A perfectly horrid news story: there is nothing in the story to explain why authorities thought an infectious or toxic agent (as opposed to something like a congenital aneurysm) was to blame.
It helps to read the short story “medical detective” stories of Berton Roueché, like Eleven Blue Men, and The Incurable Wound.
At the dawn of the age of antibiotics, there was a lot more concern about dangerous and unusual communicable diseases, especially after the US military was introduced to a whole bunch never before seen in America.
However, antibiotics and vaccines were so effective that people for the most part forgot. But now with a new age of antibiotic resistant bacteria rising, medical personnel are remembering to treat it with much more respect.
Quietly, the number of reported antibiotic resistant infections in the US passed one million a year in the mid-2000s. What everyone is waiting for is a growing number of virulent, even lethal cases.
Also thinking what you posted.