Posted on 12/27/2009 4:11:24 PM PST by jessduntno
LANTANA, Fla. (Dec. 27) - It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away.
Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood.
I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad."
It was really bad, and not just for him.
Doctors say Juarez's incessant hack was a sign of what they have both dreaded and expected for years - this country's first case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not been made public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring global challenge of drug resistance.
Juarez's strain - so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB - has never before been seen in the U.S., according to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation's leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it.
"He is really the future," Ashkin said. "This is the new class that people are not really talking too much about. These are the ones we really fear because I'm not sure how we treat them."
(Excerpt) Read more at sphere.com ...
Stopping smoking?
I'm going to file this under D...for duh.
Of course there are other and better reasons...this is just one more. ONLY 990 deaths a year? Not insignificant if your mother is one, yes? Or not insignificant if it is, as some say, a NEW and more VIRULENT strain. Then the number might reach...oh...3,000 dead. Significant? 3,000 dead innocents because of a foreign invasion? Sound familiar? Tell me, professor...can you make a brick wall without bricks? No? Which will one you put into place before others might notice and say "Oh, look! There is a brick wall!"
47,500 deaths every year in car accidents
425,425 Heart attack deaths in the United States in 2006
556,902 people died of cancer in the USA in 2003
167,366 deaths in 1999 due to stroke
63,730 annual deaths for influenza and pneumonia
Do you see where this is going?
Nah, I am not scared of dying with TB.
Odds are ten thousand to 1 it will be something else.
I am much more concerned about murders and accidents caused by illegal immigrants than spreading TB.
It will take 6000 years for TB to kill as many killed by heart attacks. Your post is barking up the wrong tree.
“47,500 deaths every year in car accidents
425,425 Heart attack deaths in the United States in 2006
556,902 people died of cancer in the USA in 2003
167,366 deaths in 1999 due to stroke
63,730 annual deaths for influenza and pneumonia”
Do you see where this is going?”
Unless you think these nubers are due to invasion of aliens in the US, your logic needs mustard.
Seek help...
“I am much more concerned about murders and accidents caused by illegal immigrants than spreading TB.”
And THOSE numbers are?
Seek help...
Don’t have stats handy. But it is not insignificant.
and another note...I don’t come in prolonged close contact
with any illegal immigrants to be susceptible to catching TB. Most people who catch TB are malnourished and I am just the opposite LOL.
But one need not know an illegal to be killed in a car accident or murdered in a robbery etc.
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