crime. I’m sure that this attitude is a factor in the Obama administration’s decision-making process. Not that *they* want to catch deadly diseases, but they rarely think though the likely consequences of their ideas and what’s more they figure the danger will be confined to us evil bourgeoisie and dirty proles.
Lex, Jonathan,
Instalantch in progress!
“Instalantch in progress!”
The servers are straining to keep up? Cue voice of Scotty in the engine room, “I dinna kin say ha much longer they can take it.”
“The upper class professional women that rely upon illegal labor domestic help for childcare will soon see their kids get MDR or XDR TB, because of this Obama Administration executive order driven public health collapse.”
They all voted for him, too. Too bad the kids will suffer needlessly.
We need to control the border, for a lot of reasons.
“The upper class professional women that rely upon illegal labor domestic help for childcare will soon see their kids get MDR or XDR TB, ”
A friend of mine had his son catch tb (converted to positive skin test) at the age of four from a babysitter in a middle class neighborhood in Tacoma WA. A medical school classmate developed tb pneumonia from doing bronchoscopy on tb patients as a first year resident. He was quarantined for a year. He had just been married a month. He spent that year in a tb hospital.
This will be a huge issue for medical personnel treating illegals in every ER in the country. I don’t know what schools will do. Another reason for home schooling.
There has never been good evidence for the effectiveness of BCG. Student nurses at County Hospital in LA got it in the 60s. I don’t know if a study has ever been done on effectiveness. This one looks pretty good:
Thorax. 2014 Jun 26. pii: thoraxjnl-2014-205688. doi:
10.1136/thoraxjnl-2014-205688. [Epub ahead of print]
The effectiveness of BCG vaccination in preventing Mycobacterium tuberculosis
infection and disease in Greenland.
Michelsen SW(1), Soborg B(1), Koch A(1), Carstensen L(1), Hoff ST(2), Agger
EM(2), Lillebaek T(3), Sorensen HC(4), Wohlfahrt J(1), Melbye M(1).
snip
BACKGROUND: The BCG vaccine’s ability to prevent Mycobacterium tuberculosis
infection (MTI) remains highly debated. In Greenland, BCG vaccination was
introduced in 1955, but was temporarily discontinued (1991-1996) due to
nationwide policy changes. The study aimed to use the transient stop in BCG
vaccination to evaluate the effect of vaccination onMTI prevalence and TB
incidence.
METHODS: MTI study: A cross-sectional study (2012), comprising East Greenlanders
born during 1982-2006, evaluated the effect of BCG vaccination on MTI prevalence;
a positive interferon γ release assay defined an MTI case. Associations were
estimated using logistic regression. TB study: a cohort study covering the same
birth cohorts with follow-up until 2012 evaluated the vaccine’s effect on TB
incidence. A personal identifier allowed for follow-up in the TB notification
system. Associations were estimated using Cox regression.
RESULTS: MTI study: Included 953 participants; 81% were BCG-vaccinated; 29% had
MTI, 23% among vaccinated and 57% among non-vaccinated. BCG vaccination reduced
the odds of MTI, OR 0.52 (95% CI 0.32 to 0.85), p=0.01. Vaccine effectiveness
against MTI was 20%. TB study: Included 1697 participants followed for 21”…148
person-years. 6% were notified with TB, 4% among vaccinated and 11% among
non-vaccinated. BCG vaccination reduced the risk of TB, HR 0.50 (95% CI 0.26 to
0.95), p=0.03, yielding a vaccine effectiveness of 50%.
CONCLUSIONS: BCG vaccination was effective in reducing both MTI and TB disease
among children and young adults in a TB high-endemic setting in Greenland.
That seems to be the best it does. I doubt the Obama CDC will be up to the task. God help us if Ebola ever gets here.
“I doubt the Obama CDC will be up to the task.”
They are currently focusing their efforts on the more serious health dangers, such as private gun ownership. /sarc
Just about now is the time to ask the Surgeon General what is the limit of acceptable communicable disease increase past which current border policies will be tightened and whether anybody is even calculating how much that will impact state and county public health programs. We need to get them on record and preferably on video multiple times laying out what is acceptable costs and what are the acceptable losses with this policy.
For the Children.
I had a known exposure to an immigrant day worker at my place of employment. The guy had to come into the little office trailer I was in on a daily basis, so he was coughing the whole time for a month. I was the only person lucky enough to get a latent TB infection. So, 9 months of isoniazid, swollen and painful liver, no acetaminophen or alcohol during that time. I was a miserable and cranky SOB the whole time. I wouldn’t whish this on anybody, but we know that the TB infection rate will skyrocket now.
Why is the Department of Homeland Security spending their time worried about the Tea Party and homeschoolers, and ignoring this threat?
We are getting linkie love from the American Thinker, see:
http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/07/are_you_ready_for_a_tb_epidemic.html
But they can’t spell my last name.
Oh Well.
They didn’t get your name right but the article does have one good comment:
Maybe this is one of the reasons President Obama would not tour the border camps? He didn’t want to be exposed to TB.
Good thinking.
KevinA:
Why is the Department of Homeland Security spending their time worried about the Tea Party and homeschoolers, and ignoring this threat?
Because the Tea Party and homeschoolers are a threat to the leftist power structure while a TB epidemic would be an opportunity to expand government.
And it not just TB, but everything else they are carrying – scabies, lice, assorted interesting tropical diseases. It’s bad enough that the Border service personnel and the medical staffers at these holding areas are being exposed, but transporting the so-called ‘kids’ all over the country? Is this why all the security, regarding conditions in the holding centers, and why local politicians and the media are being refused access? Is this the 21st century equivalent of throwing diseased carcasses into a besieged city?
If this is a humanitarian disaster, it must be about the first one ever to shut out the media.
“But they can’t spell my last name.”
Many of us have that disability with any name rarer than ‘Smith’. I hope you will be forgiving.
Obviously the elite in this country do not consider the possibility of their exposure or their kids exposure to any of the diseases this emergency will bring to the regular public. After all their kids go to private schools and they don’t shop where regular people do. And they don’t want to think about it or perhaps they consider the health of the regular American public to be “oh well, eggs must be broken for the omelet I want.” Well to get their attention it might be a good idea to go visit your congress people and their staff when you’re sick (cold, etc.) — make sure you sneeze or blow your nose and shake their hands. If you are scratching (possible mosiquito bites, etc.) make sure you visit their offices and do a good scratch while sitting in their office furniture. Hey share the joy. Make them really think about it.
Given that none of this is a surprise to anyone, and the entire border invasion is a planned and deliberate action by the Federal government; the spread of a epidemic and pandemic diseases in the general population has to be considered a feature and not a bug.
This is biological warfare being coldly practiced on the American people.
Once again as I have stated before, I am not a nice person.
Anyone who is infected with any of the imported diseases should make a deliberate point of visiting Federal government offices of all kinds, attending any Federal town halls by politicians [party is irrelevant], and if you have Leftist acquaintances/co-workers/etc. they need to be the objects of your attention and direct presence.
Sauce, goose, gander.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai Bahadur,
Yes, that is very much “not nice.”
I’d much rather ‘save the souls of the wicked’ than kill them.
“I’d much rather ‘save the souls of the wicked’ than kill them.” Yeah, but killing them’s better than nothing.
Trent Telenko,
Ah, but what if they are trying to kill us?
“Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill ’em right back.” —– ‘Mal Reynolds’ ;-)
Subotai Bahadur
““I doubt the Obama CDC will be up to the task.”
They are currently focusing their efforts on the more serious health dangers, such as private gun ownership. /sarc”
You must remember that public health physicians, and the CDC, are all Democrats or worse. The radical left group Physicians for Social Responsibility began in the UCLA School of Public Health. I was a medical student and was invited to the first meeting by a classmate Bill Bronston, son of movie producer Samual Bronston who was a red diaper baby.
a nephew of socialist revolutionary figure, Leon Trotsky.
The father was also convicted of bankruptcy perjury for hiding a Swiss bank account. Bill affected Cuba army fatigues in medical school as Castro had just taken over Cuba. Bill, of course, became a psychiatrist and is “disillusioned with care of the mentally retarded.” He was also heavily into union organizing. UCLA School of Public Health is a serious department but most public health MDs are lefties.
Subotai Bahadur,
Make no mistake, I am a big believer in self-defense.
I am also a big beliver in incentives, most of the folks I am trying to save are not actively trying to kill me. They are just trying to make a living at my expense.
Pointing out their interests in saving their own kids will work for most.
As for the rest…I did mention I am a big believer in self-defense.
Two kinds of people will get TB: people Obamunists don’t care about (illegal aliens) and people Obamunists want to die (American citizens who in their fancy and delusion believe themselves immune). Why go to all the trouble of building an American Gulag when disease will do Ayer’s and Obama’s wishes for them?
ErisGuy,
Not only is that inflammatory, it is also wrong.
Specifically government employee unions are a part of Obama’s ruling coalition and a cornerstone of his power.
They, and teachers especially, are on the front lines of the coming TB epidemic.
I hate to be ordering up the material from which a bespoke tinfoil chapeau is made, but I am honestly wondering if ErisGuy has a point. Of course, I am also hung up on the horns of the old dilemma; is it malice or sheer incompetence on the part of this mal-Administration?
Was it just one grand and badly-thought-out Cloward-Pivening? “Hey, boys and girls, lets bring in thousands and thousands of central American illegal aliens, swamp the Border Patrol and law enforcement, and then plead, ‘Think of the cheeeeldren?’ It’s a win-win, ’cause we get amnesty, PLUS we get lotsa new voters and lotsa cheap workers out of it? Whaddya say? Sound like a plan?” The high incidence of TB and other nasty endemic diseases was a horrid and unforeseen repercussion. Hence, the secrecy regarding the various holding camps.
Or is it deliberate from the start? “Hey, let’s route all these exotic tropical diseases-carriers in mass numbers into all those red-state enclaves, without any screening or applied public-health measures whatsoever – let the merry microbes go where they may – and if a couple hundred or thousand red-staters fall ill and die, is it any skin of ours? Our kids go to private school and we live in very, very nice neighborhoods.”
This whole thing was enabled, from the very beginning, and from the highest levels.
Sgt. Mom,
That has been the subject of several threads going simultaneously over at Pajamas Media by separate columnists.
My take is malice.
Once that question is answered, it lends a certain clarity to thoughts and reactions that follow.
Subotai Bahadur
“They, and teachers especially, are on the front lines of the coming TB epidemic.”
Plus, of course, health care workers.
Interestingly, I have posted a number of comments on the subject over at HuffPo and they keep disappearing. Coincidence, I’m sure.
Tinfoil just ain’t what it used to be.
Who would have believed a few years ago that the Federal government would conspire to import hundreds of thousands of disease-ridden foreigners, for any reason? That’s crazy talk, of course. Yet here we are.
I also wonder what the political effect on the left will be when those social justice loving womyn start watching their toddlers die of TB, brought into the country by their lightweaver, Barry Obama.
I suspect they won’t be happy about it. As an added bonus, we’re well into Barry’s second term, so good luck blaming Bush for this one.
“As an added bonus, we’re well into Barry’s second term, so good luck blaming Bush for this one.”
Well, that’s one cheerful thought, grabbed out of the disaster that this is likely to become.
A public health crisis … just at that very moment when the Affordable Health Care Act is about to demonstrate that it is anything but.
No wonder that they are deleting your comments At Huffpo, Mike. Reality and real-time knowledge is such a tiresome bore, when there is an entrancing fantasy to be upheld!
I’m a second-generation American, and still remember my grandparents talking about the “little boy” they had to leave in the old country because of his illness. (I do not remember what illness.) They chose to leave behind a family member for the greater good of their new countrymen–a choice that had to be agonizing, yet necessary to take the rest of the family to the “land of opportunity.” Once here, (legally!) my grandfather would tell the story of how he started elementary school not knowing a word of English. He and his parents were fluent fast–there was no other option, nor did they even think of seeking or asking for one! My grandpa ended up being the controller at a major oil company.
That country my grandparents, my parents, myself and my children love is disappearing before our very eyes. How will that help the rest of the world? What will the global landscape look like when this vast country is no different from the chaos in many Latin American countries? Have these prissy prog I-want-my-free-abortifacients chicks considered that? And since they are hellbent on remaining childless, maybe they should be the front line workers in quarantined schools and health centers for the newly-arrived unscreened people.
>>Name the exception.
Killing Osama Bin Laden and exposing Pakistan as an Enemy.
Trent’s update points that the American health care establishment is:
“locked into the existing “track, isolate and treat standard TB public health model”,
and that this is of paradigm shift magnitude, are critical. Most of them will die before admitting that the coming TB epidemic requires shift to a vaccination policy.
“Science advances one funeral at a time” – Max Planck
A whole lot of Americans, notably including young children, will suffer and die because of this.
Tom,
I’m trying to make sure the “funerals” are for the careers of CDC scientists and public health administrators, not that of children.
” Most of them will die before admitting that the coming TB epidemic requires shift to a vaccination policy.”
Tom, this may well be true but it will be an admission that we have become a third world country. After all, it is only fair since we have a third world president.
Fifty percent efficacy is not the policy of an advanced country.
Trent Telenko writes:
“I’d much rather ‘save the souls of the wicked’ than kill them.”
In order to save them, they must repent first. You cannot save the soul of the unrepentant.
>>Fifty percent efficacy is not the policy of an advanced country.
We will be paying $14,00 per normal TB treatment and $100,000 per XDR TB treatment regimen for every active TB case.
Preventing 50% of either will be worth it.
“Preventing 50% of either will be worth it.”
The focus of US public health efforts to date has been identification and isolation of carriers, not treatment. First of all, treatment of lawbreakers is extremely expensive as they must be confined for nearly a year. This is the role of TB sanatoria which are no longer in existence. The legal issues will be terrible in the present day legal atmosphere and the illegal aliens will use every stratagem (or their lawyers will) to avoid and prevent detention. This is a public health disaster as even identification of carriers will involve issues similar to those already in play with terrorist detainees. The US public is not going to understand what is at stake.
There is no “herd immunity” to TB. That is why it was such a scourge until Streptomycin was discovered. People have no memory of those days. This will be the opening chapter of the end of the era of antibiotics.
Mike K,
One of the things that is going to happen in the coming TB epidemic is the mass conversion of the current “Prison-industrial complex” into TB sanatoria.
Concurrent with that will be a mass decriminalization of non-viloent drug offenses to provide the space in those prisons.
I am in the process of putting together a couple of more articles on the “Coming TB epidemic” that will address that and the competing governance issues between the American federal and state/local governments in terms of open borders immigration versus public health jurisdictions.
Trent, I hope you’re right. This has a lot of end times feel for me. Even Peggy Noonan is very negative about the situation.
All this gives normal people a feeling of besiegement and foreboding. Is a nation without borders a nation? Washington’s leaders seem to recognize what’s happening as a political problem, not a real problem. That is, they betray no honest alarm. They just sort of stand in clusters and say things.
There seem only two groups that view the situation with appropriate alarm. One is the children themselves”¦ The other group feeling a proper alarm is normal Americans, who are seeing all this on TV and who judge they are witnessing a level of lawlessness that has terrible implications for the country.
There is more. She is really seeing what her vote for Obama means now.
The latest border surge has been going on for at least two years. Children and others are coming because they believe that under the president’s leadership, if they get here they’ll get a pass to stay. (They’re probably right.) This was predictable. Two years ago Texas Gov. Rick Perry wrote the president that the number of unaccompanied children was spiking sharply. He warned that unless the government moves, other minors would attempt the journey and find themselves in “extremely dangerous situations.”
The little children in great danger, holding hands, staring blankly ahead, are pawns in a larger game. That game is run by adults. How cold do you have to be to use children in this way?
Very cold and calculating. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the public health issue. Remember that Mexico uses BCG so skin testing is useless. I don’t know if Guatemala does.
Mike K,
Reality will force the issue.
It is only a matter of the body count on the road there.
The Federal law enforcement agencies will hate it, but they will get bulldozed here like they have been with state level pot decriminalization.
Tuberculosis doesn’t kill quickly. It takes years to do so. The low information crowd will not recognize what is happening for years, or until their own kids convert their skin test, which will quickly become mandatory for schools unless the Obama unions oppose it.
>>The low information crowd will not recognize what is happening for years
Or there is a panic, in which case that will change overnight.
The “unattended kid crisis” has been going on for a couple of years are we are looking at hundreds of thousands of kids, with 1/3 having early on-set LTBI, AKA 5% of them are going to get active TB cases in the next couple of years in the public schools.
That is 5,000 cases of active TB in the public schools this next school year per 100,000 kids who cross the border.
And the Obama Administration is trying hard to spread them across the country.
Mr. Trelenko,
Quite seriously be careful of giving the administration more ideas.
As to reality forcing the issue etc, unless that reality is us actually forcing the issue and until we do, the ones getting bulldozed are us.
Oh, they’re already blaming Bush for the 2008 law. I’ve heard it from multiple local Dem/Progs already (probably repeating CNN/MSNBC talking points). Not realizing of course that (1) the 2008 bill was just an update of an original Clinton-era bill, and (2) the law Bush signed was initiated by Dianne Feinstein and passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress.
>>Oh, they’re already blaming Bush for the 2008 law.
Which expired in 2011 and was replaced by an Obama executive order because the Republican House would not consider the legislation for fear of the Tea Party.
So we already have uncontrolled tuberculosis. What will Obama give us next, Bubonic Plague.
Thanks Trent. Didn’t know that.
Richard40: Boils and Locusts.
N95 masks look cheap in bulk on Amazon. I use them for heavy wood/remodeling projects anyway (projects between no mask and a full-on respirator), so stock-up sounds like the plan.
It seems this post was a headline over on the Hot Air blog —
http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2014/07/10/americas-impending-tuberculosis-epidemic/
Forward the Trentosphere :))
Jonathan,
I’d rather not have this writing subject which got all the attention, all other things being equal.
I’m with MikeK.
I expect the response from the regime will be to pretend a TB outbreak is perfectly normal, nothing to see here, folks- and blame the nearest Republican for an epidemic if anyone suggests otherwise. Then, if there’s a GOP president elected in 2016, the leftist media will immediately incite panic and blame the GOP for not solving the problem instantly.
Pardon my cynicism. Of course if any epidemic is and massive and deadly, all bets are off, sooner or later.
I’m with him here, too. I think the smart set working with Barry to import a new people for the regime simply can’t imagine anything really bad ever happening. The glorious transport of children from Central America is just another Berlin Airlift, sticking it to the evil rethuglicans and racist tea baggers.
Infectious disease is problem that used to happen, before the saintly FDR invented antibiotics. The idea that a massive and deadly epidemic could happen here just does not compute for them. And having in the past read various leftist sites and the commentary therein, I expect plenty of leftists would be thrilled to watch red-state children die, and would happily say so.
Which is another, much more important matter. These folks- TWANLOCs, as Subotai calls them- have spent my entire lifetime scrubbing away the mystic chords of memory that made us one people. *We* can handle an epidemic. We’ve done so before. But if some large segment of the population-say, conservatives- concludes the elected government is trying to murder us and our children on the sly, all bets are off there, too.
In a sense it doesn’t even matter if the regime is deliberately introducing TB into a community or is just too stupid not to. To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently thorough incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. But again, they’ve spent decades attacking us as vile and loathsome scum, and I used to frequently read how they wished us harm.
Why shouldn’t I conclude a deadly epidemic is deliberate?
Sigh. I just got off the phone with my dear mother, who is otherwise relatively sane, save that she gets her news from NPR and BBC-America. It’s the weekly keep-in-touch-whaddy-ya-doing call. I tried to tell her about the looming TP epidemic – and she didn’t want to hear about it, since it didn’t come from “an official source”. Just one of my unreliable and partisan sources, which can be easily dismissed. Because, they aren’t “official.”
“Just one of my unreliable and partisan sources, which can be easily dismissed. Because, they aren’t “official.”
Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. Two of my kids are oblivious, two are conservative and one is wavering.
The evidence gets hard to deny when the cases start to roll in. I see a lot of young Hispanics joining the military. Several are TB positive and have poor records of treatment. It will get worse and the left will still deny it as long as they can. Magical thinking is very common.
Posted this over at Occidental Dissent.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2014/07/10/aint-that-america-obama-shoes
This is a race-hate issue.
Obama and ‘my people’ Holder are racists, intent on destroying the White American people.
It’s that simple
But it’s the elephant in the room no one will talk about.
Except me.
Join the dialogue.
Fr. John+,
The increasing open racial polarization of American politics is a fact of life.
However, bringing that racial polarization discussion into this subject — the impending TB epidemic — distracts from the life-or-death need to move to a mandatory TB vaccination public health policy ASAP.
There are enough people utterly invested in the current effective antibiotics based public health paradigm as it is, while the post-antibiotics world closes in, to waste bandwidth poisoning the debate and closing the minds of the wide swaths of public by going there.
The bottom line for me regards racial polarization politics is that it is going to get a lot of children and elderly unnecessarily sick or dead from TB.
Please keep your discussions of this unfortunate political development confined to your web log.
If anyone thinks the CDC is capable of handling the impending TB epidemic, or in developing a vaccine of some sort, you might want to read this .
At the C.D.C. itself, Dr. Frieden said, staff members who knowingly failed to follow procedures or who failed to report dangerous incidents will be disciplined. A committee of experts will be convened to revise procedures.
In the flu-related incident, a C.D.C. lab accidentally contaminated a sample of less-dangerous H9N2 bird flu, which it was preparing for shipment to an Agriculture Department laboratory, with the H5N1 bird flu strain.
Though the contamination was discovered on May 23, Dr. Frieden said that he was dismayed to discover that senior C.D.C. officials were not informed until July 7, and that he was told only 48 hours ago.
I wonder if their e-mails are secure ?
>>Magical thinking is very common.
Very True.
Nowhere more so than in America’s Public Health System.
“Not only is that inflammatory, it is also wrong.”
Well”¦ can’t be wrong yet. Socialists have a habit of betraying the Old Bolsheviks and Long Marchers to further the psychopathic ends of the tyrant and his sycophants. Who is to say teachers won’t be thrown under the bus with the rest of America?
But: OK. If the TB epidemic comes and if the teachers’ unions reverse course, correct all the damage they’ve done for the past few decades, and suddenly gain common sense, I’ll buy you a Coke.
ErisGuy,
The political elites we are dealing with are statistically and epidemiologically illiterate.
They are playing a game of “hiding the TB Spike” via spreading out the illegal kids the way the Obama operatives at the US Census played with employment data in the fall of 2012 to help reelect Obama.
They have no real idea what that means for public institutions, our kids and other immune impaired. All they want is a US Amnesty to seal their power the way open borders sealed the Left’s power in California.
It is magical thinking all the way.
Lefties absolutely believe in sympathetic magic. It underlies most all of their hot button issues. I can’t find the original Volokh Conspiracy blog post by Fub on Yale’s ban of fake guns in stage productions, but it lives on via _Best of the Web_ (I submitted it to Taranto):
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123575569913095809
” What makes these ritual bannings of depictions or imitations of real weapons politically effective (among those for whom they are effective) is a very primitive human thought process: belief in sympathetic magic.
The actual object, the weapon, is imbued with magical power. Its very presence magically causes harm. It causes people to behave in evil ways. The rationale commonly offered is that the mere presence of a weapon makes people more prone to violence.
Sympathetic magic is the belief that what one does with an imitation of the thing with magical power will affect the actual thing. For example, in a magical religious context we see the image of a deity addressed, or given gifts or sacrifices. The magical deity is affected through the treatment of its image, and so performs its magic for the one who gives the image a gift.
In the imitation weapon banning context we have first the belief that the object, the actual weapon, is magic and causes those in its presence to behave in an evil manner. The sympathetic magical belief is that by banning the image or the imitation weapon, the magical power of real weapons to cause people to be violent will be lessened, or the real weapons will stay away from the presence of the faithful.”
It looks like there is far more in the way of Alinskyite forethought in the unaccompanied alien children crisis that I had thought.
See:
http://www.libertynews.com/2014/07/exclusive-hhs-bankrolled-catholic-and-baptist-church-from-2010-to-2013-to-prepare-for-obamas-2014-invasion/#!
EXCLUSIVE: HHS Bankrolled Catholic and Baptist Church from 2010 to 2013 to Prepare for Obama’s 2014 Invasion!
By Eric Odom 186
11:16 pm July 10, 2014
A month or two ago news broke that Obama’s HHS was calling for private contractors to help transport illegal aliens throughout the interior United States. What made this already big news even bigger is the fact that the original call for proposals came out in January, long before the bulk of the illegal alien surge began.
The breaking news you’re about to read is ten times bigger, because the following proves the Obama administration was bankrolling America’s churches back in 2010. And the tens of millions were flowing in to prepare for the invasion currently underway.
The following is a small taste of what’s out there in grant records. This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks.
Between Dec 2010 and Nov 2013, the Catholic Charities Diocese of Galveston received $15,549,078 in federal grants from Health & Human Services for “Unaccompanied Alien Children Project” with a program description of “Refugee and Entry Assistance.”
Last year, the Catholic Charities Diocese of Fort Worth received $350,000 from Department of Homeland Security for “citizenship and education training” with a program description of “citizenship and immigration services.”
Between September 2010 and September 2013, the Catholic Charities of Dallas received $823,658 from the Department of Homeland Security for “Citizenship Education Training” for “refugee and entrant assistance.”
From Dec 2012 to January 2014, Baptist Child & Family Services received $62,111,126 in federal grants from Health & Human Services for “Unaccompanied Alien Children Program.”
Any questions?
well I had a TB vaccine when I was a kid and then again when i was 8 and again at 14 and at 37.
My parents had had the TB Vaccinne as kids, and they wanted us to have them.
If any anti-vaxxer had ever tried to talk BS to my parents, they’d have thrown them out the door.
“we have first the belief that the object, the actual weapon, is magic and causes those in its presence to behave in an evil manner. ”
Magical thinking is heavily involved in leftist beliefs, like recycling. It doesn’t matter if it costs more.
Joseph Bottum has pointed out how the Protestant religion has become leftism . The same sense of piety and self satisfaction.
H.L. Mencken is usually credited with dubbing the Episcopal Church of the 1920s “the Republican Party at prayer.” The Episcopal Church today seems hardly distinguishable from the small portion of America that is the National Organization for Women at prayer.
The changes are not very new.
the elderly Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten wrote in 2005 …a bewildered catalogue of all the things Braaten thought mattered. He carefully lists his antique political credentials (“I am a life-long political liberal . . . . My wife and I opposed the unjust war against Vietnam”)”as though that would give him standing.
The present leftist ideology is just a debased form of liberal Protestant (and Catholic) philosophy with all interest on God or prayer removed. It is no surprise that churches of all denominations are participating in Obama’s assault on America.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, I was at the Episcopalians’ National Cathedral in Washington, on a panel to discuss violence and religion. The evening began with a prayer from Jane Dixon, the cathedral’s temporary bishop, and her invocation was as revealing as any short speech could be of the concerns of the contemporary Episcopal Church.
While asking the divine gifts of wisdom for the speakers and understanding for the listeners, Bishop Dixon was vague”not merely failing to name the name of Jesus but straining to phrase all her requests in a Âpassive voice to avoid even naming God: “May we be given . . . may it be granted to us . . . ” When her prayer unexpectedly swerved toward abortion, however, her language suddenly snapped into hard specificity as she reminded God that “America at its best stands for the spread of rights around the world, especially the right of women to choose.” The discussion that evening, she prayed, would not turn vindictive, for we could not condemn the destruction of the World Trade Center until we remembered that “even in the United States, people have bombed abortion clinics.”
Magic has replaced theology. I left the Catholic Church long ago. That was even before the “gay mafia” took over the Catholic seminaries.
The word is starting to seep out from the Border Patrol agents .
Cabrea added: “The border patrol is trying to play catch up and we’re having a lot of diseases coming in and some we haven’t seen in decades and we are worried they’ll spread throughout the United States especially if they are being released and have the disease.“
Contrary to all rules on epidemic control.
Dear Mike K and anyone,
I too left those churches, plural, and found the only one that wasn’t sliding into all you and Joseph Bottom list above. Magic is alive and well. Charismaticism or Pentecostalism, or what ever you wish to call it, that believes in itself as the author/interpreter of what God is currently saying, is the basis for the problem. That’s what I think. Everywhere my family and I went we found strong belief in belief. We saw congregation after congregation in the decline toward Magical Thinking. It was not belief in Christ. It was self belief.
Anyway, not all churches are the same, nor should they be clumped in that way. I found a confessional Lutheran church. My family and I do not have to deal with magic there. I know that there are states in which the very same type of Lutheran church/pastor/congregation is incredibly liberal and is just as you say, but there are still some of us out here, fighting for the faith VERY quietly. All I will say is that my body is NOT the ELCA (Lutheran type)… which you may as well call Presbyterian or Baptist. I see no resemblance to the original Lutheran confessions in the ELCA, which you sited via Joseph Bottom’s essay.
Personally, I reject all that you wrote about “me” and “mine” in the above, though it might be truth for the majority of churches in the US. It is a very sad time that way. It is nothing though that a bit of suffering won’t take care of. Any magical thinking being relied upon quickly disintegrates when one is faced with actual suffering.
The border problems along with all of the other Oligarchy problems are to be expected from our group of leaders at the federal level. It is a plan, and an evil one. But let’s not call all Christians by one nasty name. I am absolutely against open borders and this touchy-feely “let’s help the kids” facade. No real country allows an open border. Only countries ready for destruction do such things. Many many Christians think the way I do. Lumping various groups into one is not going to be a wise choice in this matter. Let’s not make that assumption about Christians in America.
My daughter-in-law is very serious about her religion although I’m not sure what all is involved. They go to a Presbyterian church but I notice the “Presbyterian” name doesn’t appear. Maybe it has reorganized. Anyway, she goes to Bible study and the kids go to Bible camp in the summer. It’s fine with me and they are good people.
I think the Bottum essay concerned “mainstream” churches. The American Catholic Church has gotten very left wing with some exceptions. I grew up in it. The child abuse and the left wing shift occurred about the same time.