Mother says daughter diagnosed with tuberculosis

[William769]

LEE COUNTY: Southwest Florida residents are waiting to hear if a woman has tuberculosis. The family of the 34-year-old Hendry County woman says she has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and that she is taking drugs to fight the highly contagious disease. But the disease is not all she's fighting.

The woman, Andrea Page, lives in Hendry County, worked in Collier County and checked in to Lee Memorial Hospital on Saturday.

Health departments in all three counties are aware of the situation.

Page says she is under quarantine at Lee Memorial Hospital and that she is taking about 11 different types of antibiotics.

http://www.nbc-2.com/articles/readarticle.asp?articleid=12905&z=3&p=

[Mrs. Overall]

1. The woman is receiving threatening phone calls:

more from the article:

But Page says she is also getting some grief to go along with that treatment.

"This is not my fault. People are calling me, threatening me - they are calling my cell phone and threatening me," said Page.

LaBelle Mayor Randy Bengston says people just need to relax.

"Residents of Hendry County are safe. They are investigating it very thoroughly," said Bengston. "I'm not worried. When you see my car packed up and I'm racing out of the city - that's the time to leave."


An outbreak or pandemic in this country is going to be complete chaos. I can't imagine threatening an ill person....

[Arkansas Granny]

2. This is what happens when people are kept in a state of

perpetual fear. They act and react unreasonably.

[City Lights]

8. Absolutely right!

Welkome to george FUBAR bush's Amerika. :scared:

[William769]

4. That was the main reason I posted this.

I'm still dumbfounded.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. i didnt understand that either.

[Nunyabiz]

19. I would not doubt at all

if this (TB) is being purposely spread by Bushco.

[Orsino]

20. "Burn the witch!" is not quite as effective a rallying cry...

...but yeah, when ill-educated people feel threatened, they'll turn on each other or on any convenient target.

[Nunyabiz]

27. Actually with as stark raving insane

as these Rethuglican Neofascist and their brain dead minions are today "Burn the Witch" would work nicely.

[durrrty libby]

3. I am quite sure that there are at least dozens of people walking

and flying around with undiagnosed and untreated TB.

People vacation and travel for business, every minute of the day.

There is no mandatory testing going on. I found the outrage over “the TB guy”

silly because this is going on all the time. Sticking one guy in a negative pressure room

does not make a dent in protecting people. That was all a big show

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. i thought the big deal was because he had a particular form of TB that is untreatable

or atleast not easily treatable

[liberalhistorian]

7. That is indeed what the big deal was, and is. His form of TB

is extremely contagious and extremely drug-resistant, which makes it really, really, extremely dangerous, much more so than most other forms of TB. It was totally selfish of him to do what he did and put the lives of others at risk. I hope he has to pay every single penny of the nearly four hundred grand his treatment is costing. And I still find it absolutely bizarre that his FIL is a microbiologist and TB researcher at the CDC. That's almost too much of a coincidence, frankly.

[hedgehog]

32. His form of TB is drug resistent, but he is currently NON-CONTAGIOUS!

Every source I checked, including actual printed books (The Forgotten Plague), agreed that when a healthy person inhales Mycobaterium tuberculosis, the immune syystem encapsulates it to seal it off. White blood cells can not eliminate the bacillus; the bacillus actually eats the white blood cells from the inside out. As long as the immune system is in good shape, the bacteria colony is sealed away and harmless. The TB is latent. If the immune system fails due to poor nutrition, age, AIDS, steroid treatment etc. then the ca
One third of the people alive today are carrying TB.

A positive skin test indicates previous exposure either to a wild bacillus or to a vaccine. It does not confirm active tuberculosis.

My question at this point is how can any antibiotic penetrate the capsule the body has built in order to kill the bacillus inside.


Note: There must be a technical term for the capsule, but I don't know what it is.

[durrrty libby]

9. There are some resistant forms of TB in other countries

People may or may not know they are carriers and they are traveling anywhere they want

My point is Andrew Speaker was known but there are so many out there not known

[Ilsa]

10. Meanwhile Sci-Fi channel keeps re-running Stephen King'sThe Stand

to keep people afraid that they are all going to die from contagion. Of course, they'd love for us to believe it is intentional terroristic contagion.

[Tesha]

14. Given the American's and Russian's unwillingness to destroy Smallpox...

> Meanwhile Sci-Fi channel keeps re-running Stephen King's "The Stand".
> to keep people afraid that they are all going to die from contagion.
> Of course, they'd love for us to believe it is intentional terroristic
> contagion.

Given the American's and Russian's unwillingness to destroy
the Smallpox (virus which now seems to only live in the
laboratory freezers of those two countries), I think there's
a definitely non-zero probability of a "Project Blue"/"Captain
Tripps" sort of bug accidentally escaping or being deliberately
used within our lifetimes.

I doubt there's a Mother Abigail, though I'm pretty sure
that Dick Cheney personally knows The Walkin' Dude.

Tesha

[Bitwit1234]

11. TB

Back in the 50's they used to have special hospitals for the treatment of TB patients. Why don't they have that now....besides I thought TB (not the aggressive kind) was treatable and not that contagious. Unless you lived intimately for a long length of time with a person who had it...

My mother had TB in the 50's. She lived with us, prepared our food, washed clothes and did all the things a mother does and did not infect us. When they found she was infected and she was hospitalized we all had tests. And then went back in several weeks for retest. No one had TB, no one had the germ that was expected to turn into TB. So I don't understand why people are upset with a person who has the regular type of TB. It is not that contagious.

The same as Lou Dobbs scaring people about leprosy. Leprosy is not that contagious tail there again you have constant and intimate contact.

[Tesha]

13. One reason that sanitariums went out of style...

> Back in the 50's they used to have special hospitals for
> the treatment of TB patients. Why don't they have that now.

One reason that sanitariums went out of style is that,
like leprosy, in the developed world, it had pretty much
been conquered as a disease. Sanitariums existed when
there was really no hope of curing you unless you
managed to miraculously cure yourself.

But several things went wrong:

o American health care, in general, has gotten
a lot worse, with a lot of people having no
health care. So they get a cough and just wait
to see if it gets better.

o American public health agencies have been
decimated by the same Reaganesque budget cuts
that have decimated so much of the "invisible
infrastructure" that we all depended upon but
didn't know about. There just aren't enough
public health officials paying attention to
those folks who contract TB.

o AIDS provided a community of immuno-compromised
people who were very easily infected with TB.

o People who use antibiotics casually or incorrectly
help breed antibotic-resistance into any germs they're
infected with, and that certainly includes the TB
mycobacterium.

So now that we're losing our ability to fight what
used to be pretty mundane bacterial infections
(including TB), maybe sanitariums will come back
into style again.

And then look for the rest of the ancient diseases
to re-emerge as well.

Whooping cough (pertussis) is certainly on the rise.

Plague pops up again from time to time.

Heck, maybe it'll even get to the point where we
need a Molokai and Molokai needs a Father Damian.

Ahh, modern society!

Tesha

[Bitwit1234]

12. TB

Back in the 50's they used to have special hospitals for the treatment of TB patients. Why don't they have that now....besides I thought TB (not the aggressive kind) was treatable and not that contagious. Unless you lived intimately for a long length of time with a person who had it...

My mother had TB in the 50's. She lived with us, prepared our food, washed clothes and did all the things a mother does and did not infect us. When they found she was infected and she was hospitalized we all had tests. And then went back in several weeks for retest. No one had TB, no one had the germ that was expected to turn into TB. So I don't understand why people are upset with a person who has the regular type of TB. It is not that contagious.

The same as Lou Dobbs scaring people about leprosy. Leprosy is not that contagious til there again you have constant and intimate contact.

[dogday]

15. There was a TB hospital across from the base where

I used to live in SA.. My friend from High School worked there... Don't know if they have it open still or not....

[kineneb]

16. there are lots of people in US with TB

Nothing new here...

Many are known to local county health agencies and quietly receive treatments. One of my friends is a public health nurse who's specialty is TB and other major contagious diseases. She actually goes around to the patients' houses to observe them taking their medications. She can report a patient if he/she refuses medications.

The reason most people haven't heard about the resurgence of TB is because of patient privacy issues and "avoidance of panic" by what remains of the US public health services.

The problem comes with those who are undiagnosed or those who refuse to follow treatment protocols. The undiagnosed can spread disease. Those who refuse to follow their treatment can legally be put in medical isolation. This holds for all major communicable diseases.

Reading suggestions:

Laurie Garrett's books: The Comming Plague and Betrayal of Trust
Lee Reichman/Janice Tanne: Timebomb, The Global Epidemic of Multi-Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

For the faint of heart, the books can give nightmares.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Why is this news?

[William769]

18. Why is it not?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. Because there are 15,000 cases of TB in the U.S.?

And about two billion world wide?

[William769]

22. Are they all receiving threatening phone calls?

With what has happened in the news recently, I find it to be very news worthy when you tie into hysteria & ignorance.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. I have no idea how many people recieve threatening phone calls

every day.

You suppose it has something to do with nonsensical fearmongering, hysteria, and ignorance?

[William769]

24. If you don't think it belongs here, you are more than welcome to use the alert link.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. I couldn't give a crap if it's here or not.

I'm wondering why it's even news.

[William769]

26. Thanks for all the kicks.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. You're welcome.

Let me know when you figure out why it's news.

[William769]

29. Thanks again.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

30. No problem.

:thumbsup:

[durrrty libby]

31. Hee.

[uppityperson]

33. Only reason is because TB is in the news in general 'cause of TB man

otherwise, you are right, there are many people with TB who aren't in the news and 1 person, even if they are getting phone calls, isn't necessarily news.