The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact.The Occupy barnyards ought to be shut down immediately. This isn't a matter of free speech any more, it's a matter of public health and safety. I know no one in power wants to be all Squaresville and make the kids end their sleepover, but enough is enough with this.
If Tuberculosis isn't enough to make us clean out these man-made disasters with fire hoses of Lysol, then what is?
9 comments:
Yeeks.
If you want to read something alarming, check out this page. It turns out that a full third of the world's population are TB carriers, including 5-10% of the US population (luckily only 10% of those people ever show symptoms, though). It is not a rare disease by any means, and people have gotten way to relaxed concerning it. A number of my relatives in my grandparents' generation died of it.
When I was a kid, back in the 50's, we had a state-operated TB "sanatorium" (same root as "sanitation") long term care facility in my home town. The sanatorium served to isolate those with active disease from the general population.
Antibiotics changed all that, of course, but the new antibiotic-resistant TB pathogen is a very real public health threat.
TB is not to be trifled with...
Thanks to ObamaCare, patent law changes and the financial crisis we can look forward to more drug resistant diseases as the U.S. slows in the race to find new antibiotics! Spread the health, wealth and misery!
Tim, Russia in particular is rife with TB. Before I went there a few years back, I went to a local travel clinic to get the necessary shots. Russian prisons, they told me, are saturated with TB due to overcrowding and lousy sanitation. When the prisoners get out, they carry the disease to the rest of the population who spends a lot of time together, indoors due to the bad weather. Collecting people indoors for long periods is the perfect way to spread TB.
Too late. Cities hosting these sleepovers were too cute by a half offering initial support/backing off initial demands and have effectively painted themselves into a corner.
They are now rightly worried about rioting if they try to shut down the Obamavilles.
Someone likened all this to the eventual outcome of feeding bears.
There's no way these guys are obeying the laws, is there? Do they have all the necessary permits that would have been required of the rest of us? It just seems ludicrous that it's perfectly OK to set up tent cities wherever you want.
Here's the answer to my own question. Looks like the charming little OWS tots are being allowed to throw their tantrums in a way that would land the rest of us in jail or saddle us with nice, big fines.
They're calling it Zuccotti lung:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Zuccotti-Lung-Park-Sickness-Demonstrators-Protesters-Illness-133669113.html?dr
Re the russian prisons, i watched a documentary about them. the prisoners were saying that the supply of antibiotics was sporadic; it is a perfect breeding ground for resistant tb strains. Alix Lambert's "The Mark of Cain" on netflix streaming
Ivyan, from that article:
Some protesters have refused free flu shots, citing a "government conspiracy," the Times said...
The health department has visited the site and is monitoring.
Deranged, spoiled children at the site being watched over by an overindulgent government.
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