I read somewhere that Legionarre’s never disappeared. What’s not common is identified clusters. Does it sometimes get diagnosed as pneumonia?
“I read somewhere that Legionarre’s never disappeared. What’s not common is identified clusters. Does it sometimes get diagnosed as pneumonia?”
It is a pneumonia. Many years ago, 1976, when this was first identified in a large group at a convention in Philadelphia, Penn., my husband was there at a business meeting, not part of the convention, but stayed in the same hotel where people caught it, and he caught it and brought it home to me. It was like an extremely bad flu/chest involvement that didn’t want to get better. I had it for weeks but wasn’t hospitalized.
At that time, they determined this bacteria had grown in the air conditioning system, the cooling tower, in the hotel and was dispersed throughout the hotel so people were breathing in this bacteria constantly and that’s why so many became ill. The below is from the United States Department of Labor:
Legionellosis is a common name for one of the several illnesses caused by Legionnaires’ disease bacteria (LDB). Legionnaires’ disease is an infection of the lungs that is a form of pneumonia. A person can develop Legionnaires’ disease by inhaling water mist contaminated with LDB. LDB are widely present at low levels in the environment: in lakes, streams, and ponds.
At low levels of contamination, the chance of getting Legionnaires’ disease from a water source is very slight. The problem arises when high concentrations of the organism grow in water systems. Water heaters, cooling towers, and warm, stagnant water can provide ideal conditions for the growth of the organism.
Scientists have learned much about the disease and about LDB since it was first discovered in 1976. This outbreak occurred in 1976, in a Philadelphia hotel where the Pennsylvania American Legion was having a convention. Over 200 Legionnaires and visitors at this convention developed pneumonia, and some died. From lung tissue, a newly discovered bacterium was found to be the cause of the pneumonia and was named Legionella pneumophila.
"When the CDC personnel arrived, pre-positioned EIS members such as Beecham and top health adviser Robert Sharrar stopped obeying local authorities and began following orders from the incoming CDC team. The CDC began fomenting wild rumours that this "Legionnaire's disease" was the beginning of the swine flu epidemic. The media proved cooperative; the New York Times assigned none other than Lawrence Altman, an EIS alumnus, to cover the story.
With nationwide hysteria rapidly developing, Congress suddenly changed its mind and approved the swine flu vaccine. Some 50 million Americans were inoculated over the next several months, ultimately producing at least 1,000 cases of severe nerve damage and paralysis, dozens of deaths, and nearly $100 million in liability claims. Meanwhile, within days of the legislative approval, the EIS team finally acknowledged the pneumonia was not related to swine flu, but the announcement came too late.