We don’t know if the person who died of TUBERCULOSIS in Nebraska in late October was an American who had been traveling or an immigrant who might have lived in that part of Nebraska as part of the ever-expanding foreign born meatpacker work force in the state.
We don’t know because health officials there aren’t saying and didn’t answer questions by Breitbart reporter, Michael Leahy, who has become an expert on TB over the last year.
So, of course, one naturally asks the question:
How does the secrecy surrounding this case and withholding of statistics in other states keep us safer?
Wouldn’t you like to know if the deceased person crossed your path (the patient isn’t alive to explain where he or she had traveled for months preceding death)?
From Breitbart:
State and local public health officials are offering few details about the mysterious tuberculosis (TB) death of a patient first diagnosed last month at a hospital in Fremont, Nebraska.
Fremont is a city of 26,000 about 40 miles northwest of Omaha that was at the center of a national controversy in 2010 when it passed an ordinance that prohibits landlords from renting to individuals who are not American citizens.
“Three Rivers Public Health Department said they received notification that a patient evaluated and treated at Fremont Health on October 29, 2017 tested positive for tuberculosis. That patient was transferred to Nebraska Medicine and later died at that facility,” WOWT reported.
“We’re actively investigating this case of TB and we’re interviewing family and community members to identify any setting where other individuals might have been exposed to this patient,” Terra Uhing, executive director of Three Rivers Public Health Department, which is responsible for public health in three rural counties–Dodge, Washington, and Saunders–with a combined population of about 77,000, said in a statement released on Monday.
“Safety is our number one priority and we’re taking all the necessary steps to make sure people identified at risk for exposure are evaluated,” Uhing added in that statement.
Deaths from active TB are rare in the United States, since highly effective and relatively inexpensive treatment regimens have been widely in effect for more than five decades [Unless it is Multi-drug resistant TB—ed]. Virtually all patients who receive an early diagnosis and complete the treatment regimen survive.
The patient who was diagnosed with TB in Fremont, Nebraska on October 29 died within days of that diagnosis, indicating the patient had been walking around with active TB for many months prior to death.
There is much more including how local communities have been stressed by BIG MEAT bringing in cheap immigrant labor. I’m not saying the dead patient worked at a meat plant, but the point is, we don’t know because health officials are withholding virtually all information.
If you have a few hours, visit RRW’s ‘health issues category’ here where I have archived 342 other posts on refugee/immigrant physical and mental health. There are lots of TB stories there because refugees are admitted to the US with TB (with the understanding that state and US taxpayers will foot the bill for their meds!).