The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted action to stop.
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.
Since the founders didn’t mention TB hospitals in the Constitution, why should government get involved in the business of making sure people take their TB meds so we don’t develop more resistant strains?
Anya
Florida voters must be very pleased with Gov. Tuberculosis. They deserve each other.
AnonPhenom
TB patients in Fla,
If you’re disease is going untreated, go cough in a rich fuckers face.
AnonPhenom
TB patients in Fla,
If you’re disease is going untreated, go cough in a rich fuckers face.
amk
tundra twit on sean klannity
“It is the, what Barack Obama believes and then makes manifest in our economy with the monumental failures that kind of replicate the socialist nations that he seems to want to emulate.”
Jay in Oregon
For God’s sake, how can it get any clearer? They thought the outbreak “only” affected poor people, the homeless, and mentally ill people, and their response was “enh, let them die.” Anyone who lost a loved one to AIDS in the 80’s and 90’s should probably have uncomfortable flashbacks right now…
A political party as heartless as the present-day GOP should be polling at about -15%. TB strain FL 406 should have more of a chance of being president than Mitt Romney.
the Conster
Too bad Santorum isn’t the candidate – it would make for endless Santorum/sanitarium/sanitorium jokes about the sick and crazy GOP.
beltane
@Jay in Oregon: Unfortunately, a large number of our fellow countrymen are horrible people who fully support the GOP’s “let ’em die” philosophy. It is a cruel irony that the vast majority of these horrible, inhumane people call themselves Christians.
robertdsc-PowerBook
The next time a teatard mentions the Constitution in this way, ask them if the fucking Air Force should be disbanded since it’s not in there, either.
Anya
@amk: WTF is she saying?
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – but had to share – this morning on MJ Scarborough told the crew that this weekend while he was eating breakfast his wife told him that his son had chosen not to take his employer’s health coverage but instead elected to stay on his parents’ plan thanks to Obamacare. The look on everyone’s face was priceless.
Joseph Nobles
@Anya: She’s saying the sheriff is near.
General Stuck
I’m wondering if we shouldn’t revoke Florida’s statehood, and return it to territorial status, then declare it the national leper colony. John Galt can just wear a filter mask riding the liberty bus on the way to an early death.
beltane
@Anya: I think she’s saying that Obama is worse than Pol Pot which is the only thing this nitwit ever says.
dmsilev
@Litlebritdifrnt: Did Scarborough then announce that he was disowning his son for this heresy?
c u n d gulag
I really do feel sorry for the people of FL. Especially the people affected by this TB epidemic, the worst in 20 years. Which could be anyone, now that that hospital’s been closed.
But, I’m sorry, too many of your fellow citizens voted for a man who, if he couldn’t afford the best legal minds his money could buy, would probably still be in jail – a criminal guilty of Medicare/Medicaid fraud.
Instead, this criminal sociopath became the Governor of FL. And apparently the State Legislature is also dominated by sociopaths.
Ir the smart people in certain states can’t convince the stupid, ignorant, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and/or homophobic, other citizens that they’re voting to cut-off their noses to spite their own faces, maybe it’s time to get the feck out, and move to states that value people who like to keep their faces intact?
I know that’s easy to say for someone who live in NY State.
I’m just at a loss of what to tell the good people who live in states run by sociopaths to do.
Work hard to change things. HARD! And I’m sure many people do.
And if that doesn’t work, do you really want to live in a state that doesn’t value its citizens health, or education, or women’s rights, or civil rights, or the freedom of religion, and FROM religion?
I know there’s a ton of money and effort involved in moving. Never mind the loss of family, friends, and neighbors.
We’re in a period of a “Cold Civil War.”
People worked hard to escape the USSR, East Germany, and other Eastern European countries – and, at the least, leaving family and nation behind – and, at worst, getting captured and going to jail, or losing their lives, trying.
I see the Republican Party getting crazier and crazier, not only with no end in sight, but getting to the point of complete and utter nihilism and sociopathy – with no regard for anyone.
Anyone have any better solutions, I’d love to hear them and pass them on.
Right now, I don’t see any solution to this madness except splitting the country in two.
I wish I could say otherwise.
And most of these states WANT to secede.
I say, FECK ‘EM! Let ’em.
Maybe we can do exchanges, where we rational states exchange our unhappy sociopathic citizens South, for the rational people in the irrational states.
What we’re doing now, is only making this entire country into a Banana Republic.
Let the Banana’s Republicans have their own Banana Republic, so the rest of us aren’t dragged down by these religious zealot’s and sociopaths.
I hope someone can think of something better than my idiotic idea.
Anya
@Joseph Nobles: that makes sense.
@beltane: I will be shocked if she knows who Pol Pot is.
Litlebritdifrnt
@dmsilev:
He said he had been trying to call him for 3 days and he wouldn’t return his calls. Don’t know how true that is.
General Stuck
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’m wondering if our wingnuts are developing some post Obama PTSD. With night terrors from being chased by Black Godzilla.
PeakVT
why should government get involved in the business of making sure people take their TB meds so we don’t develop more resistant strains?
Why indeed. Just think of the business opportunities a full-blown TB epidemic would provide, not to mention all of the federal government programs that could be ripped off.
amk
@Anya: The twit is saying, ‘I’ve done my part. Now, where is my money?”
General Stuck
@PeakVT:
Not to mention a great campaign issue to blame Obama for. Much better than defaulting on our national debt that would have been bad for bidness. They could call it the Kenyan Flu.
Punchy
@Litlebritdifrnt: Correct me if Im wrong, but doesnt that mean the kid has elected to NOT pay for his own insurance, but instead stick his ‘rents with a higher premium to cover his ass? Isnt this more of a mooch move than anything else? If I were Joe Scab Id have the NO! Face too….
NotMax
Some info on tuberculosis:
Tuberculosis (TB) is a global pandemic, killing someone approximately every 25 seconds — nearly 1.4 million in 2010 alone.
Drug-resistant TB spreading fast around the globe
With global travel more frequent, the spread of any particular strain is easier than ever.
bemused
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I love this.
I’m guessing Joe’s insurance may have been better than the employer’s. Of course, people are going to like ACA as they are able to use the benefits which is why Republicans are fighting it so hard. It’s not just health care. The GOP doesn’t have much to offer the 98% so they have to make shit up constantly.
hep kitty
Rick Scott is a skeletoristic scumbag. Nice going, FL! Think twice about voting for a soulless corporatist next time.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Punchy:
Sounds exactly like a mooch move to me, but it was funny that Scarborough had to admit that given the choice, his son had gone with the Obamacare option. While everyone was laughing about it Joe did say something about “taking it out of his checks” or something like that, but I am not clear exactly what he meant, other than he was going to have his son reimburse them for the difference in the premium (I am assuming that his son decided that that would be the cheaper option than paying a portion of the premium through his employer, but that is just a guess).
ETA – I got the impression from the conversation that his wife had basically said he had to suck it up and accept it, but I could be wrong.
PeakVT
Possibly related: Bt-resistant rootworms have been discovered.
But that whole evolution thing is just a model so these things can’t be happening.
Anya
@Litlebritdifrnt: Why was Scarborough telling this story in the first place? What was the moral of the story?
hep kitty
@bemused: The people who are screaming right now will use it, bitch about it the entire time (even though it may save their lives), but they will use the hell out of it and keep on calling us commies.
Litlebritdifrnt
@bemused:
EXACTLY the repubs know that when the individual pieces of the bill are polled they are hugely popular, it is just the scary “Obamacare” as a whole that gets bad polls (and even they are coming around as time goes on). The repubs know that if they don’t get rid of it NOW, like medicaid and social security, they will NEVER be able to get rid of it.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Anya:
They were talking about the repeal vote and he said that he “had a confession to make” and then went on to tell the story. I thought it was hilarious.
NonyNony
@Punchy:
Not necessarily. The kid’s new employer might have really, really lousy coverage in comparison to the Gold Plated Plan that Joe Scar gets as an NBC/Universal employee. It may also be that paying the premium difference for his parents out of pocket is still cheaper than the out of pocket he’d pay for his new employer’s plan. Could also be that his primary care doc or some specialists he uses aren’t covered by his new employer’s plan.
There are all sorts of reasons why you might choose to do it that way. If it were just a mooch move with no real reason behind it, I imagine Scarborough is tough enough to tell his kid to suck it up, right?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@bemused: And almost every health plan is AdministrativeCosts + Care. If Joe’s son were to take it on his own, he’d have to pay his own AdministrativeCost.
Now, what Joe should do is require his son to pay his part of the care, which would still be cheaper, and as you said, probably better.
gvg
As a Floridian, well Rick Scott is horrible but this report was “penned” nine days before he signed a bill that eliminated funding for this particular hospital, so he may have a sort of defense.
first I doubt he saw this report before he signed. Of course it’s a different matter that this news wasn’t spread higher back in 2008 due to lower level indifference but he wasn’t in office then. Second the funding elimination cut off has to have been part of a bigger bill with a bunch of stuff in it right? I’m not sure of that though but I think this is part of the whole austerity cuts overall and I happen to think they are cutting a whole bunch of things that are just a seriously needed with yes deadly consequences. The prior decades saw so few TB cases that this function of this hospital was barely used. given that he probably saw a lot of reports on what departments got the most use/need statewide I don’t find it too surprising that this looked like something that could be cut.
He should have had better info a lot sooner-and that reflects on the officials who didn’t react back in 2008 or even 2009 2010 etc.
From what I’ve seen he probably would have still closed it, or privatized that function to friends but that scenario didn’t actually get tested.
Ira-NY
Florida more screwed-up than a stack of coat hangers.
In addition, Florida hurts other states by being a tax haven. Many folks that live in my state ” claim ” Florida as their tax residence.
bemused
@hep kitty:
No doubt. Will the “hands off my SS/Medicare” delusion never die?
General Stuck
OT
Leave it to the msm, and in particular, the dumbshits at
DisneyABC news, to throw up the ‘both sides do it’ banner.So the article posits the absurd notion, that since every democratic official in the country hasn’t made their tax returns public, then both sides do it, and Romney has a case to not make public his own, past the one year he did return. So now we are all running for president, just like Mitt.
beltane
@PeakVT: The failure to accept evolution has implications that are far more important than the simple misunderstanding of human prehistory. That’s why when people say they don’t “believe” in Darwin I tell them it’s OK because nature, unlike their God, is utterly indifferent to their belief system.
OT but related to yesterday’s post on coal miners, Spanish police are, as we speak, firing rubber bullets into crowds of coal miners demonstrating in Madrid.
magurakurin
@c u n d gulag: I don’t think it is an idiotic idea, but there are scary elements to it. The United States of Canada so to speak with the Northeast and the Upper Midwest as well as California and the Northwest merging into Canada would probably be an awesome country. We’d probably have to think of some sort of way to connect New Mexico and Colorado though, lest they become islands drifting in a sea of madness. Perhaps there could be some sort of corridor running along the Colorado River. That would be a really good thing anyway since it would give control of the River to The USC.
My biggest concern. How do we split the nukes? This really is a deal breaker for me. There is no way The Confederate States of Jesusland should be allowed any nukes. The thought of those nutjobs with atomic weapons is actually scarier than the thought of Pakistan’s nukes going full metal jihad. Not sure they’ll give them up quietly either.
SRW1
“Since the founders didn’t mention TB hospitals in the Constitution, …”
Also, states rights! What if Florida decides to let its poor die of TB? These bugs surely know that they can’t immigrate illegally into other states.
NotMax
@General Stuck
If I could be granted just a single wish this year, it is that someone associated with the ’08 McCain campaign who knows which box has the file folder with the 23 years of tax returns Romney provided them decides to make those public.
El Cid
Let them cough-up cake!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Hopefully this won’t sound too urban legend-y, but a friend of my co-worker was just diagnosed with TB here in California and has to spend 6 weeks in isolation away from her newborn baby to get intravenous antibiotics. She and her family are shocked because they’re nice, middle-class people, not the kind of poors who get TB.
It’s baaaaack ….
PeakVT
@El Cid: Lol.
dr. bloor
Has anyone broken the news to Florida that they’re going to be on the far side of that big-ass fence everyone wants to put up along the southern border?
Mino
It would be wrong to hope a few 1%ers might be coughed on by the clerk processing their credit card, wouldn’t it?
dr. bloor
@NotMax:
At some point, the old coot himself is likely to get pissed off enough at Rmoney to release the documents.
El Cid
@dr. bloor: Maybe it won’t be necessary, since given Florida’s completely porous ground structure, the rising sea levels will flood the land uniformly. There is no seawall able to protect them, as the entire state is the sea.
dr. bloor
@El Cid: So, you’re saying we can expect America’s penis to suffer shrinkage in the cold ocean water?
Thanks folks, I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to try the waitress and tip the veal.
rea
@robertdsc-PowerBook:
Since the founders didn’t mention TB hospitals in the Constitution
In 1819, the US bought Florida from Spain for $5 million. Under the rigthwingnuts’ preferred construction of the spending power in the Cosntitution, Congress is only empowered to spend money in connection with an express grant of power in Art. I, Sec. 8. US possession of Florida is therefore unconstitutional. Let King Juan Carlos deal with these idiots.
AnonPhenom
@PeakVT:
….. And it would prevent “voter fraud” becase it disproportionately effects “urban dewellers”.
c u n d gulag
@magurakurin:
No, the New Confederacy shouldn’t have a single nuke. Or aircraft carries, or sub, either.
After we take them, we tell them to follow their belief’s – God will protect them! :-)
scav
@General Stuck: I mean, how unreasonable of people. Until each and every person in these here Entire U-Night-Ed States is Competent, then the G-D President should be E-QUILL-EE IN-Competent as the Found-DEEN Fadders Wanted it. None of this elitism here, no how. We dun faugh a war wid them red coat rayalists to put our own gold-plated twits on the throne.
NonyNony
@rea:
What has Spain ever done to you? Don’t they have enough of their own problems?
RSA
@SRW1:
And personal autonomy! The government should not interfere with the rights of someone with TB or another communicable disease who decides not to receive treatment; other members of our Galt’s Gulch society, if they’re adversely affected by this decision, can seek redress in court.
Jay in Oregon
@beltane:
I’ve referred to it thusly: “It doesn’t matter if you believe in evolution; evolution believes in you.”
chopper
@Anya:
she likely thinks ‘pol pot’ is a state referendum on legalizing weed.
gelfling545
@Punchy: It probably is not a higher premium. Most employer plans are single or family, no adjustment for numbers of family on the plan.
chopper
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Jesus’s CPA had the same problem i hear.
Valdivia
True story: I come from a country where you get vaccinated for TB. This causes you to test positive for TB and the only way to make sure you don’t have it is to have an x-ray. When I lived in Atlanta, Georgia I got a physical and the TB test came out positive. I went and got the x-ray and it was clear. It took their State Health Dept. ONE year to contact me saying I had to prove to them I was clear of it because I was at risk of spreading TB. If I had had it, I would have been a veritable TB Mary all over the city of Atlanta after one year.
Nylund
@Litlebritdifrnt:
A similar thing just happened to me in casual conversation. My conservative friend (age 30), was railing against Obamacare. I looked at him and said, “You do realize that your 25 yr old girlfriend only has insurance because of Obamacare, right?” (she’s on her dad’s policy as her sales job doesn’t include benefits). He started going off about how that probably made his premiums higher since she’s getting free health care. “Huh?” I said, “She’s paying her own premiums. No one else is paying for her. The law just gave her the chance to buy insurance at a rate that most people pay through their employers that her employer doesn’t offer her. She’s no more and no less getting free insurance than you are.”
It was just shocking to me that he didn’t even realize how much the law was benefiting the person he lived with!
Linda Featheringill
No one has mentioned the headline on a WaPo opinion piece:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gop-to-the-uninsured-drop-dead/2012/07/10/gJQA4xZfbW_story.html
This headline is also carried on the front page.
[GOP to the Uninsured: Drop Dead]
Chris
@beltane:
Evolution remains my personal litmus test for whether someone has the minimum required intelligence to have a conversation with on politics or several other topics.
Sadly, it disqualifies something like half the country.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
You would think Mickey Mouse would have some influence over the state government. I wouldn’t vacation in a state where you get sick and die or someone can shoot you dead for no reason.
RedKitten
Fucking anti-vaxxers. You get one crappy study and one high-profile idiot who thinks that vaccines gave her kid autism, and now you have resurgences of TB and whooping cough all over North America. What’s next, fucking polio?
gbear
You don’t suppose that someone might start a rumor that there will be a free TB treatment clinic in Tampa Bay FL on August 27-30?
Gex
Hey Jenny McCarthy and Oprah, take a look at your handiwork. Dead kids!
ETA: @RedKitten: too late. There have already been outbreaks. Measles too.
Jebediah
@amk:
Wow! What Sherman did to Atlanta, she does to our language.
Davis X. Machina
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: Mickey don’t care. The hordes will continue to come, for every American must, if they can afford it, make the pilgrimage to Orlando, at least once in their life. The risk of death from infectious disease or gun violence just increases the merit that one acquires from making the pilgrimage.
maya
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s about time Democrats and Obama start calling the GOP a DEATH PANEL.
Will TB turn out to be Rick Scott’s Katrina?
Villago Delenda Est
@Joseph Nobles:
“The President is a ni*CLANG*”
“What’s she saying?”
“I think she’s saying the President is near”
Villago Delenda Est
@Joseph Nobles:
“The President is a ni*CLANG*”
“What’s she saying?”
“I think she’s saying the President is near”
ding dong
@Anya: she probably thinks pol pot is a pole pot that famous stripper who smokes pot while stripping on a bong shaped pole.
l@rea: e..I hear Spain has a return policy like Nordstroms you can return anything you bought anytime you are unhappy so yeah return Florida to Spain. Next up is the Lousiana and Alaska purchases.
@gelfling545: my guess is that scarbo`s son is at a job that doesn’t offer insurance.
Origuy
My roommate was telling me about a young woman on “What Not to Wear” that was stricken with polio. She’s about 25 and wears leg braces to compete in triathlons.
Another Halocene Human
@ding dong: I, for one, welcome my Spanish overlords. Buenvenidas!
Citizen_X
@ding dong: “Hello, Mexico? We’d like to return Texas and Arizona. They’re broken.”
“Return them? You pendejos stole them! Now you’re stuck with them. Get lost!”
chopper
@Nylund:
with any luck you can hope your friend is one of those conservatives that actually rethinks things when they apply to him. dunno.
Brachiator
@Nylund:
His girlfriend should ask if he will pay for her health insurance if the GOP wins and finds a way to repeal Obamacare.
@Chris:
The funny thing is how many liberals are disqualified who accept evolution, but misunderstand it. Fer xample, people who believe that evolution has a direction, purpose or goal, and that one day (if the GOP does not mess things up), we may become “more evolved” and hence more enlightened.
Bubblegum Tate
@chopper:
I was going to say “cops who bust weed dealers,” but yours is better, methinks.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
Except that in Florida, they’re likely to be dealt with by the Stand Your Ground law. TB is obviously dangerous to anyone near them, so they can legally be shot by anyone who is close enough to hear them coughing.
Roger Moore
@RedKitten:
Are not responsible for our TB problems; the USA has never routinely vaccinated against TB.
patrick II
@Nylund:
Man, that’s cold. I get it when a wingnut doesn’t want his own rates to go up to help some black stranger — I don’t approve, but I get it. But to complain that your rates are going up because the girl he is living with (and therefore at least likes if not loves — if he is capable of love) gets insurance is nuts. Does he not understand if she gets cancer and has no insurance she is a dead person? He is complaining about a few extra bucks to protect the woman he is living with? That’s a cold MF.
Jay in Oregon
@Brachiator:
A small yet not insignificant part of that is due to bad portrayals of science in movies and TV, too.
There’s a lot of terrible dialogue and plot points revolving around things “evolving before our eyes.”
Anoniminous
Anybody who bothered to pay attention knows multiple drug resistant diseases such as TB and gonorrhea are springing up all over the place. Anybody who bothered to sit down and think would realize gutting Public Health Services during this process is a massively stupid thing to do.
But that’s what they did so now they get to experience the consequences of their action.
Call it a state wide effort to win the Darwin Award.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
I prefer the solution that Whitechapel Bell Foundry took when the Procrastinators Club of America demanded that they replace the Liberty Bell because it was damaged. The Foundry, which is still in business, said they’d be happy to do so, provided the Bell was returned in its original packaging material.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
But he would just have to get a new girlfriend. It’s not like he’s married to her or anything. Maybe he doesn’t see a downside here.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Hope you friend has a nice, uncomplicated recovery.
It amazes me that people still believe that being middle class or higher automatically and magically exempts a person from some illnesses, or that there are poor people’s diseases and, I suppose, rich people’s diseases.
Mr Stagger Lee
@dr. bloor: Maybe the upscale whites will discover that good old tubercle bacillus, does not respect race or class. and what shoulkd get people’s shit up that it crosses borders. Damn I knew this was the wrong week to read Stephen King’s The Stand.
RedKitten
@Roger Moore: You’re correct. I was wrong. I was conflating the TD vaccine with a TB vaccine in my head.
So you’re right, the TB outbreak cannot be blamed on the anti-vaccine people.
I still reserve the right to loathe them, however. :)
Brachiator
@Jay in Oregon:
There appear to be a great number of Hollywood writers and directors who are anti-science morons (and yeah, I’m talking bout you, the production team behind Prometheus).
Supposedly there was even a plot point in the new Spiderman movie about “genetic destiny,” whatever the crap that’s supposed to be. Most of this was dropped, but there are vague promises that it will be taken up again in the inevitable sequels.
The tv show Heroes initially began with a halfway interesting take on things, but fell into nonsense about fate and destiny that was another version of Hollywood science denialism.
And so it goes.
Jebediah
@Brachiator:
Sounds like this idea of “directed evolution” would be a very comfy bedfellow with intelligent design.
chopper
@Roger Moore:
just remember clause 147(a)(1) which requires you to shout ‘they’re coming right for us!’. don’t want anyone to break the law.
SRW1
@gbear:
Yeah, and that because of the number of people expected to show up, the place will be the Tampa Bay Times Forum.
Hypatia's Momma
@Brachiator:
Or believe that individuals evolve. I blame the X-Files, which never managed to get that correct.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Have a 74 yr old friend who has TB. I have visited him in a ward when he had a reactivation and had to be hospitalized. This was around 25 years ago, but the people on the ward were mostly middle class adults.
Jay in Oregon
@Brachiator:
The computer/hacking technobabble is even worse. No, you can’t just type “OVERRIDE PASSWORD” to get into a computer system at a bank…
Leverage deserves some praise for attempting to get the tech right; John Rogers and Dean Devlin are science/tech geeks and the show frequently contains references to how much prep work Hardison, the team hacker, does before they go on a job. It’s easier to suspend disbelief when you create the impression that Hardison’s spent days or weeks getting the backdoors and Trojan horses into the targets’ network before they go out into the field.
But even they goof up; I’m looking at you, Parker-deflecting-laser-security-grid-with-tinfoil…
Darkrose
@Jay in Oregon: You’re derailing the fun train there…