"See, this is why you simply can't run government like a business. It's not a business. You can't just walk away from a non-profitable division when it's your job to look out for the public's health and well-being. I know that Republicans and their hard-core enablers like to tell themselves these fairy tales, but it just doesn't work. (Are you listening, Gov. Scott?) Via Raw Story:
The state of Florida has been struggling for months with what the Centers for Disease Control describe as the worst tuberculosis outbreak in the United States in twenty years.
Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.
The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated requests. These documents should have been freely available under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
According to the Post, the coverup began as early as last February, “when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia.”
That decision now appears to have gone terribly awry, partly because the disease appears 0 but also because just nine days before the CDC warning was issued, Florida Governor Rick Scott had signed a bill downsizing the state’s Department of Health and closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital that had treated the most difficult tuberculosis cases for over 60 years.
With health officials preoccupied by the challenge of restructuring, the CDC report went unseen, and an order even went out for the hospital to be closed immediately, six months ahead of schedule.
According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.
Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure."
People in Florida should be out in the streets DEMANDING their Officials address this.You have sick people walking around possibly infecting all they come in contact with while the CROOK they elected plays Governor.
Disease does not stop at state lines.We are all in danger because of this asshole and the idiots who elected him.When their children start dropping dead will they then understand ?If it weren't so serious I'd laugh at these self rightous turds for their stupidity.Hey.you put him in office.A guy who wiggled out of jail for his part in the largest to date Medicare Scam in history.They wre told.The info was out there.
So if an epidemic occurs we know where it started and why and as the Sea Level rises in the limp dick state displacing millions in years to come they can take solance in the fact that maybe TB will kill them first,thats if they have not been locked up already in Florida's new Debtors Prisons.gb
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