TB patient demonstrates *'s utter failure once again

It's been how long since 9-11? During this time, * has been promising to keep us safe from biological terror attacks. We've been warned about the dangers posed by potential pandemics like bird flu. Yet one single person has shown how, once again, * has completely failed. Where were the procedures to deal with this sort of highly infectious disease? How is it that, despite knowing this person was infected, he was able to travel so easily around and possibly infect many others?

I swear, it continually amazes me how an administration can be so completely clueless and inept about everything.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WORK, PUT US IN CHARGE AND WE WILL PROVE IT.

:grr:

That man and his father-in-law are both fools.

Seems like it wouldn't be all that hard for someone to infect themselves with a highly contagious disease and spread it around. If we KNEW this guy was carrying TB and couldn't quarantine him, how can we expect to stop anyone who is intent on infecting others?

Especially in large urban centers, you have no way of knowing who is standing next to you on the street. The borders are virtually wide open and I think that * and his crew have been watching too many movies to get plots.

To positions where they control programs designed to serve the public. Bush has been so fixated on choosing people who have the "right" opinions on subjects such as sex, the environment, privatization, religion, ad nauseum, that he hasn't bothered to check if any of them were competent. He's been gutting virtually every government funded agency to promote his warped agenda. Considering all the money that was diverted from public health to focus on "bio-terrorism", the failure to have any plan for dealing with a contagious, potentially lethal, multi-drug-resistant disease amounts to criminal negligence.

Just business as usual for BushCo. Heckuva job, CDC!

know it because they can't afford H/C & have no insurance. Probably a whole bunch, legal and illegal.

Now where are the Minutemen AND the NAFTA superhighway people AND the North American Union people who pop up here with their fear mongering about the SOUTHERN border.

So this allegedly super contagious dude crosses into the U.S. from the NORTHERN border, and our highly trained border guard IS alerted via the boondoggle-expensive electronic passport that we will all soon be required to have, yet the guard passes the dude through within minutes "because he LOOKED ALL RIGHT."

Just saying, that this dude didn't LOOK Alquaidic, not to mention -- GASP! MEXICAN! -- so ALL of that WASTED money we have spent on Rudy GIULIANI "security" equipment and training proves its worth yet again.

Let's say, just for fun, that the TB dude had LOOKED like the "Shoe Bomber" - really RAD-odd - AND had been STOPPED at the border. We would have been subjected to unending MORE hysteria about border security and SEALING the Southern border (against the facts about the NORTHERN border) AND we would all be electronically chipped.

As it is, the aforementioned border fanatics are willing to break the bank at the SOUTHERN border with open-ended hiring of Border Patrol, dune buggies, drone planes, horses, river boats, militarizing the border, electronic surveillance, laser border crossing documents (that go UNused)-- And FENCES!!1 How could I forget FENCES!!1

not to mention our having to HEAR the ravings of TANCREDO, MALKIN, O'LOOFAH, SENSENBRENNER, BROWNBACK, HANNITY and the rest on the subject...

Then the low-ranking border control agent did what his supervisor, his supervisor's supervisor, and his supervisor's supervisor's supervisor probably want to get drunk over: The agent let the man through, taking it upon him(her?)self to render a judgment.

The agent should be promptly fired, denied severance pay, and sued for endangering the public.

However, the point can't be stressed too strongly: No matter what the laws are, no matter what the regulations are, it's always--*always*--up to the people on the ground to make sure the regulations and laws work the way intended.

I am not particularly concerned about TB man, or measles man, but I am sooooooo tired of bushites pushing "we're keeping you safe" that I really appreciate when something like this happens to SHOW people that no, it is a sham.

Believe it or not, not everything that goes wrong is Bush's fault.

How do you expect Bush to stop this from happening?

Talked about this on Olbermann: basically the medical authorities admitted they "didn't have a plan" about what to do if they identified a case of XRTB (extremely resistant TB), and "made it up as we went along".

They didn't have a freakin' plan! All the hysteria about bird flu and bio-terrorism, the whole SARS experience, and they didn't have a plan! That's a failure at the highest governmental level, and you bet I blame Bush. All the money diverted from providing medical care to the poor via the public health system to "fighting bio-terrorism", and they don't even know how to deal with one case that poses a threat to the public? Imagine how much worse this would have been had an actual epidemic been in the early stages.

If Bush had bothered to appoint just one really competent epidemiologist to draw up a plan for coping with an infectious disease disaster, I would be sleeping easier at night. Because it's just a matter of time before one really happens. We don't need to worry about bio-terrorism: there are enough emerging diseases already.

You said pretty much what I was saying, but in a more concise manner.

We've been hearing about the threat of biological terror and pandemics for the past several years. Yet there is still no viable plan.

I'm a retired public health nurse, and I've been screaming about this for years!

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/31/cdc-budget/