I hereby apologize to TB guy.

[hedgehog]

The more I hear about this story, the more it stinks. I'm starting to think he was set up to draw attention from something else. How could he be under treatment since January without knowing what kind of TB he had? As far as I know, the standard protocol is to isolate the TB patient until a sputum test shows that they are essentially non-contagious. In other words, his body had reduced the bacteria count low enough that it is unlikely that he was a hazard to anyone. Does anyone here think his father-in-law would have allowed his daughter and grand-daughter to be exposed to someone actively shedding the TB bacillus?

[BrklynLiberal]

1. It is likely that there are many facts about this story that have not come out yet.

You have made some good points.

[LisaL]

2. How could he be under treatment since January not knowing

what kind of TB he had?
Easy. These tests take a long time because it's a very slow growing bacterium.
I've just watched a show and complain was neither new medications nor tests have been developed in years and years. I am talking decades here.
Bacterium is evolving and becoming drug resistant, but new medications aren't being developed.
Apparently not enough money for the pharmaceutical companies to make a big investment into it.

[pnwmom]

4. And they gave him a course of treatment with more than one set of drugs.

Which is how they determined he was multi-drug resistant.

[pnwmom]

3. Those aren't quite the facts as I've heard them.

It's not that treatment reduced the bacteria in his sputum. As far as I know, they've never found any bacteria in his sputum. The way they determined that he is multidrug resistant is that they gave him the full course of treatment with drugs -- which takes months -- and his body didn't respond -- as shown in his blood and x-ray.

What they told him is that even though he presently had no fever or cough, and no apparent bacteria in his sputum, any of that could SUDDENLY change, and he then could be highly contagious. They were still waiting on the results of the final tests when he pushed up the date of his wedding and left the country.

My impression is that his father went into lawyer-mode in the meetings with the health people, trying to get them to prove how sick and/or contagious his son really was. The father-in-law appears to have been more concerned, but how much could he do? After all, his daughter was practically eloping anyway.

[WI_DEM]

5. TB guy? is that what he is known as now?

[LisaL]

6. Yep, that would be him.

[kestrel91316]

7. I think "TB Andy" is appropriate, given how his behavior reminds

me so much of "Typhoid Mary", who also didn't believe she could possibly be a threat, in spite of being told so by health authorities, and went around exposing everybody she could with gay abandon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon

[TZ]

8. my thoughts exactly!

Which I believe I posted in one of the other nine billion TB man threads.:)
Great minds think alike..:hi:

[AlCzervik]

9. an article in my newspaper had the title "TB man" this morning.

[Buns_of_Fire]

24. The name makes him a marginally more sympathetic figure

than being known, say, as "Flatulence Guy."

Or, as I refer to him, "that little twit who endangered thousands of people because he's a self-centered asshat."

[tammywammy]

10. I'm waiting to pass judgement until we hear more

The whole thing is fishy.

[LisaL]

11. I don't see anything fishy about it.

TB is a big problem in Asia, Africa and India. Much less in the US right now.
But since people travel, and new drugs aren't developed, it could become a big problem here as well.

[tammywammy]

12. Oh I've read about his traveling

It bothers me that he traveled with it. But he says he has a taped conversation with the health dept that says it's okay to travel.

I do understand that it takes time to find out if it was the drug resistant strain, so that doesn't bother me.

[snagglepuss]

13. Health authorities told him it was advisable not to travel. That was

when he was planning his trip. When the CDC contacted him in Italy they "begged" not to fly because at that point the CDC had identified the strain of TB. At that point TB guy, knowing he had a deadly strain altered his return travel plans so he could avoid the US no-fly list.

[tammywammy]

15. I knew about them contacting him overseas telling him not to travel

but I thought that I read that he had a tape of them saying it was okay? Maybe I'm just mistaken though. And why wouldn't his FIL, who apparently knew he had TB, tell him not to travel?

[LisaL]

16. Yes, you are mistaken.

He was told they prefer he does not travel before he went to Europe. But he went anyway, since they did not forbid him to travel. Then after he gone to Europe he was told he should not be flying back on commercial flight, but he flew anyway. That's why he flew into Canada and not US.

[tammywammy]

19. Thanks for helping clear it up for me

I admit that I haven't been on the up and up on this story.

[snagglepuss]

21. When TB guy was in the US planning his trip the health

authorities did not yet know he had XDR-TB and according to the authorities they told him that they would prefer him not to travel. As to why the FIL took such a nonchalant attitude is mystifying.

[LisaL]

14. If he has the tape, maybe he should produce it for everyone to

hear. I also think you are mis-characterizing his claim. He claims he was told they prefer he did not travel, but that he was not forbidden to travel. He does not claim he was told it was o'key to travel.
Furthermore, he isn't denying he was told not to return to US on commercial flight.

[tammywammy]

18. As I said, I figured that maybe I'm remembering it wrong

And I already knew they said don't travel back, they'd come and get him and did anyways.

[snagglepuss]

17. His culpability lies in the fact that after the CDC contacted him in Italy

to advise him that he had XDR TB they "begged" him not to fly and put him on the no-fly list. Despite his knowing that he had XDR-TB he put his own interests in front of others and snuck back to the US via Montreal. This lowlife deserves the contempt.

[LisaL]

20. At that point he was scared he would die in Italy.

I find it hard to understand why he went to Europe in the first place. He knew by the time his TB was resistant to drugs. He just did not know it was XDR-TB.
Still, if you have a serious deadly disease with potential to infect others (even though he is saying he was told he was not contagious) maybe traveling to Europe is not the best idea.

[snagglepuss]

22. This is why he is so contemptible. He went oversees because

it would be inconvenient for him to delay the wedding without any concern that he had TB and then came back because it was inconvenient for him not to have American health care. At no point did he care about the well-being of others.

[hedgehog]

23. Those were my first thoughts, but too much of the story isn't hanging together.

The guy's known he had TB since January, and the future father-in-law is an expert on TB. If he was contagious at all, why wasn't he quarantined or carefully instructed on what precautions to take to avoid infecting others during the five months he was living in Atlanta? I'm starting to think that this guy's bacteria load was so low that he was more or less considered non-contagious. So what exactly did the CDC tell him in Italy that put him into such a panic? Was he afraid of the disease or of the CDC? Maybe he's seen too many spy thrillers, I don't know. Maybe he was afraid of ending up at Guantanamo, not an Italian hospital.

[LisaL]

25. CDC told him had XDR-TB, which doesn't respond to anitbiotics.

He thought before he had MDR-TB, which still responds to antibiotics.

[snagglepuss]

31. The following is one the more informative articles to date.

TB guy probably got into panic mode becauae the cure rate is only 30 to 50% so he wanted to get best care available ASAP and the best care is at the hospital in Denver. As the article states is someone outside the US contracted TB from Speaker they wouldn't have access to the level of care Speaker has access to.

What remains outrageous is why not err on the side of caution and not leave the US until the strain was identified. As for the FIL, I believe that medical professionals often become lax about prevention. CBC is running an uncover story about cleaniness in Canadian hospitial; it's completely shocking to see doctors and nurses go from one patient to the next without washing hands when handwashing is the number one way to stop transmission of infections. It appears the FIL betrays that same lax attitude.:shrug:




http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2007/06/02/meshdenver0602a.html

[Recursion]

26. Tinfoil time?

Are you suggesting this was a trial balloon for the next big anthrax-like scare? So that we'll all know the importance of quarantine and avoiding large public gatherings like, say, voting booths?

:tinfoilhat:

[hedgehog]

27. That's what I can't figure out.

I doubt it's anything that big. More likely someone was playing CYA and things got all out of hand. Who knows? Maybe someone at CDC was aiming at embarrassing the father-in-law. Think of it as this year's runaway bride story.

[TZ]

29. Remember this...

Correlation is not causation. For him to be infected by something from the CDC, the father in law would have been infected too. Those labs are secure labs and no one who does not work in them has access, including relatives. Especially after the anthrax scare its hard to get infectious material removed without knowledge(chain of custody forms,controlled substances laws, strict inventory record keeping) and to infect ONE person with TB? Which is usually transmitted by air? No, thats not possible. The guy picked it up somewhere else and consulted with his specialist father in law obviously who gave him some not so great advice since he was not at the time symptomatic and did not know he had this variant.

[hedgehog]

30. I don't think he picked up the infection from CDC.

It may have been from foreign travel. I'm just wondering if someone down at the local health department was playing games with another employee and things got out of hand. "So-and so never does proper follow-up and this time I'm not covering for him... The patient has WHAT! and he's traveling WHERE?!? Oh, shit! time to bring out the big guns!"

I figure the patient and family were getting different answers at different times, that would explain why his lawyer father dragged out the tape recorder.

[KittyWampus]

28. Maybe this was an attempt at innoculated the US people to outrage over such a thing