Airbone Virus!

[Furtherman]

Ahem... that's AIRBORNE.

Time for your scary doom and gloom story today!

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Federal health authorities are looking for people who may have been exposed aboard a plane to someone infected with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis known as XDR-TB. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/05/29/tb.flight/index.html)

The infected patient traveled to Europe via Air France Flight 385, departing Atlanta on May 12 and arriving in Paris on May 13, the CDC said.

The patient returned to North America last Thursday aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague, Czech Republic, to Montreal, Canada, then drove into the United States.

Great! This guy has been all over! Did he look like this?

http://www.davidmorse.org/photo/twelve/images/PDVD_026.jpg

People who are ill with TB of the lungs, the site most commonly affected, can spread the disease by coughing, sneezing or even talking.

SSSHHHHH!!!!!


Ok, it's a small percentage of a chance that you'll get it. But one day, this is how it's gonna go down! Prepare the bunker!

[cupcakelove]

Time to dust off your old SARS masks.

[SatCam]

Airbone

What is AirBud's favorite chew toy?

http://www.rochestergoesout.com/mov/a/airbud1.jpg

[Furtherman]

What is AirBud's favorite chew toy?


:laugh:

[King Hippos Bandaid]

looks like the Germ Warfare has begun against the French

:king:

[pennington]

I thought the original report said the disease was spread by 12 monkeys.

[A.J.]

If people would cover their mouths when coughing and yawning, and if they would also wash their hands, this wouldn't be a problem.

[torker]

It's a bacteria.

[Furtherman]

ATLANTA (AP) - A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 had health officials around the world scrambling Wednesday to find passengers who sat near him on two trans-Atlantic flights.

The man told a newspaper he took the first flight from Atlanta to Europe for his wedding, then the second flight home because he feared he might die without treatment in the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding said Wednesday that the CDC is working closely with airlines to find passengers who may have been exposed to the rare, dangerous strain. Health officials in France said they have asked Air France-KLM (AKH) for passenger lists, and the Italian Health Ministry said it is tracing the man's movements.

[patsopinion]

meh


(conspiracy theory:)
as long as its actually tb and and not something more dangerous that they are just calling tb to play down something else

[BoondockSaint]

Wow. Check out the dude's wife. She looks pretty fucking hot.

http://www.drudgereport.com/ta.jpg

But I was fooled by that chick in that Popeye episode so what do I know.

[johnniewalker]

Wow. Check out the dude's wife. She looks pretty fucking hot.


But I was fooled by that chick in that Popeye episode so what do I know.
I saw that pic today, it doesn't matter what is going on under that mask, that guy made the right choice.

[PapaBear]

ATLANTA (AP) the CDC is working closely with airlines
I wonder if his father in law is one of the ones doing all this work.

[sailor]

meh


(conspiracy theory:)
as long as its actually tb and and not something more dangerous that they are just calling tb to play down something else

2 million die from tb every year compared to approx 3 million from aids. it's pretty darn dangerous in its own right.

[Yerdaddy]

Places I been I could eat a plate of TB and sop up the yolks with my toast.

But it's a brutal disease that God created especially to brutally torture the sick and poor for his own amusement. Or maybe he also created the First and Third Worlds to see if we First-Worlders are selfish dicks or not? Maybe he's mysterious after all.

TB killed 1.7 million people in 2005. And it's on the rise. Bill Gates' foundation trusts this organization(s) enough to donate to it. (http://stoptb.org/) Hopefully this news story will help raise awareness and funding to help alot of people. (This is a blatant hint. I got checked out at the local children's hospital here in Cambodia the other day. I was fine but the kid in bed next to me had TB and he was far from fucking fine. I donated to the hospital and to this org.)

[sailor]

how come the 2nd world never gets any press?

[Yerdaddy]

how come the 2nd world never gets any press?

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/1459/janbradysecondworldny0.jpg

[Yerdaddy]

Return of the White Plague (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/08/AR2007060802480_pf.html)

As doctors have long known, and as the rest of the world is beginning to appreciate, TB is very much alive and well. It began to rise again in developed nations in the 1980s, largely as a result of funding cuts for TB prevention and treatment programs and the emergence of the AIDS pandemic. The reemergence of tuberculosis has been most devastating, however, in impoverished nations, particularly ones where HIV/AIDS is prevalent, because AIDS significantly increases a person's susceptibility to tuberculosis. As TB cases have multiplied, so have the numbers of people either inadequately or incompletely treated -- which, in turn, has led to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of the microbe that causes the disease.

Our understanding of the prevalence of XDR-TB is somewhat sketchy. Nevertheless, the transformation of a once treatable disease into an infectious foe as deadly as it was when Eugene O'Neill was confined to his 1913 sanatorium is the worst nightmare of those charged with protecting public health. XDR-TB has appeared 49 times in the United States between 1993 and 2006 and is of particular concern in Eastern Europe, South Africa and Asia.

In the fall of 2006, the World Health Organization declared XDR-TB to be a global emergency and beseeched the wealthiest nations to contribute $95 million by the end of this year to contain it. But many billions more are needed to thoroughly treat the millions of cases of drug-sensitive tuberculosis so that those patients don't become resistant to standard antibiotics.

Today, more than one-third of the world's more than 6 billion people have been exposed to the tuberculosis germ. Five to 10 percent of them, or at least 100 million, will develop symptomatic TB. Each will infect 10 to 20 people before they are either successfully treated or they die. Last year, active -- and contagious -- tuberculosis was diagnosed in more than 8.8 million people. Approximately 420,000, or 5 percent, of them have a drug-resistant strain that requires several more medications than drug-sensitive cases do; about 30,000 of these 420,000 cases are even more difficult and expensive to treat, the highly lethal XDR-TB.

TB is not the only disease once close to eradication that is experiencing a scary renaissance. Drug-resistant strains of syphilis have reportedly been on the rise; and strains of once-conquered germs such as staph and strep have developed powerful and broad resistance to just about every antibiotic known and, as a result, wreak havoc on unsuspecting hospital patients. In the never-ending dance between humans and microbes, we have been leading for only about half a century. These deadly germs are evolving, mutating and revising their structure to reclaim the upper hand in their powers of infection.

We live in a risky world menaced by war, terrorism, economic inequities and global warming, to name a few major threats. But ask any doctor what keeps him awake at night, and he will probably tell you about emerging and reemerging infectious diseases such as XDR-TB.


Tuberculosis is a bad disease, and it's contagious. International air travel poses real risks in the spread of tuberculosis. Coughing, sneezing, singing, yelling and even laughing can spread TB germs. People contract tuberculosis after prolonged exposure (eight hours or more) to someone with the illness. This is the same length of time as most transoceanic flights, where passengers breathe re-circulated air for hours on end.

Howard Markel, a professor of communicable diseases and the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, is the author of "When Germs Travel."

[El Mudo]

how come the 2nd world never gets any press?



It doesn't exist any more

The term "Second World" is a phrase that was used to describe the Communist states within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Along with "First World" and "Third World", the term has been used to divide the nations of Earth into three broad categories. The term has largely fallen out of use since the end of the Cold War. The other two 'worlds' are still widely talked about, although "First World" is now deprecated for the more politically correct "developed country" and "Third World" has been replaced with "developing country".