You didn’t make a long story short. The opposite, really.
You know, your comments reminded that you’ve done this before – pop in and compare something being discussed to your situation in Australia – and so I looked it up. As I’ve replied to you before, in an area slightly smaller than the US contiguous 48 states, Australia has a population of about 20 million. The United States population is approaching 300 million. We are vastly different countries.
I am, of course, giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are truly for some reason expecting a similarity of experience between our two extremely different countries, rather than simply looking for an a excuse to point out how much better Australia compared to the U.S.
So what’s your point? Can you specify the length of a post that would comply with “long story short” to your satisfaction? When I wrote, “long story short”, how do you know that I wasn’t vastly abbreviating a very long story?
You don’t. You don’t know the whole story. I didn’t post every last detail because I figure those reading the post only want the meat of the story and aren’t interested in whether I was putting on my shoes or preparing dinner when I got the phone calls. So you can’t say with any certainty that I didn’t make this long story short.
So, do tell: how many lines could a post contain that would still conform to your definition of a long story made short? Responding with, “Well, I don’t know but I know an overly lengthy post when I see it” doesn’t cut it.
You wrote that I didn’t make a long story short; that I did quite the opposite. Prove it. Excuse me for writing more than a couple of cryptic sentences (you seem to be particularly fond of these) to communicate my story.
**
Long story short: <58 more lines snipped>**
So, I guess if a 'Doper has the audacity to write more than that in a post after they’ve written, “long story short”, you’ll be calling them on it. :rolleyes: Good luck with that.
I’m thinking that, really, you don’t understand the concept of the line, “To make a long story short…” Here. I’ll help.
There. I have successfully made your long story short. I have to assume that this is ALL sarcasm on your part. You can’t possibly expect anyone to believe that, without your TMALSS, your post would have been FAR longer, as in:
I hope I have been able to help you in this matter. If you really usually leave that much detail in your posts, I might recommend that you try to streamline them a bit anyhow. Writing like that all the time would be torturous.
On topic, there was a TB outbreak in a local high school last year and IIRC they didn’t have any fatalities, and I don’t recall hearing about anyone having permanent lung damage. Here’s hoping the tests come back negative either way.
In my experience, when people say, “To make a long story short” they rarely do. Just a comment, not a criticism of your OP, silver. Your OP was just fine.
There is a lot of TB in Canada as well, especially in the Native populations. There’s a lot of VD up North, too, just FYI.
I don’t think it’s very productive for you to be too mad at your kid’s friend’s mother, though, silver. All through your life you’ll be running into people who are doing things that endanger your kids, and all you can do is protect them the best way you can, without stunting their growth in the process. The world is not set up to please you or me; sometimes we just have to accept what we can’t change, and we certainly can’t change what other people do.
Lots of collateral damage in this thread. :dubious:
I can understand the parental upset over finding out that your child may have been exposed to TB, but I wouldn’t blame the mother all that much from what I’ve heard. As someone else noted, there may have been confusion over waxing and waning fevers/symptoms. Even if there’d been a more prompt visit to the doctor, TB in kids can be a difficult diagnosis, especially if there’s no known exposure to an adult with TB. Lastly, the odds of other kids at the party getting it are quite low and the typical medical therapy is tolerated well by children.
This article has a good overview on the subject of tuberculosis in children (maybe more than you need to know).
We have growing numbers in urban South Auckland amongst the low socioeconomic who have large families crammed into small houses, so I can’t imagine that it would be a rural problem in Australia either.
I recently watched a programme on TB in Russia - and it is spreading very fast and becoming resistant to treatment because they don’t have access to full treatment doses.
I wonder if it is one of those diseases that used to be prevalent in Western countries, was almost wiped out with innoculations and is now back again.
On the up side, TB is very easily treatable in Western countries. Also, I know families with one member who has TB, and although other members are tested regularly, they don’t get it - which would show that it can be quite hard to catch.
Not that I know of. TB, formerly called consumption, seems to be mentioned throughout history. Back in the fifties or the sixties, my great-uncle’s first wife died of it.
Certainly always mentioned throughout history, but when I say wiped out - I mean almost and I mean in the 70s/80s/90s. Same as for example Ricketts - this had almost disappeared in recent NZ history (70s - 90s) but is now coming back.
How do you know?
Silver1 may we have the long version, please? And I hope everything turns up negative on the skin tests.
Don’t pay attention to Hamadryad, silver1.
Yeah, when she was a child, she was exposed to raging bitch germs at a birthday party, and her parents never got her treated.
But IIRC, Qadgop stated that TB is very difficult, if not impossible, to vaccinate against.
Who knows?
Oh, another famous modern victim of TB-actress Vivien Leigh. She died of it in 1967.
While I understand the OP’s anger, silver1 should calm down. TB isn’t that easy to catch. The kind of casual contact one might expect at a children’s party isn’t likely to pass the infection along. People, historically, lived long term with “lungers” without routinely becoming infected. Much of the consumption that one reads about in old books was actually bovine TB that was contracted by consuming raw milk products. In my teaching career, I have twice had daily contact with students who had active TB. I remain negative on the tine test.
Janet did what many parents would do. TB isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when I kid is snotting and hacking around over a period of weeks, especially when there are times that the chikd appears to be “better.”
Oh, and silver1? Hamadryad is right. You didn’t.
Fortunately, I managed to escape the far more prevalent “whiny pussy” germs.
No, it’s easy to vaccinate against.
The vaccine is just not very effective. It seems to protect some kids for a while against some forms of non-pulmonary TB, but isn’t so hot protecting these kids against pulmonary TB when they get older, nor is it so hot in preventing adults from getting pulmonary TB. And pulmonary TB is the most common kind.
And by the way, once one has had the TB vaccine, the easiest most common and cheapest test to use to screen a person for TB infection (the skin test) is no longer effective.
My understanding is what really helped against TB was the development of effective antibiotics against it. Unfortunately, the bacteria has developed resistances, plus immigrants from areas with higher infection rates can bring it to countries where it’s not as common.
Vivien Leigh was an alcoholic, which makes a person more susceptible to developing an active infection. Taking care of yourself and your immune system really helps a lot in preventing the development of active infections.
Not prevalent per se, but the number of diagnosed cases is increasing, and it’s pretty much attributable to the flood of illegal aliens entering the country.
Not so much. Antibiotic resistance, a rise in immunocompromised patients (think HIV), and the attitude that “we’ve conquered TB” back in the late 60’s well into the 80’s are much larger factors.