Another TB/homeland security debacle
Remember Andrew Speaker? He’s the TB-infected American who was able to slip through several airline security layers and fly around the globe despite being on a no-fly list in May. There were several other TB/security incidents this year that have fallen down the memory hole.
Looks like we still haven’t learned anything (via SJMercNews):
A Santa Clara County resident infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis flew back to the United States earlier this month without alerting authorities of her illness – potentially threatening fellow passengers and people at Stanford Hospital’s emergency room with whom she came into contact.
Now public health officials are trying to alert those who may be at risk.
The 30-year-old woman, who went to Stanford Hospital several days after arriving back in the Bay Area and who is now being treated in isolation there, is infected with multi-drug resistant TB. That form of the bacterial disease is emerging as a significant global public health problem because it is difficult and expensive to treat and has a higher mortality rate than conventional TB.
Just seven months after Atlanta personal-injury lawyer Andrew Speaker came under intense public fire for traveling to Europe while knowingly infected with drug-resistant TB, Santa Clara public health officers and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating how a woman who had been diagnosed with an active case of TB while abroad was able to easily step foot on an international flight.
The CDC, county health authorities and Stanford Hospital officials have been informing passengers who sat within two rows of the woman on the flight. In addition, a handful of patients, visitors and staff who were in the Stanford emergency room at the same time as the woman were told they might be in danger of getting the respiratory illness and were urged to undergo testing immediately and again in several months.
Citing federal patient confidentiality rules, health authorities would not name the infected woman or the country she was visiting. A CDC spokeswoman said the agency was not yet ready to disclose the airline and flight she was on, where her flight originated or even what day she landed in San Francisco.
That’s right: They won’t tell the public the woman’s name, the airline and flight she was on, where the flight came from, or when she landed.
So, they’ve succeeded in scaring the bejeesus out of a large population of the flying public without giving them any specific information to make proper risk assessments.
Thanks, DHS, TSA, and CDC.
Your hard-earned tax dollars at work again.
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Categories: Airline Security, Tuberculosis
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This alphbet soup of agencies you named(CDC,TSA,DHS), they’re on our side, right?
This has nothing to do with TSA. Can the confidentiality rules be gotten around by suing under the Freedom of Information Act? There should be some review process whether by a judge or an administrative panel. Personal information should be protected from routine disclosure by low level bureaucrats. The real problem is that many agencies abuse the privacy rules to cover up their mistakes. Schools and hospitals are especially notorious for doing that. FIA abuse is a separate topic that should be covered and many conservatives and libertarians will find themselves torn between conflicting interests.
So, they won’t give us any specifics, so I guess that leaves us with the short list of everyone who flew in December. Perfect.
A point that I feel is being overlooked here is the level of health standards. In the Western Hemisphere, the standards are now lower then they have been since the early 1900’s.
In the United States TB was almost nonexistant, along with several other maladies. These sicknesses are on the rise. Why? Latin American countries are no longer pursueing the inoculations or treaments for these problems. We here in the United States are now suffering the after effects. As our own standards are being lowered and no longer followed.
What is it going to take? A full out plague that kills hundreds of thousands for people to wake up and realise that by having an open boarder is contributing to this. With out the medical examinations required by legal immigration TB, bed bugs, and many more aliments will only rise.
These government entities are equipped for one thing only – to protect [themselves against unemployment] and to serve [thier unions].
Anything else can suck hind-left teat.
You’ve forgotten the most important three letter acronym:
CYA.
There is a stong possibility that the government agencies are doing what they are supposed to do: Not panic the public.
With all of the seemingly conflicting disclosure rules it is possible for one of them to get fired fired giving out any kind of detail. Yes it smacks of ‘coverup’ but maybe that’s that’s because that’s the spin the MSM in their zeal to get to the bottom of a ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ news story has done by drumming the fear and panic drum.
Sure, the name of the airline and flight number would be helpful – to anyone else on that plane. Does making that public before those on the plane are contacted do any bit of good? Oh sure it satisfies the ‘rubber necking at the accident’ urge in many of us, but it doesn’t do anything to correct the situation other than possibly forcing governemtn agencies to waste time and resources on press conferences – where tyhe MSM will lob every hair-bained question about the origins of germs.
Color me cynical – but me thinks the MSM protests too loudly only to make themselves seem more important here.
Eventually the facts will come out – just not at the pace of the MSM.
Face it, the rest of the world doesn’t have the same sanitary standards we have in the US – so the
Sorry for the split post.
Face it, the rest of the world doesn’t have the same sanitary standards we have in the US – so the chances of bringing something back isn’t an unusual occurance. Is that news? Just about as much news is as there is gambling going on in Casablanca. The real question is what to do? Mandatory Innoculations? Mandatory Tests whan you return from a foreign land?
I don’t have that answer – althjough in this day and age if you don’t have innoculations – you are a fool IMHO.
Not mentioned are the patient’s privacy laws instituted to provide cover to homosexual men with AIDS. The rest of it follows.
In the 60’s every food handler in major cities was licensed and carried a card to show that they had a chest x-ray to screen for tb. As a result of this screening and other steps by health departments, tb became so uncommon that the program became fodder for budget cuts.
Fast forward to the 2000’s. Food handling is now done by whom? Latinos, maybe? Immigrants, maybe? From societies that never screened, never cut TB down to uncommon. From societies that have always had a contagious cohort.
Project to the future, TB incidence in the US will rise.
Feel better now?
Pathetic. Just flat out pathetic.
And imagine what the headlines will be if Hillary-care is enacted. May God help us.
Where’s this stuff coming from, anyway? I mean, where do you have to go overseas to even find an exotic, high-mortality-rate, drug-resistant form of TB in the first place?
Calling Dr. Frankenstein.
I hope that at some point you believe the body count will be high enough to let the “public” know what’s going on. If you’re one of the “public” who drops dead because nobody told you anything about the person with the plague who sat next to you – well, I guess it’ll be a little too late, won’t it?
“I” would like to know so that I might be able to do something to protect myself.
And it’s more than just “the other people on the plane”. Did they come in contact with anyone between the time they sat next to “Jane Doe” and the time the government finally decided it was time to clue them in? What about the people they came in contact with?
This isn’t about the MSM. It’s about the government playing CMA while putting the people they’re supposed to serve in danger.
As a child traveling overseas to Germany I had to get the TB vaccine. I had an allergic reaction from it that almost killed me.
If TB breaks out again in America it will almost certainly be the death of me.
I can not express in polite company how angry those fools who fly with TB make me!
So, how many people have died here? And why do you assume that nothing is being done – becuase there is no public fanfare?
Well, were you on the plane?
And if you weren’t – now knowing that it was a specific flight that you weren’t on – what would you do?
What about all of the others that the MSM doesn’t know or care about?
You also assume nothing is being done in the background to protect the populace. HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS? You act like the US is in a sanitary bubble and – oh my – one germy passenger is going to wipe us all out and there is a conspiracy to do so.
If you want to do something, get innoculated, take reasonable health precuations, and work for better global sanitary conditions. You’re upset becuase one TB case was discovered and you can’t get all of the details – probably because you haven’t been directly affected and are unwilling to wait – panicing – to find out the facts.
You want to jump to ‘coverup mode’ – that sells newspaper but doesn’t address the problem.
Are government agencies infallible? Not llikely. Are they always wrong or doing the worng thing? Also not likely.
Re-read the story. To give the story traction – the newspaper had to weave in another notorious TB case.
Think they really care? What did they propose to do about the situation? They aare whipping up fear and panic here.
Don’t get me worng – TB is a killer and I don’t want body counts – but starting a panic isn’t the way to solve the problem – or to get the message out.
“Do not panic the public”
But rest assured our leaders will always make sure that THEY have the information to protect themselves.
Isn’t there some personal responsibility in this. It sounds like the unknown carrier knew she had the TB and didn’t tell anyone about it till she got back to the USA. She concealed it, and now things are happening.
Until we take the common-sense measure of quarantining anyone with active MDR TB,
we’ll continue to read about incidents like this.
I believe in an earlier age, persons with active TB *were* quarantined which was a big reason TB became a very rare disease
in the USA (along with restricting immigration from parts of the world TB is endemic).
Selfish and irresponsible — that’s what this woman is. Almost criminal, if not criminal.
Same goes for the TSA, and the rest of them.
Why are they protecting this person? They need to protect the PEOPLE. Give her name out so those that know her will know what to do!
CarpiJugulum said:
They will get interested in doing something about it when they can figure out how to blame America for the problem. If TB was attacking only gays, then we would get plenty of demagoguery and a tax increase to fix it. I am sure if they do come up with a plan, the WHO will be picking our pockets.
I would have nipped this in the bud…..
…but they took away my nail clippers, for my “safety”.
Now, now people. I’m sure that the reason for this, as usual, is that we, the American producers and tax payers, aren’t transferring enough of our wealth to some 12th Century sh*t hole to help bring them into the modern era. We haven’t squandered enough of our wealth on charity, nor dismantled our economy enough through environmental initiatives to lower our standard of living to be close to parity with those unable to govern themselves and therefore unable to build a vibrant economy.
Let’s stop blaming other people who cross our borders illegally to steal away our wealth, social services umbrella for OUR needy and to commit the drunk driving, rapes, murders and gang terror that our citizens are unwilling to do. This is our cross to bear for our bad behavior by being the shining hope for millions of immigrants. Once we are a disease infected, lowered standard of living, sh*t hole nation also, then things will be fair and this stuff won’t happen to us anymore.
Can someone tell me why we need a government anymore? Seems we would be better off without them!
Did you even try to see my point? Why do you assume that the government is doing the right thing by keeping this from us?
Yes, you’re right. The people are too stupid to let know what’s going on that might directly affect them. /sarc off
It doesn’t matter if I was on the plane. According to you, I’m too stupid to be able to do anything by myself.
Oh, I’d go to a doctor and have myself checked.
But wait; I’m too stupid to know what to do that unless my betters tell me.
Hate to be the one to break the news to you, but the MSM only cares about themselves and those who are ideologically on their side of the fence.
You should try reading what I post rather than reading something into it that isn’t there.
YOU act like this has only happened ONCE, ever. I never said conspiracy – that was YOU. “I” am talking about blithering incompetence.
No, there’s no panic from me. I’m upset because it happened AGAIN. How many times does it have to happen before TSA does something? Do people have to die?
Nothing like that was in my post. I want to jump to “Let’s fix the problem so it doesn’t happen again” mode. Let’s find out why it happened, and who sat there and stamped “OK” on the paperwork to let this woman through. Should those people still be working for us?
Note that I never said either one of these things. But there’s a difference between a mistake, and setting the parameters so that it will happen again and again.
For the record – I’m all for criminal and terrorist profiling.
You should read the story the first time. They weren’t weaving in anything to give the story “traction” – they were reminding us that it has happened before, and that there are apparently still no safeguards to keep it from happening again.
Because if there were safeguards, then we wouldn’t be talking about soemthing that didn’t happen, would we?
Nobody’s starting a panic. Why is it that you assume that when people know there’s a problem, they will panic? I think you’d find that the majority of the American people aren’t like those you know.
I haven’t assumed anything here. We can’t even tell from the article if the woman knew she had TB when she returned on her flight. Again, there are enough disclosure laws that may preclude anybody in authority to say anything without threat of fines or jail time.
If the information isn’t released after the affected parties have been notified, I would be angry – but not until then.
Tell me – now that you’ve read the article, what you are going to do about it? PS – I didn’t call you stupid or allude that you are too stupid. I take offense at that. What I said was that there is a stong possibility that the government agencies are doing what they are supposed to do: Not panic the public. Again time will tell if my observation is right or not.
This situation probably happens more often than we’d all like to know. I don’t know if it’s the TSA’s job to screen for disease as they seem to be focused on entering an airport rather than leaving one. Again, if you are not happy with how this is being handled, what is your proposed solution?
You still didn’t answer my question about ‘How do you know nothing is being done to protect the populace’. A better question how could we better protect the populace. ….and sometimes you do have to wait for information from higher up people – and your side comments about “But wait; I’m too stupid to know what to do that unless my betters tell me.” led me to think you were working a conspiracy angle. Mea Culpa.
…and this would have prevented the TB person from entering our country how?
Other than a person being forced to get a clean bill of health every time they leave and are allowede to re-enter the US, what can reasonably be done? It still hasn’t been established that the woman in question purposely hid the fact that she had TB.
I disagree. The MSM is stirring the pot – and it is suceeding as it has at least stirred you. It doesn’t have all of the facts of this case but are trying to make it identical to the earlier TB case. Fact is we don’t know enough – other than to be worried or paniced about the situation. Stay tuned for further details.
And please do not presume to know who I know. I find it interesting that you presume to know what the majority of American people are like.
Bureaucracy is the anti-freedom.
I see Mixer14 still hasn’t botered to read anything I’ve posted – and it appears she’s still calling Michelle part of the MSM.
Mixer might not want to know what’s going on around her, but I sure do. Mixer may think that the government always does everything right, even if they don’t tell us what it is, but I know better – I’ve worked in the US government.
And I’m not presuming to know what Mixer knows – all I’m doing is reading her posts. I’m just glad that Mixer has let us know how much we should all bow down to our betters – like her.
JHSII:
You haven’t read a thing I’ve written. I started by supposing that there is more to the story than meets the eye and that perhaps there is some legitimacy to how the government agencies are handling things. You seem to be stuck on distrusting the government at all times. You obviously have a problem with authority and refuse to think that maybe just maybe, things are progressing with this situation as they should. I only added that it looked like the MSM (not Michelle) was trying to stir things up a bit as they are normally full of knee-jerk hyperbole to make people worry and panic more than they probably need to. Got it JSHII?
Now as for you knowing better – I am going to call you STUPID. You don’t know me or anything about me. You stupidly assumed that I am a female.
WRONG! Mixer14 is a he.
You stupidly assumed I was lumping Michelle in with the rest of the MSM.
WRONG Again!
You don’t know a thing about me and you don’t get to speak on my belhalf. I don’t put Michelle in the same bucket as the MSM. So stop casting espersions.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
It seems that you are very one minded. I even said that government isn’t likely to be right or wrong all of the time. I could care less that you work for the government – does that somehow make you an expert on all facets of the government – including all of the agencies liosted in the article?
I also wrote that the article doesn’t have enough information to make a sound judgement on what went on and what is truly happening. I said I’d have to see more before coming to any conclusion.
My point is that I think the MSM is making hay with very little here to work with – and it appears you’ve taken the content and intent of the article face value with thye MSM spin of ‘the #%$&^@ governmental agencies are doing a crappy job and they aren’t telling us everything they know.’
You question the government actions here – and haven’t offered up your solution. On the other hand, I’m questioning the MSM’s intent here and am willing to wait to hear more before I do something.
SO, that, in your book is ‘not wanting to know what is going on’. I did question you on if you knew more of the particulars, what would you do? You have avoided answering that twice. You rambled about being harsh in terrorism and criminal profiling. That’s not an answer – that’s a statement and how does it apply here?
Sorry if you think I am bowing down to betters – WRONG YET AGAIN!
What I am doing (that darn nuance thing you don’t get….) is being perfectly skeptical about the information that has been given to me by the MSM and their motives – and yes I trust the governement a little more than the MSM.
Mixer, I never said that you were bowing doen to betters. That comment alone proves that you haven’t read anything I’ve posted.
If you actually bothered to read what I posted, you would have read:
At this point I have to classify you as a troll. You don’t read what is posted, and then expect me to answer your twisted interpretation of what it was that I never posted in the first place.
When you read what I actually posted and respond to that, then maybe we can have a conversation.
I’m not going to hold my breath.
What did I miss?
YADDA YADDA YADDA – whatever.
I guess anybody that doesn’t agree with you is a troll.
Mixer proves my point again.
You read what you want to read, see what you want to see. I knew there was a reason I wasn’t holding my breath.