First of all, I want to respond to this picture that greeted me on the cover page of cnn.com this afternoon:
Now, this thing just screams, “run for the hills! Lock yourself in a fallout shelter! Tuberculosis is a’coming, and he is gonna kill your baby!”. Now, I am all for public health and awareness, but this much press to this case of TB is a little bit blown out of proportion. I say this, because even though it is a drug resistant strain of TB, this is what the CDC has to say about TB in the US:
…with increased funding and attention to the TB problem, we have had a steady decline in the number of persons with TB since 1992. But TB is still a problem; more than 14,000 cases were reported in 2003 in the United States.(source)
Now, that means that out of the millions and millions of people that live in the US, chances of getting TB are still pretty low. In fact, even all this press is stressing that those that were closest to the person on the flight were the ones that were most likely exposed; even though that doesn’t mean they were necessarily infected.
My point is, this form of scare tactic public health tends to do more harm than good. I bet those people are freaking out, and in turn freaking their families and friends out. Not only that, they have no way of truly preventing the fact that they have actually been exposed. What they should do, rather than splashing these terrifying images and headlines all over the news, is contact those that have been infected, test them, and move on.
I say this, because even CDC doesn’t use these scare tactics; that is all from the lovely media. More from the CDC website on TB:
In the United States, 49 cases of XDR TB have been reported between 1993 and 2006. (source)
This potentially makes this guy #50. Not too many people at risk here, so why the scare? Oh yeah, because he was on a plane. But wait, this is what CDC says about air travel and this specific strain of drug-resistant TB:
Air travel itself carries a relatively low risk of infection with TB of any kind.(source)
Well damn, there is pretty low risk, even to those people that were exposed to it. Again, why the media circus? Because, fear is what the media uses to manipulate us. It makes us feel less safe, and as such, gives them something to stir up. I just hate when it uses public health to do it; especially in cases like this that really don’t deserve the amount of attention this is getting. Sigh… I guess that is just part of living in this country; scared to death of everything, just because the media makes it seem that it is a direct threat to me, and may kill me. I mean, shit, TB is bad enough, but one they can’t cure!? I’ll never fly again! Well, that’s not true, but that is the kind of feeling they are going for. Shame on you “liberal” media, for twisting this story into something more grandiose than it really is.
Also… here’s the thing that I don’t want to admit: James and I have been shopping at Walmart recently. I feel so ashamed. I feel like I have given in to that deep down red neck side of me that still lives down in there somewhere. I mean, there’s nothing more ghetto-red neck fabulous than Walmart. But they have great prices! Damn, it is so hard to forget about how they rape their employees by preventing them from having company sponsored health care, so I won’t go often. Yeah… that will work. But I saved money! The humanity of it all. Damn you Walmart and your seductive prices!! Seriously though, I feel bad about it, but I guess not bad enough to never go back. I will just have to stay away from that side of the highway. That will make it a little better, I suppose.
Hope everyone’s hump day is humptastic! Thanks again for the support on the letter from yesterday, it was much appreciated.