How many of those cases were multi-drug resistant TB?
He has resistant TB. There was a recent outbreak in South Africa. 54 people contracted the disease. 53 died.
According to page 2 of the ABC News site linked to by DanBlather in the other thread:
That’s an average of 3 or 4 cases per year.
QG, would you be willing to hang out in his hospital room in Denver for several hours, without any protection against airborne infection?
TB already is an epidemic. One-third of the world’s population has it. Five to ten percent of those who have it are sickened by it. Two million people a year die from it – and this is after a multi-year, multi-national, aggressive campaign of education, containment, drug research and treatment. (Cite.) His type of TB is not just “more difficult” to treat; it is both extremely difficult to treat (being resistant to all of the first-line TB drugs and half of the second-line TB drugs – cite) and remarkably virulent. As has already been noted, due to the lack of effective treatment options, 70% of people with this type of TB die. And yes, the chief (although by no means only) concern is those with compromised immune systems. That includes the old, the young, those with a history of TB, and those with any number of other infectious or chronic diseases. For a person with HIV, for example, TB can be a death sentence, regardless of whether it is drug-resistent or extremely drug-resistent or not.
How do you know? What if one other person catches XDR-TB because of this guy? What if five do? Ten? 50? And how many of them have to die? At what point does a public health problem like a virulent, contagious, nearly untreatable disease become appropriate for a Disease Movie? And is that really your criteria for concern? And why the hell should we share such a stupid criterion?
You do realize this is XDR-TB, not run-of-the-mill TB, right? There have been 49 XDR-TB diagnoses between 1993 and 2006. (Cite.) But drug-resistant and XDR-TB is on the rise in the US – there was a 13% increase in cases from 2003 to 2004. (Cite.) From a public health standpoint, it would be difficult to overstate the degree of alarm and concern over the development and spread of drug-resistant variations of one of the world’s most widely-spread and easily communicable diseases.
So educate yourself before down-playing the situation, m’kay?
Try again. 60% of people who aren’t diagnosed early die. Problem is that this strain doesn’t have many symptoms so, as with many cancers, by the time you show symptoms you’re pretty sick.
It requires a fairly lengthy course of treatment and is contagious if people are in regular contact with it so they put patients in hospitals so they wouldn’t infect everybody at home while they were recuperating.
Cite?
Um. Do you see any ‘get everybody who was on the planes into the hospital NOW’ notices? Nope. No different a reaction from that when a student in a high school comes down with hepatitis. People who have come in contact are watched and tested. Really, it’s kinda sad that some people are so willing to declare the sky falling because the media gloms onto every story and makes it sound tragic.
Not very many people died of SARS, either. Turned out that it first appeared to kill a lot of people but the fact was that in most people it wasn’t very serious and that only people sick enough to have to go to hospital had a high percentage of deaths. Caution was warranted at the beginning but not the worldwide scarefest that took place.
I do so enjoy the ‘intellectual debate’ I find here. :rolleyes:
Wait, this is the Pit. Gratuitous personal attacks are encouraged.
My grandmother died of TB. My dad always tested positive but never got it. That you test positive only means you’ve been exposed. You may be a carrier but never get it. I had TB tests when I was a kid. I tested negative. So despite living with someone who had tested positive all his life, I’m fine.
I did. Nothing in the stats you cited says this is a case for panic. It may be virulent if not caught and treated in time but nothing and nobody says this is highly contagious. Which is the point.
The thing that gets me:
He said in an interview: “…no way was I going to stay in Italy” (my paraphrase).
We are to believe Mr. I-want-my-cake-and-eat-it-too was afraid for his life and needed to leave Italy immediately, yet, he didn’t think that the disease that he was afraid he was going to die of any moment was any danger to anyone? Why is he even risking exposing his wife to this disease? And what’s wrong with her - she went along with the whole scheme.
To whoever said he heard the guy was a “nice guy” I say, he looks like a real entitled jerk. I guess the lawyer doesn’t want to follow official rules issued by a government body.
Regardless of the circumstances before he left the U.S. he admitted that the CDC told him in no uncertain terms to stay put in Italy. How did he even know how to sneak back to the U.S.?
My guess is he didn’t tell anyone he had TB except his wife.
One other thing, according to his website, this guy went to the Naval Academy but his bio doesn’t mention any kind of military service, what’s up with that? His father, by contrast lists extensive military service.
They just had an interview with him on Good Morning America. In his defense, he didn’t sound cruel or malicious, just self-centered and scared. He said he was told repeatedly he wasn’t infectious and it wasn’t until he arrived in Italy that he found out it was the drug-resistant type. He said he was told he had to be treated in Denver or he would die, and he wasn’t offered any help in getting there. He also said that chartering a jet would cost $100,000 and he couldn’t raise that kind of money at 11:00 in Europe.
I can understand being freaked out. He said repeatedly that he felt abandoned. I think he really did believe he had to get to Denver, Colorado ASAP or he would die. I also still think he was a selfish jerk who made a decision on the spot without thinking the consequences through. I honestly don’t think it occurred to him that he was exposing people to the same fear he was experiencing. I think he did believe he wasn’t infectious and he didn’t think about what effect his actions would have on others. When the interviewer asked him about a passenger who’s already been identified, he said he was sorry for her, but look at him – he couldn’t even kiss his wife!
Maybe he’ll realize the consequences of what he did, maybe he won’t. Right now, I think he’s a scared man who’s only trying to stave off what he sees as certain death. What’s sad is I don’t think it’s hit home to him that he’s put others in the same position.
If he didn’t want to stay in Italy, he should have left…in a canoe, rowing across the Atlantic all by his little self-entitled lonesome. I hope if (gods forbid) anyone else on the planes he was on does come down with XDR-TB, they let that person go into his hospital room to slap the shit out of him. Maybe a few kicks in the crotch for good measure.
I’m struggling to find a way to say this without sounding like an ass, but I guess I’ll give up and be an ass.
What do you folks expect from CDC? It’s just another insular, incestous government organism like FEMA, Homeland Security, and others. Their top priorities are self promotion and self preservation.
Did you expect them to do what their name implies and control diseases? Hah! You’re sooooooo naive. 
I’m thinking the FIL being a rare TB researcher for the CDC is just too much of a coincidence, as well. Given TB Andy’s behavior, I can see how he might want him out of the picture.
Methinks the state and the CDC are going to go halvsies on a pretty ankle bracelet for him.
If he’s a lawyer, I would imagine that the state bar in his jurisdiction may decide to discipline him.
“Cite?”… Are you fucking kidding? This is all over the new and why this very thread was started.
He hopped continents by flying on a No Fly order. Hew was on the e no-lfy list because he represented a huge biohazard/epidemic risk. It’s front-page news all over the world. What the fuck do you mean, “Cite?”
I just looked at the articles, and apparently it wasn’t until he was in Europe that he was told in no uncertain terms not to fly. Given that the risk to fellow passengers was pretty minimal, and given that he thought he needed to get home right away to survive, and given that neither he nor the CDC could come up with the money to charter a plane, his decision doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. If he had booked 3 adjoining seats, I would probably give him a pass.
I suppose that the CDC should have a program to compensate people who have to cancel their travel plans due to being told not to fly.
It’s funny. I work in public health and am no stranger to the evil that is TB, but I feel more pity for the guy than anger. ::ducks as the rotten tomatoes fly at my head::
I like to think that I’d do the right thing if I were in his predicament–a young guy at the prime of his life, on the threshold of marriage and the whole nine, with a career and dreams and plans. But I certainly can imagine myself being in denial, especially if I was assymptomatic. I don’t think panic was what drove him to do what he did. It was probably that he just didn’t see himself being a real public health hazard. When faced with scary facts, people have a way of deluding themselves into thinking everything is okay.
I can only feel bad for him. His life will no longer be in his complete control, at least for many years. He has a good chance of dying a slow, crappy death. He will be separated from friends and family and he won’t be able to enjoy something as simple as a trip to the grocery store. He just got married, but he won’t be able to fully reap the rewards of that. He may be the biggest jerk on the planet, but no one deserves to deal with what he’s going to have to suffer through. It’s hard for me to forget that he’s a victim more than a villian. Let’s hope that his deluded thinking didn’t cause others to become victims.
I’m also curious where he may have contacted this strain. It had to have come from somewhere.
How is he a “pandemic waiting to happen?” His strain of tuberculosis is difficult to treat, but that doesn’t equate to it being a good candidate to start an epidemic.
You should ask how he got it in the first place, obviously whoever gave it to him is still out there, and isn’t under quarantine. Why hasn’t an epidemic broken out? Because it’s not an easy disease to transmit whatsoever, some diseases are incredibly easy to transmit person to person, tuberculosis really isn’t that easy to transmit despite it being an airborne transmission.
The English sweating sickness for example spread so fast that it would ravage entire villages and then be gone within 24 hours, having killed so many so fast it would fail to spread any further.
Tuberculosis is way on the other end of that scale, TB is not easily transmitted. Evidence suggests HIV is spread way easier in practice (look at the number of yearly, new HIV infections versus yearly new TB infections–why aren’t HIV patients locked in quarantine?) The fact that’s it’s an airborne disease scares people, but in truth TB just isn’t that contagious. The common cold, noroviruses, and influenza all spread way easier.
Speaking about HIV, it and TB go hand in hand, the only places in the world where TB is easily spread are in populations already ravaged by HIV and with suppressed immune systems. In the United States most cases of drug resistant tuberculosis come about when a patient of “normal” TB develops drug resistance (often through the patient mismanaging doses of his medication); however since apparently this guy was only first diagnosed within the last few months that is probably not how he got it.
Also, even people who are infected by the bacteria are not guaranteed to develop the disease.
Huh. Color me surprised that he’s not being handed a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Before I pose the unpopular question, please understand that I think the guy is a selfish prick. I hope that he has not infected fellow travelers.
Why was his identity released? There are Hippa laws regarding the release of medical information.
I’m not defending him; however, I do not believe that his outing will do anthying other than fuel the tabloid aspects of this.
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