Posted on 07/10/2014 8:10:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
(NOTE — Update at the End of the Column)
One of the things that changes you, when you become a parent, is the body of knowledge you acquire to protect your spouse and children including things like knowledge of infectious diseases in public schools. In my case that meant looking at the NY Times saying the following: “…the administration has begun to send the expected 240,000 migrants and 52,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border illegally in recent months in the Rio Grande Valley to cities around the county.” And at headlines for the open border crisis like this by Todd Starnes titled “Immigration crisis: Tuberculosis spreading at camps” which caused me to immediately free associate them with a pair of “Tuberculosis in Public School”, headlines, one local to North Texas in 2011 and the other very recently in California. See this 2011 Consumer Health Daily article from Denton Texas “TB Outbreaks in Texas Schools Show Disease Still a Threat – At least 100 people have tested positive for the respiratory ailment” and this 1 July 2014 article from the Sacramento Bee “Four more students test positive for tuberculosis at Grant High.”
As a Texas parent, this idea of TB positive illegal alien children released to illegal immigrant parents scares the heck out of me from the point of view of epidemiology. In the 1920s TB was the eighth leading cause of death for children 1-to-4 years old. Since then American public health has been so effective in preventing it that the USA no longer has any “herd immunity” to TB.
This “catch and release” illegal alien policy is horrible from the infectious disease point of view in that phlegm or aerosolized sputum that are contaminated with Mycobacterium tuberculosis are active biohazards that have long latent infection periods. This makes “exposure” very easy. The clinical definition of TB Exposure — which I found in a University of Vanderbilt student medical file PDF — is the following:
“A person is considered to be exposed if there is shared breathing space with someone with infectious pulmonary or laryngeal tuberculosis at a time when the infectious person is not wearing a mask and the other person is not wearing an N95 respirator. Usually a person has to be in close contact with someone with infectious tuberculosis for a long period of time to become infected; however, some people do become infected after short periods, especially if the contact is in a closed or poorly ventilated space.”
The Federal Government Hazmat protocol for dealing with suspected active TB cases is as follows:
1. Administrative controls • “Develop policies and protocols to ensure the rapid identification, isolation, diagnostic evaluation and treatment of persons likely to have TB.”
2. Engineering controls • Isolation and • Negative pressure room ventilation
3.Personal protective equipment controls • N95 personal respirator protection
Questions people and reporters need to be asking their local, state and federal elected officials regards the so-called “unattended child immigration crisis” include:
1. How many Border Patrol Agents, health workers or other support staff at these immigration processing centers have worn N95 respirators in treating symptomatic TB sufferers?
2. How many TB sufferers were also wearing masks?
3. Have those Border Patrol Agents, health workers or other support staff followed a rigorous TB decontamination protocol?
Whether people ask those questions or not, we are going to find out the answers soon, and not just in Texas. Testable anti-bodies to TB infection appear in two to 12 weeks for skin and blood tests and the incubation period for full blown active TB is six months to two(+) years.
TB SCREENING, LTBI AND VACCINATION While active TB can be found by chest X-rays, screening for latent TB infection (LTBI) can only be found by two tests that screen blood and skin. The problem for screening these illegal alien immigrants is, strangely enough, that they are from countries with wide scale TB vaccinations.
The TB vaccine is called BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin). It is considered controversial because it isn’t “very effective” in countries with a low incidence of TB, like the USA. However, that isn’t the biggest reason BCG isn’t usually given in the United States. Mass inoculation with BCG would remove both latent TB skin tests from the public health arsenal and increase the false positive rates from blood tests because those treated with BCG vaccinations all have the anti-bodies that current skin and blood tests look for. The public health system would lose most of its ability to track the spread of latent TB in the American population. The current public health paradigm of track, isolate and treat TB is about to come to a horrible end for the American public health system.
LTBI AND LETHAL DOSE 5% ISSUES The real issue with TB positive illegal alien children is what the US Military epidemiologists called the “LD-5 population” back during the days of the Anthrax postal attack after 9/11/2001. In US Military speak “LD” is lethal dose. So a chemical or biological attack that is “LD50” kills 50% of the exposed.
What the 9/11/2001 Anthrax postal attacks proved via the death of one little old lady victim of a wrongly addressed mail — mail that went through a contaminated post office distribution center — was that there is a huge population of “immune impaired” in the USA who would be “LD5″ for any infectious disease.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) list of “special consideration” for the treatment of drug resistant TB reflects that “LD5″ thought process. The list includes:
• Pregnant women • Older people who have suppressed immunity from diabetes, open heart or other major cardiac surgeries • HIV sufferers • Or children under 4 years of age
There are ten FDA approved antibiotic drugs for treatment of TB with a core of four drugs listed by the CDC as the “preferred treatment regimes” which lasts 6-to-9 months. Those core treatment regimen drugs include:
• isoniazid (INH) • rifampin (RIF) • ethambutol (EMB) • pyrazinamide (PZA)
The reason for so many different drugs is that TB is developing resistance to antibiotic treatment. According to the Texas Department of Health Services, TB is classified into three treatment groups — TB, multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB and extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB. The first responds to the ten standard antibiotic drugs, while the last two are less and less responsive to antibiotic treatments.
Multi-drug resistant TB is defined as INH and RIF resistant.
Extreme Drug Resistant TB is MDR plus resistant to any of the following:
• Any fluoroquinolone; plus one of three following injectable second line drugs • Capreomycin • Kanamycin • Amikacin
The six-to-nine month long TB antibiotic treatment regimes must be followed rigorously, and completed, or the LTBI and the active TB infected will breed more MDR and XDR TB strains.
COUNTING THE COST A LTBI individual represents a 5% risk of developing active TB in the first 2 years of infection and is at a cumulative 10% risk of active TB over his or her lifetime. The US Army medical community estimates 1/3 of the world population has LTBI, with World Health Organization (WHO) data showing 9.2 million active TB cases and 1.7 million deaths annually.
By way of contrast, the 2010 estimate for the US LTBI population was at 4.2% (11 million people).
That 1/3 LTBI infection number for foreigners means that adding one million new illegal aliens results in 300,000(+) new people with LTBI, or a 3% increase in America’s pool of LTBI people over that 2010 estimate. Some 30,000 of these people will have an active TB in their lifetime, and if we are talking recently infected children, up to 15,000 of that may happen in the next 2-years.
Given the current Federal Judiciary enforced defacto Open Borders policy of “All illegal aliens have the rights of citizens,” it is impossible to enforce, for reasons of Public Health, long term detention for a full directly observed therapy (DOT) course for the TB positive that are harbored in that the 12-to-20 million and growing illegal immigrant community.
The willingness of American citizens to follow TB medical protocols can be shown by the fact that even with LTBI positive US servicemen — who are getting mandatory treatment under color of authority — only 50% complete a full drug therapy course for LTBI. Thus we are certain to see more and more antibiotic resistant strains of TB everywhere.
A collapse of the current non-vaccination based public health standards on TB (See the 1996 article “The Role of BCG Vaccine in the Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis in the United States” in the notes below on the ‘track, isolate and treat’ standard model TB public health thinking) with the illegal alien community will be a huge budget issue for the Border Patrol, healthcare workers, emergency 1st responders, prisons…and increasingly Public Schools serving illegals.
The coming TB epidemic in the illegal population will force the public health system to require complete mandatory vaccination of children, all women planning to have children, healthcare workers, emergency 1st responders and prison populations nationwide for TB as the latent periods for TB will see all prisons and hospitals pretty much contaminated all the time.
The actuarial cost hit on public budget medical care coverage of families of Federal Border Patrol agents and Prison Guards infected with extremely resistant TB from Agent/Guard work related exposure will be mind boggling.
Knowing all the above, you can see why I am terrified.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR Forewarned is forearmed, so here are a list of “The TB Epidemic is here markers” to put in your social media and RSS feeds in terms of near future events –
• Mass orders of N95 masks by State, Federal or Military health systems. • Mass orders of BCG vaccine by State, Federal or Military health systems. • Shortages/price spike of the list of 10 standard TB antibiotics • “Cone of silence” media reporting of TB in public hospitals or school stories that exclude the mention of illegal alien TB sufferers. • Border Patrol Agent or health worker families becoming infected with TB from immigrant processing centers
Given the numbers of illegal immigrant children already released by the Obama Administration — and the further numbers it wants to release before President Obama leaves office — the only thing you can say for certain about the coming TB epidemic is that it is inevitable.
UPDATE 12:30pm -
I have been watching some of the comments over on the American Thinker article quoting my column regards the Center for Disease Control and why it isn’t acting more swiftly regards the TB threat.
I am going to point everyone to this book by Thomas S. Kuhn so you can understand their inaction —
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
Kuhn’s key point is that the only way that scientific paradigm change happens is over the dead bodies of those that hold the obsolete paradigm, while those that replace them hold the new scientific paradigm.
The CDC is made up of scientists just like the ones Kuhn described, scientists who have fought TB one way their entire careers and cannot think outside that paradigm.
They are so hugely locked into the existing “track, isolate and treat standard TB public health model” that they cannot acknowledge the reality that President Obama’s mass importation of unscreened for TB illegal alien children has already destroyed their life’s work.
My intent in writing the column was to provide “The Hand Book for the Coming TB Epidemic” for parents and public employee union shop stewards in the Border Patrol, Public Schools, and other State/Local Health Care/emergency 1st responder communities to give them all a template to push the transition from the “made obsolete as a result of stupid public policy” — See Obama’s DACA executive orders — “track, isolate and treat” public health model to a mass vaccination model.
Public employee unions have a huge dog in the fight against this coming TB epidemic and the Open Border policy that is creating it. Telling them how to avoid watching their children suffer a tortured agonizing death from TB is serving the general public’s interest as well as the unions.
I owe my 6-year old, 2 year old and 2-month old children that much and more.
Official TB Sources For Column:
TB Statistics The Big Picture https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/idcu/disease/tb/statistics/
Tuberculosis (TB) Treatment http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/treatment/default.htm
Treatment for TB Disease http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/treatment/tbdisease.htm#2
Treatment of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/treatment/drugresistanttreatment.htm
LTC Jamie Mancuso MD, MPH, “Tuberculosis in the US Military” Sept 15, 2010, Program Director, Preventive Medicine Residency Walter Reed Army Institute of Research http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.wrair.army.mil/Documents/TropMed/11-Mancuso-MTb-WRAIRTropMed.pdf&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ei=DlW9U8b8EcfJ8wGOsIGIBw&ved=0CCYQFjAC&sig2=grJBbk7-1M74eazs6-ptVA&usg=AFQjCNGkfjzLR0y3rrxsF9CEbNxPonGtUA
“The Role of BCG Vaccine in the Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis in the United States” A Joint Statement by the Advisory Council for the Elimination of Tuberculosis and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, April 26, 1996 / Vol. 45 / No. RR-4 www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr4504.pdf
Tuberculosis Among Nonimmigrant Visitors to U.S. Military Installations http://dx.doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-12-00297
Tuberculosis, Tuberculin Skin Test, and BCG Vaccine, Military Vaccine Agency, 1 March 2007 www.vaccines.mil/documents/1042mip-tuberculosis.pdf
That 300,000 was just the first wave. More are coming. The second wave of the Obama Invasion/Colonization will be here within days or weeks.
And it will keep happening until Obama is no longer President.
Yeah, I’m sure it’ll come to a screeching halt under President Clinton or Bush.
Whatever happens, the MSM will ignore it. The words “Tuberculosis” and “TB” will disappear from all media reports and will become a buzzword that the trained seals of the left will be taught to laugh at.
You mean just like George Bush stopped it or Clintoon one or GHWB or even the beloved Reagan who later regretted his compromise?
Go back and read my post again. You didn’t see me scoffing?
And I meant President HILLARY Clinton or President JEB Bush.
Will Speaker “Blank Check” Boehner pay for the 8 Million dollars cost of one-way tickets for these hordes of Obama human trafficking (children), or will Boehner take the easy way out and just give Obama all the Taxpayer Money that he wants?
My shots are up to date, I think.
Ha..mine was probably 55 years ago
Booneville, AR near Ft. Smith.
At that time I was 11 and we lived near what was a tuberculosis center. This place was huge and was built back in the 50’s or something. It didn't cover acres...it covered square miles. It was a quarantine center and fully self sufficient. The doctors, nurses, and all other workers lived there. They created all of their food; meat, vegetables etc. It was a city.
Tuberculosis patience's from all over came. In 1970 after the they pretty much eradicated the disease it was empty.
They sold a lot of the property and gave a huge chunk of it to the Boy Scouts who built a dam and giant camp. Family friend was the Scoutmaster and live out there and we had great parties.
that's the population of several cities. The more we ask probing questions, the higher the number magically becomes.
Frightening and so unnecessary.
Unless I missed it in the text, this is most likely drug resistant TB. And this is only what is known or what is being allowed to be reported on, as far as contagious infectious diseases. Should be a great fall/winter flu season here in the States.
TB even if you take the medications and get the all clear a year later from the doctor is with you for life. Inactive TB basically TB that has been treated and is no longer contagious {in remission} & can become active {contagious again} at any time and lots of cases of that happening even among the earlier strains. The second nursing home I worked at did have a patient test positive. So did a healthcare worker.
The generation that remembers epidemics like TB, Polio, the Asian Flu which took my grandmothers first husband in the early 1900's is nearly gone.
I went to school with Polio survivors in the early 1970's & they were older than me.
Our nation to deal with these epidemics used some health laws many today likely don't realize. TB diagnose meant likely involuntary hospitalization in a TB sanatorium for up to a year. Choice? You didn't have one. My mom's sister and her husband watched their son die from Polio. I remember taking the cube and the shot. I was born in 1957. My aunt my moms sister she never got to meet died of meningitis. Then there was Scarlet Fever, Whooping Cough, Small Pox, and more. Our nation put together health laws and policies to eradicate and prevent the contacting and spreading of these killers.
Look at the average age of reporters today. They don't have a clue. Look at the average age of members of the house and sensate. Most are old enough to have seen at least part of these epidemics and the horrors they cause.
The inaction by POTUS, Congress, and CDC as well as the farce DHS to act and immediately remove from our nation the invaders with these serious risk too our nation is tyranny.
They aren't being charitable. They have no right to be charitable risking our lives, our kids lives, and our grandkids lives, with their corporate lobbied for human trafficking into the United States of America.
I remember that place. I also remember one out at Fort Supply. What a desolate place. You’d either will yourself well to get out or die of desolation.
Wasn’t there also one at Talihina?
I know whereever there was a TB Sanitarium there was a stigma to stay away from the place.
Dear Lord, we pray one of these ‘children’ will be front and center to offer a bouquet of flowers to the little boy king. Perhaps this was the reason the coward feared a trip to the border when visiting Texas. He must have that yellow stripe tattooed on his back. If we should experience a wave of infection and subsequent diseases, may the creature in our oval office suffer in the most agonizing way imaginable...painful and long. And Lord, please help find a place in my heart to understand why we should forgive him for what he has done to your gift....our America!
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