Change! Once vanquished diseases emerge across America
Outbreaks of leprosy, active TB, and hand, foot & mouth disease
When President Obama said he would fundamentally transform America, who could have guessed it meant that exotic diseases and once-vanquished illnesses would break out across the county?
The Zika virus, which we have been following closely, is increasing its footprint within our country. Florida Governor Rick Scott just announced that the Zika virus transmission zone in Miami Beach has tripled in size.
The new zone was set after the Department of Health identified five people, two males and three females, in the area who all experienced Zika symptoms within one month of one another.
The virus poses a particular threat to pregnant woman due to its link with neurological disorders in unborn children.
It brings the total of nontravel-related Zika cases in Miami Beach to 35.
When was the last time you heard about leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, which is a devastating bacterial infection that mostly occurs in poverty-sticken regions of the world? Now, a California school has reported two as yet unconfirmed cases among its student body.
Two elementary school children in Riverside County could have Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, according to health officials.
Nursing staff at Indian Hills Elementary School in Jurupa Valley notified county officials Friday of the suspected infections, which will take several weeks to officially confirm, said Barbara Cole, director for disease control for the Riverside County Department of Public Health.
“We have to keep stressing it’s not confirmed,” Cole said. “We’re just at the beginning of the investigation.”
Jurupa Unified School District officials sent a letter home to parents Friday to inform them about the unconfirmed cases and provide resources to learn more about the rare disease, said district Supt. Elliott Duchon.
Duchon said a parent notified the school’s nursing staff of a preliminary diagnosis of Hansen’s disease for a student at the school. He would not say whether the two suspected cases were in the same family.
But elementary school kids aren’t the only ones at risk in this strange, new world of infectious diseases. Florida State University is reporting that 22 of its scholars have come down with hand, foot and mouth disease.
A university official told NBC News that as of Friday afternoon, there have been 22 total cases of hand, foot and mouth disease — a highly contagious virus in which sores develop in the mouth, and a skin rash with blisters appears on the hands and soles of the feet.
“I’m thinking we’ve got probably one more little spike [in cases], then hopefully it will have worn itself out,” said Lesley Sacher, executive director of university health services at the Tallahassee school.
Florida isn’t the only state struggling to address public health crises. Nineteen refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in Michigan between 2011 and 2016.
One of these nineteen refugees, an Iraqi who arrived in the United States in June 2015 with latent TB infection, was diagnosed with active TB in March 2016, according to the Oakland County Department of Health and Human Services.
Five of the nineteen refugees were diagnosed with active TB at the time of their initial domestic medical screening, which usually takes place within 90 days of arrival. Fourteen were diagnosed subsequent to their initial domestic screening, but within five years of their arrival.
Perhaps that is now why GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is now surging in Michigan to the point he’s in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton in this battleground state.
There certainly has been change in the quality of public health during the Obama administration. Let’s hope the next president can fix this situation.
[Featured image via Wikipedia]
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It was predicted—not guessed—long ago that the D’rat obsession with free flow of populations across America’s borders wold also mean the free flow of diseases. It was even discussed on these very pages by perspicacious persons who can remain unnamed.
But leprosy isn’t a new arrival. It’s not uncommon in armadillo country. Apparently the little buggers are the only animal which shares the human susceptibility to the bacillus which causes the disease. It’s a very fragile organism, too frail to grow in culture, which has made it hard to study. But that also makes it easy to kill. Antibiotics work just fine. The real problem with treatment is the stigma of LEPROSY!!!! People who have it don’t want to talk about it, as if it’s some sort of mark of Cain. Another hot tip; avoid armadillo meat. Cooking it helps, the bacillus can’t tolerate even normal human body temperature.
Zika, well, the best thing we can do about Zika in America is stop pretending that Puerto Rico is part of the US. That won’t help much, and won’t help Florida at all, but it will make the government statistics look better.
Re: Zika. Don’t forget DDT. Now that it’s affecting places where progressives live, they will throw Rachel Carson under the bus. The millions of malaria victims in Africa didn’t matter.
Its all according to the plan to bring the US down to the level of the 3rd world, because its “fair.”
Oooh, I had Hand, Foot, and Mouth once. It’s a coxsackievirus apparently not uncommon in infants and they just get a little fever and are irritable for a couple days (like they are about every few weeks with some virus or another). But, in an adult (as I was – caught it from my infant daughter) it is nothing I would wish on anyone. The sores in the mouth made swallowing (even a sip of water) feel like razor blades going down (lasted for days), and I alternated between uncontrollable chills and hot flashes for about 6 hours! Worst thing I ever went through!
Don’t forget head lice and bed bugs. (Hint: Bring back DDT!)
To this administration, and to a Hillary administration, every one of the people who came down with these old diseases that had been eradicated from the US population is just a statistic.
When the Democrats decided to ride the war in Iraq all of the way to the White House, they also decided that the lives of people who serve us could be sacrificed for their own political interests. That was a deal with the Devil, and they have lurched from one policy disaster to another, ever since.
Obama is right that his America is not exceptional. That is because the people around him are all collectivists who do not give a rat’s a$$ about anybody but their cronies.
In the days of Ellis Island, immigrants were screened and tested and on occasion, detained for a period of time to insure they were not carrying a dangerous illness. OH, for the good old days!
If we really hurry and concentrate we can become a 3rd world country before obama leaves office.
Obama is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Like VD.
Rick2guns is undeniably correct. With no comparable Ellis Island on the southern border, this will become a public health nightmare.
This crap started around here (Kentucky) about 25 years ago when the illegals streamed in with all their sickness and filth.
This is all apart of the plan of the Left to destroy the America we love and reshape it into the Leftist utopia that can never be. They must be stopped but no one is doing a thing to stop them. God save us
We need a comprehensive
immigrationinterdiction/deportation plan to return illegal aliens to whence they came.