Texas Newborns hit with TB Scare
Today’s infectious disease update should have parents on edge.
Remember when the worst infection Americans had to worry about was a bad flu?
As I reported last week, Enterovirus 68 with its potentially devastating respiratory symptoms is still spreading among American children. An outbreak has now been reported in San Diego county:
California’s first cases of a virus that has been spreading across the country were confirmed Thursday by the state’s chief health official.
Four cases of enterovirus D68 have been confirmed, all in Southern California. One was in Ventura County; three others were in San Diego County.
The patients ages ranged from 2 to 13 years old.
More instances of the disease were expected as results from lab tests come back, the California Department of Public Health said in announcing the cases.
So far, 175 cases have been formally reported, with newly documented occurrences in West Virgina.
Meanwhile, there has been a troubling infectious disease development in a Texas hospital involving newborns:
A nurse working at Providence Memorial Hospital in El Paso, Tex., may have exposed more than 700 infants to tuberculosis.
Parents of potentially infected children received a letter from the El Paso Department of Health last week, according to ABC News. They include children born at the hospital between September 2013 and August of this year, when officials discovered that the unnamed female nurse had the illness.
In the letter, parents were informed that they could receive free TB screenings at the El Paso Department of Health, along with treatment.
…The nurse was placed on leave after she tested positive for the disease. Forty-three of her co-workers were also possibly exposed to TB. The El Paso Department of Health posted an exposure schedule on its Web site, presumably detailing when the employee was present in the nursery of the hospital.
Given that newborns are much more susceptible to infection because of their developing immune system, exposure to such a serious disease is very concerning. I couldn’t begin to imagine how worried those infants’ parents are right now. A summary of this situation comes from Newsy Science.
And while I personally am more worried about these two infections, in terms of their impact on America, the African Ebola outbreak still has not been contained. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control project as many as 1.4 million cases may occur by 2015. The fact that Health and Human Services is spending millions on portable ventilators to address public health emergencies is doing little to put my mind at ease. I have to ask, “Why the sudden interest in portable inhalation assistance?”
On Canto Talk this Thursday, I am reviewing the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, which shows how strained government resources can become in the wake of such a virulent and deadly disease.
[Featured Image – Newsy Science Video]
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Comments
Scary to any parent – but to expose vulnerable newborns…..horrifying.
That illegals were allowed to come in without ANY health screening, bused everywhere – often without notice to the destinations, and that they were immediately enrolled in schools, admitted into public areas where any infectious diseases could be spread……unconscionable!!
This administration has blood on its hands – from Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the terrorist threats and acts NOT stopped (a la Boston Marathon bombing and the “workplace violence” horror done by radical Islamo-Nazis and other leftist radicals), and now this.
This so-called “hope ‘n change” has been a coup, and I would argue NOT a bloodless one.
Odd diseases cropping up in the San Diego area was the main reason why there were demonstrations against the stowing of illegal aliens at random in our population. When citizens forced examination of illegal in the Murietta area, they found diseases, including TB, which should have disqualified entry.
http://borderconvoy.com/2014/07/18/91/
Illegals and fruiters are the two main incubators for TB.
The proximity would seem to confirm that suspicion. This is likely one of diverse reasons that Mexico tolerated, and perhaps facilitated, their transfer.
Y’all do realize that the parent of any infant who acquires a drug resistant strain of TB from such exposure had better keep silent or they will be attacked by, and in, the media by the Left as “haters”, “racists”, etc.
TB, Enterovirus D68, and eventually Ebola are gifts from the Third World that the Left are helping bring into this country to “equalize” things.
It’s not fair that we have good sanitation and the rest of the world does not. So, the left is importing disease carriers.
Less than a hundred years ago, TB was a killer. My grandmother’s father and sister died from the disease. We have forgotten just how serious this disease is, not to mention the fact that it’s highly contagious. With the advent of mutant strains that are drug resistant, we can no longer take it for granted that it’s no big deal, or that a shot will knock it out.
smallpox and polio were wiped out in the first world, but they’re making a comeback thanks to the foolish importation of third world immigrants
And the infiltration of genuine immunisation programmes by CIA / secret service types. Polio is thus making inroads in Pakistan.
Polio is coming back in Muslim countries because their imams are telling everybody not to get immunized, it’s an infidel plot to hurt Muslims. Besides, vaccines don’t actually work, whether you get sick or not is entirely up to Allah.
There is a doctor in prison because he helped the!US try & track Bin Laden by obtaining the DNA of the children in the compound. Immunisation drives have been used as cover in the NW Pakistan leading too innocent workers being killed.
I have read that more people died of Spanish Influenza than were killed in WWI.
Advice given to states in the path of the disease: start building coffins because you will never be able to keep up with demand once it arrives.
Luckily, we now have the federal government to protect us:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/08/329847454/smallpox-virus-found-in-unsecured-nih-freezer?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140708
Smallpox Virus Found In Unsecured NIH Lab
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/11/health/smallpox-found-nih-alive/
CDC: Smallpox found in NIH storage room is alive
The Spanish Flu pandemic was truly frightening, not only because of its death toll, but also for the speed at which it killed its victims. My grandfather lost his first wife due to that – when my grandfather’s sister came to visit on a Thursday, she was completely healthy, but by Sunday my grandfather’s wife was dead.
God help us should another disease arise that spreads too rapidly for anyone to do anything about it. (Anybody ever read Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague?) Undocumented, illegal aliens, whom nobody knows, who have not undergone any physical and lack any sort of medical records, are the perfect vectors for such a disease ~
And notice how the government refuses to say where they are now located. There is no way for an epidemiologist to made a orrelation between outbreaks of disease and these illegal immigrants.
It rained today, OBVIOUSLY because of those ILLEGALS!1!1!eleventy!!! /sarc
You didn’t need the sarc tag. We already got that you are an idiot.
What you meant to say is that correlation does not imply causation. But you’re not intelligent enough.
Is that your momma calling? Time to take out the trash, ya know, earn your room and board while your parents pay off your student loans.