TB Yes this is a problem.

This is another reason that I no longer fly.

I used to fly monthly from Africa to Houston, via London, the last leg being a ten or eleven hour non-stop flight. I can recall at least three occasions where I was seated (in Continental Business First seating) within a few feet of someone who was obviously ill with flu-like symptoms or worse. On all three occasions I was sick at home within a couple of days of having arrived in Houston.

Am I correct in assuming that the air in a commercial airliner is recycled throughout the plane via all those individual little air ducts? If so, I would think that ten hours of exposure, no matter where they were seated relative to the TB fool, would place everyone at risk.
 
There is another guy in the Maricopa County jail who is locked up until his TB treatment is over since he would not comply otherwise.

When I worked in a hospital, we got tested for TB annually since there was a concerned that we would get exposed to people with TB who stopped taking their medicine since they "felt better"
 

The FAA maintains there is no cabin air quality problem. Currently, the FAA has no minimum ventilation standards and no operating standards for air circulation. Airborne viruses, humidity levels and ozone continue to be problems on aircraft and present health problems for flight attendants and the public. These hazards are aggravated by newer aircraft which have lower levels of fresh circulated air. Presently, new model aircraft provide half fresh air and half-recirculated air that is freshened every six or seven minutes.

Yikes!
 
I am really an authoritarian when it comes to public health. More diseases should be reportable, including HIV, and hospitals and doctors should get severe sanctions if they fail to report. Depts. of public health should be better funded, and a field worker should see to it that every bum who is being treated for TB is really being treated.

Jail for failure to comply or playing hard to get, just like the guy in Phoenix. People get jail for things a lot less likely to cause important trouble for others.

The basic task of a society is to provide security for its members.

Ha
 
haha said:
I am really an authoritarian when it comes to public health. More diseases should be reportable, including HIV, and hospitals and doctors should get severe sanctions if they fail to report. Depts. of public health should be better funded, and a field worker should see to it that every bum who is being treated for TB is really being treated.

Jail for failure to comply or playing hard to get, just like the guy in Phoenix. People get jail for things a lot less likely to cause important trouble for others.

The basic task of a society is to provide security for its members.

Ha
Click to expand...

I agree but I think you will it the wall of political correctness with this one until people are dying in the streets. All sorts of analogies will be made from segregation to German extermination camps would be made.

Imagine the affect of the Spanish Flu would have in today's world - 30 to 50 million killed when it broke out (apx 1 billion pop). Let' guess with today's population 6.7 billion how many would die. I would estimate more than the 7X that the world pop. has grown due to speed of transmission - 300 million to ? 800million; 1 billion?
 
My father went into a TB sanatorium when he was 14 years old and came out when he was 20. Back in the 1930s, when this occurred, you knew what you had to do and did it. This goes back to Fliptresses discussion of duty.
 
Martha said:
My father went into a TB sanatorium when he was 14 years old and came out when he was 20. Back in the 1930s, when this occurred, you knew what you had to do and did it. This goes back to Fliptresses discussion of duty.
Click to expand...

Martha,
I want to meet you someday. Or, you should write a book. I will be getting into the RV saddle in the next week or two. I feel a RV RE meeting coming on (must include copious amounts of alcohol).
 
In the old days one of the procedures done to control progressive TB was to collapse the involved lung. Problem was, the body has a way of re-expanding the lung over time. So some surgeon realized he could keep the lung collapsed by packing the dead space with ping pong balls.

As a medical resident moonlighting in a county chronic care hospital/nursing home I had a patient where the ping pong balls were simply never removed. She was fine, but her chest x-ray was unbelievable: one side chewed into scar tissue by TB and the other side packed with dozens of little spheres.

Other patients had TB in their bone, intestines, skin, lymph nodes, liver, kidneys and just about everywhere else. It was a horible disease, much like widespread cancer. The along came isoniazid, streptomycin and a few others. Voila - cured if you follow the program.
 
An interesting thing: I haven't heard the gentleman's name used yet, though his activities conciously put a large number of people at risk of death. This in contrast to our local paper, which reported names and employers as well as printing photos of a college professor and two teachers picked up for public indecency, a misdemeanor, in a sting at a local homosexual "hookup" public wayside park. Just find it odd that the gays get hammered and the potential Typhoid Mary character is being treated with great circumspection.
 
bssc said:
There is another guy in the Maricopa County jail who is locked up until his TB treatment is over since he would not comply otherwise.
Click to expand...

I recently read about a Russian-American who is being confined to a hospital's prison ward in Arizona until his treatment is complete. Story indicated that he didn't keep up with his treatment in Russia, flew over here and had a flare-up, and wasn't too cooperative about treatment...

This guy amazes me ... you'd think he'd want to get the TB cleared up before he got married, for gosh sakes...
 
Heard on the news tonight that the TB guy got the test results when he was in Italy, and it was strongly recommended that he check himself into a hospital there. The US then changed his passport status, and he was also put on the no-fly list.

I guess that explains his unusual return trip. He flew from Europe to Montreal (by avoiding flying to the US, he didn't trigger no-fly). Then he drove from Montreal into the US (again avoiding triggering no-fly, and no passport needed for non-air travel into US from Canada). But they missed him in Customs by a name-only check, I guess.
 
On a news program last night, they opined that, chances are, no one would be infected, sonce he was asymptomatic.

They also noted he has a version of TB that is called "x-something", meaning that it was "extended treatment resistant"...
 
The patient with the ping pong balls must have been pretty sick. Did she bounce back?
 
Might this make some of the passengers "uninsurable" later?

OK, now they've identified the guy with TB on the plane (one Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta attorney) and dozens of passengers who were on the trans-Atlantic flights are being tested. According to an interview on MSNBC with one of the passengers, after the tests the passengers will have to take some sort of medication for six to nine months and have repeated tests for some undetermined period to ensure that they remain TB-free. The young woman being interviewed said the CDC covered the cost of the TB tests so far, but she was unsure as to who would pay for the associated medications and future tests.

Two questions for this forum:
1. What do you think are the chances that these passengers might be tagged as having a pre-existing condition later should they apply for health insurance? and
2. Could the other passengers file suit against Mr. Speaker and/or his insurance provider to cover their expenses?

BTW, In an odd twist, Speaker's father-in-law works as a microbiologist at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory that studies tuberculosis and other bacterial infections.

Bob Cooksey said he gave his son-in-law "fatherly advice" when he learned he had contracted the disease.

Cooksey said that had he known his daughter was at any risk, he would not have allowed her to travel. He said he did not act in any official capacity with the CDC on the case.
 
The plot thickens:

TB patient's relative works on TB research

"The man infected with potentially fatal tuberculosis is a lawyer from Atlanta, Georgia, whose father-in-law works at the Centers for Disease Control. Andrew Speaker, 31, is now receiving treatment in Denver, Colorado, as health officials track down people he may have infected. His father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, is a microbiologist who has conducted research on tuberculosis for CDC, according to a biography posted on the agency's Web site."
 
Achiever51 said:
:
1. What do you think are the chances that these passengers might be tagged as having a pre-existing condition later should they apply for health insurance? and
2. Could the other passengers file suit against Mr. Speaker and/or his insurance provider to cover their expenses?

.
Click to expand...


Any passengers that have positive Tb tests will have to undergo treatment and have regular chest x-rays for the rest of their lives .If I was one of the passengers I'd sue because he knowingly put a lot of people at risk for a severe disease .Had it been someone not so educated I would consider it just my bad luck but he's a personal injury lawyer with plenty of knowledge available from his father -in -law about the risk of TB .I also think his father -in -law should lose his job for his part in this fiasco
 
This story gets more disgusting every time that any details are added. He should pay the maximum criminal and/or civil penalties that apply to this kind of thing. I hope that some district attorney, whoever has the jurisdiction rights, prosecutes him until he pays for this. Federal charges would apply, I assume.
 
How ironic is it that this clown is a PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER! His website is currently unavailable, but I found some cached stuff from his firm, like that he deals with car accidents, product liability, wrongful death. maybe he should add a new specialty for victims are suffering emotional distress and possible medical issues from needlessly being exposed to TB in an airplane!
 
tangomonster said:
How ironic is it that this clown is a PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER! His website is currently unavailable, but I found some cached stuff from his firm, like that he deals with car accidents, product liability, wrongful death. maybe he should add a new specialty for victims are suffering emotional distress and possible medical issues from needlessly being exposed to TB in an airplane!
Click to expand...
Find out what firm he's with. Real 'good' :confused: decision making abilities on this one....
IOW wouldn't use this guy or this firm
 
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