My mom told me never to wish bad things on people, but this is in self-defense.
The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted action to stop.
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.
Kudos to the Palm Beach Post for this stunning expose this morning which should be national news in 3,2,1...
There are rumors that some of the patients from the Lantana facility are now being kept in motels since local hospitals did not have the resources to handle long term care, as well there are no long term government insurance plans in place that would pay for the care required by these patients.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/...
The public was not to learn anything until early June, even though the same strain was appearing in other parts of the state, including Miami.
Tuberculosis is a lung disease more associated with the 18th century than the 21st, referred to as “consumption” in Dickensian times because its victims would grow gaunt and wan as their lungs disintigrated and they slowly died. The CDC investigator described a similar fate for 10 of the 13 people who died in Jacksonville.
They wasted away before ever getting treatment, or were too far gone by the time it began. Most of the sick were poor black men.
In fairness, although Rick Scott pushed this agenda since he was elected, the town officials in Lantana sought to shutter the facility for some time, in order to capitalize on getting business into the facilities or property and expand the tax roles.
(Several years ago I was hired as a PA on a low budget film featuring Linda Blair and the guy who played Pacino's sidekick in Scarface; it was quite scary being in that basement, not just because Linda Blair was there, but the leaky pipes and old boilers were freaky.)
As well, shame on the legislators who voted to remove patients from an active TB facility with no plan in place for relocation with an acceptable level of care is criminal. No doubt many of these legislators, including some Dems, would have changed their vote had this story not been kept under wraps. This stinks of conspiracy of the Nth degree and heads must roll.
Rick Scott's response to the story being discovered?
The governor’s office asked a reporter to foward a copy of the CDC letter on Saturday, but did not comment by press time.