Eighteen-year-old San Diego State University student, Sara Stelzer, died Friday from meningitis, just three days after she was hospitalized for flu-like symptoms. No Congressional hearings are scheduled.
A 12-year-old boy suddenly died of bacterial meningitis last April in Louisburg, Kansas.
No Congressional hearings are scheduled.
Bacterial meningitis was blamed as the cause of death of a four-year-old Amonti Saunders, in Holiday, Florida last December. No Congressional hearings are scheduled.
Worldwide, meningococcal disease affects 310,000 people each year. According to the US Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), approximately 2,600 people in the United States get meningococcal disease each year. Between 10-15% of the people who develop the disease will die. Of those who survive, 10% of the people will have lingering symptoms such as deafness, seizures or stroke.
1.7 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in the U.S. in 2012. In 2010 a total of 234,051 death certificates listing diabetes as an underlying or contributing cause of death. http://www.diabetes.org/...
No Congressional hearings are scheduled.
According to the CDC, about 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths. http://www.cdc.gov/.... As far as I know, No Congressional hearings are scheduled.
There are over 32,000 gun deaths per year in the U.S. No Congressional hearings are scheduled.
Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who had been diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, Texas, died on Wednesday, October 1. He was 42. Two nurses from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where Duncan was treated have been diagnosed with the virus.
Congressional hearings were held yesterday, eight days after the only U.S. death from Ebola. A House panel sharply questioned health officials Thursday over the U.S. response to the Ebola virus, as well as steps to prevent an outbreak of the disease in the United States.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden and other government officials faced tough questions from members of both parties after a second Texas nurse was diagnosed with Ebola.
Republicans have been expressing outrage and have been heaping criticism on the Obama administration while calling for the President to declare a travel ban. Republicans did not seem interested in the option of additional government funding to train hospitals how to diagnose and care for Ebola patients. Republicans did not seem interested in additional government funding to revive immunization research. With elections three weeks away that would not be prudent.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman however,
used some of their time during the hearing to blame spending cuts for undercutting the Centers for Disease Control and National Institute of Health's ability to fight the disease.
Waxman noted that the CDC budget has dropped by 12% since 2006 and that the public health emergency preparedness fund has been cut to $612 million from $1 billion in 2002.
Waxman also used his time during the hearing to feed questions to Frieden and infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Health to push their explanation of the unintended consequences of imposing a travel ban.
"It's certainly understandable how someone might come to a conclusion that the best approach would be to just seal off the border from those countries," Fauci said. "[A travel ban would lead to] a big web of things we don't know what we're dealing with."
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, picked up on Frieden's "porous borders" comment thinking the CDC director was referring to the U.S.'s borders and asked if the U.S. should "worry about having an unsecured southern and northern border."
"Oh you're referring to that border and not our porous border," Blackburn said after Frieden corrected her.
http://www.cnn.com/...
Now it is a good thing that Congress is trying to find a way to stop the spread of this deadly disease, but wouldn't it also be nice if Congress spent as much time and energy on the other diseases and public health issues killing millions of Americans every year? And wouldn't it be nice if the MSM put one Ebola death into perspective as well? And gee, wouldn't it be helpful to have Surgeon General right about now?
9:43 AM PT: With this diary I in no way intended to trivialize the thousands of deaths in Africa from Ebola. I wrote it last night after watching the evening news and was upset with the way Republicans (mainly) are whipping up hysteria and using the crisis as a way to bludgeon Obama just a few weeks before the election. Immediately after that coverage was the report on the San Diego teen dying of Meningitis and I couldn't help but think about all the other health issues in America that Congress seems to be ignoring. Especially infuriating to me is that Republicans have consistently cut funding for the CDC and NIH and that they are being intimidated by the NRA not to vote on Obama's nominee for Surgeon General. I was a bit snarky in tone and again did not intend to make light of the seriousness of the outbreak in Africa or the brave nurses in Texas who have been diagnosed with Ebola.