Florida Accused of Concealing Worst Tuberculosis Outbreak In 20 Years

NotSanguine writes "The state of Florida has been struggling for months with what the Centers for Disease Control describe as the worst tuberculosis outbreak in the United States in twenty years. Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen. The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated requests. These documents should have been freely available under Florida's Sunshine Law."

Comments

I'm going to overlook a large portion of your bias

[Anonymous Coward]

And, I'll also throw this in there: homeless people and the poor often are not as likely to be diagnosed, and, due to this and other reasons, aren't as likely to receive treatment. Oh, and take your ObamaCare issues somewhere where people give a shit about offtopic things like that.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

how about commenting on the facts and instead of your political opinion?

Re:Political correctness in action

[Sir_Sri]

But don't worry, this is all the evil Republican's fault. ObamaCare^WTax will fix all these problems.

if only. Medical care can only provide you care if you get it. If you refuse to go to the doctor, or if you refuse to get vaccines or refuse antibiotics TB is going to do bad things to you.

This is compounded by the nature of TB in the west in in general. It's sufficiently rare that most people only get vaccinated for it when they're young, and don't get boosted, the vaccine does make it hard to test for exposure to the actual disease.

I think there's probably some legitimate blame on the US health system, (and the state of florida in particular obviously) closing hospitals and not having universal care does make thing worse than they could have been, but it's not like countries with universal care won't have problems with people who don't get treatment, or who don't follow it.

Re:Political correctness in action

[tsm_sf]

But don't worry, this is all the evil Republican's fault..

Ubiquitous healthcare would have prevented this, so... yes.

But of course

[Weaselmancer]

Of course it's all Obama's fault. Even though Rick Scott(R) closed the last TB hospital 3 months after a report from the freaking CDC came out detailing the outbreak.

But hey! Don't let the facts get in the way of your Fox news deluded rant.

Florida TB hospital closed too

[riverat1]

Florida just closed down it's only state hospital specializing in tuberculosis cases on July 2nd. Bad timing.

Report: Fla closed TB hospital as cases spiked

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

Suddenly, the coverup makes sense.
Someone decided that they could save the budget by slashing a necessary public service.
The need for said public service arose, which would be massively embarrassing.
Solution: Ignore the problem and hope it goes away on its own.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[girlintraining]

Florida just closed down it's only state hospital specializing in tuberculosis cases on July 2nd. Bad timing.

Timing had nothing to do with it. It was politics. That's the problem with cutting back on social programs: They stabilize the quality of life for the general population. Take them away, and they're now subject to the random, chaotic, and violent twists of unbridled capitalism. And combine poor economic conditions with an outbreak of plague... and if you don't have any social support programs, well... grab a mirror so you can properly bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

It's the same thing with unemployment insurance and food stamps, and other forms of economic assistance; During times of economic prosperity, these services go largely unused, so they can stockpile funding for periods of economic downturn, and in so doing, moderate the highs and lows inherent in a capitalist system. What's even stupider about this: All the social programs, health care, welfare, unemployment insurance... all of it, would be amply funded without costing a single taxpayer dollar if during those aforementioned periods of economic prosperity, the unused funding for those programs was diverted into investments. Spain has a robust social security program; Every person in the country is guaranteed social security. You know how much they pay into the system for that? Nothing. Nodda.

Short term thinking, people. It'll fuck you every time.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to check the state of Spain's economy before making any bold statements about how well managed their social programs are.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Daniel Dvorkin]

In the mean time some of these chronic dependents and their lists of ailments will enjoy less state funded coddling â" we can't afford to indulge every fool that can't function without having his hand held by an army of social workers.

This whole story is just the CDC and the state funded medical industry resisting the necessary cuts. They've managed to trump up a 'health crisis' story using a single lunger and some FUD about the closing of one of a plethora of state funded facilities.

You know, I spent ten years of my life, first as a military medic and then as a civilian EMT, taking care of people like you. Well, no, not actually people like you; most of them were decent human beings. But I took care of the ones who weren't, too. Hell, I took care of the ones who had just been trying to kill me. And I never once let my personal feelings get in the way of the care I delivered. No one ever died on my watch without me doing my damndest to prevent it from happening, even if the person doing the dying was the worst asshole to ever walk the Earth.

And I have to say, in your case I'd be tempted to make an exception. Oh, I probably wouldn't, you understand, because just like most of my patients, I'm a decent human being. But I'd seriously consider it.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Spain has an excellent healthcare programme. It did get suckered by construction companies into building a load of houses, however, and failed to take account of the fact that socialist programmes would increase lifespan such that it would become necessary to change pension provision.

But this crisis is mostly manufactured as an excuse to get people to accept worse conditions. Europe's had far worse and its solution had been to spend on infrastructure to provide jobs and to increase self-reliance. You know, like Germany (which had its crisis about 7 years ago) - or China.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[AtomicJake]

Spain has a robust social security program

Spain is also a fucked up mess. They've spent decades feathering their public services nest and now they're busted. They will spend generations wallowing in servitude to their creditors while public services get cut and cut again.

Spain is a fucked up mess, because of the same reasons the USA is a fucked up mess: A house building bubble. Spanish people got obscene credits (longer than 50 years sometimes) for financing their homes. Most people looked for work in construction as it was booming like hell. The bubble burst and the economy went belly-up.

It has nothing (or close to nothing) to do with public services.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

It is tiresome how southern EU countries keep being used in arguments against social programs, completely ignoring the fact that northern EU countries are doing exactly the same thing (or more) and are clearly faring much better - it should cause you to think about what the *actual* cause of Spain's problems is, but it never seems to.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

Before greece fucked everything up and started making everybody panic about the euro, spain actually had a very responsible attitude to debt. They were one of very few countries obeying the eurozone rules on quantities of debt, keeping total debt below the set percentage of GDP. They were living within their means, paying only what they could afford to spend.

What got them was the economy of the entire continent flipping out, and having an economy built heavily on tourism, which relies on the rest of the eurozone having money to spend on holidays.

Also, fuck you and fuck your attitude to the victims of this outbreak. Tuberculosis is not some deserved punishment on the poor for daring to be so foolish as to breathe. It is a lethal disease that can and does affect anybody who likes to let air into their lungs. Without careful management, it spreads, and it kills more and more people.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

You get that facts mean nothing to a Tea Partier, right? Government does everything wrong and nothing right. Every fiscal problem is a direct result of social spending and that is the direct result of too many poor people getting rich (I know, logic, right?) off of government spending put in place by soft-hearted liberals and communists, as if the last 30+ years of Reagan-style Republican rule never happened. Military spending and crony capitalism have absolutely nothing to do with anything bad.

Remember we need more tax cuts for the job creators! The fact that we've given them tax cuts for 30 years and they haven't created any jobs in a meaningful sense doesn't matter--we just haven't tried hard enough.

I am of course severely understating both the strength of their beliefs and the complete ineffectiveness of actual facts in arguing with such people.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[sociocapitalist]

Florida just closed down it's only state hospital specializing in tuberculosis cases on July 2nd. Bad timing.

Timing had nothing to do with it. It was politics. That's the problem with cutting back on social programs: They stabilize the quality of life for the general population. Take them away, and they're now subject to the random, chaotic, and violent twists of unbridled capitalism. And combine poor economic conditions with an outbreak of plague... and if you don't have any social support programs, well... grab a mirror so you can properly bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

It's the same thing with unemployment insurance and food stamps, and other forms of economic assistance; During times of economic prosperity, these services go largely unused, so they can stockpile funding for periods of economic downturn, and in so doing, moderate the highs and lows inherent in a capitalist system. What's even stupider about this: All the social programs, health care, welfare, unemployment insurance... all of it, would be amply funded without costing a single taxpayer dollar if during those aforementioned periods of economic prosperity, the unused funding for those programs was diverted into investments. Spain has a robust social security program; Every person in the country is guaranteed social security. You know how much they pay into the system for that? Nothing. Nodda.

Short term thinking, people. It'll fuck you every time.

But we're just making the government smaller!!!!

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[khallow]

And I have to say, in your case I'd be tempted to make an exception.

Why? Because you disagree with him? The original story BTW was a slam. I don't agree on motives, but it's pretty clear that the author of the piece was using it both as a hit piece on the Republican party while simultaneously putting a word in for a little socialized medicine, the state-funded hospital which specialized in treating TB cases. In other words, a caricature of human thought.

Digging around in the original story, I came across this interesting tidbit:

It was early February when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia.

âoeWhat you donâ(TM)t want is for anyone to have another reason why people should turn their backs on the homeless,â said Charles Griggs, the public information officer for the Duval County Health Department.

In other words, the outbreak allegedly was kept secret to protect the homeless from being ostracized. But the Slashdot-linked story only mentions the first paragraph, implying that Republicans had suppressed the information about these cases because it only affected an underclass. That may end up being true, but it's not a given from the original story.

And I have to say, in your case I'd be tempted to make an exception. Oh, I probably wouldn't, you understand, because just like most of my patients, I'm a decent human being. But I'd seriously consider it.

You could have just added, there's over a hundred cases in a difficult to treat population and it really is serious. But no you had to take the moral high road and tell him how tempted you were to off him without providing any reason whatsoever.

My view is that two stories have been linked which aren't necessarily connected. The TB story seems to me a typical case of someone burying an urgent problem for rather unseemly motives. It may be as claimed that they were attempting to protect an "underclass" (killing it in the process) or it may be that they were hiding an inconvenient problem for the political sausage making that was restructuring Florida's state-run health care at the time.

They have a large bunch of possible TB cases that need to be found and treated. We'll see if they do that.

The seemingly connected problem is that of the restructuring of state hospitals. It's worth noting here that the restructuring may be sound over the long term, but implemented in a way that hampers short term responses to emergencies. If nobody knows at the time who is supposed to do what (especially difficult given that a legislature decides a lot of those issues on the fly), then that can cause more problems during the period of uncertainty than the old system would have caused.

A similar situation happened just prior to the infamous flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina (FEMA wasn't supposed to coordinate disaster response any more) and that weakened efforts to respond to the disaster.

But is the situation worsened because there's no longer a TB-specialized hospital out there? The primary complaint seems to be that the health departments no longer have a place where they can force homeless people to take TB medication. That doesn't sound like much of a complaint to me. You could always set up temporary wards at regular hospitals until the outbreak has been wiped out. It still remains that the usual background rate for TB is probably too low to justify a specialized hospital for it.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[khallow]

Remember we need more tax cuts for the job creators! The fact that we've given them tax cuts for 30 years and they haven't created any jobs in a meaningful sense doesn't matter--we just haven't tried hard enough.

But they have. They just haven't created jobs "in a meaningful sense" in your country. Social spending raises the cost of your country's labor and makes it less likely to be hired.

As to the thing about Spain, who knew that a country notorious for making bad decisions would make bad decisions about the mortgage industry? Who knew?

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

so obviously all social programs should be cut because some people manipulate them. never mind the millions of people that the programs help. We should also blow up wall street, because smart ass whiz kids game that as well. And lets get rid of politics, people always take advantage of that shit. in fact, let's just have a wild free for all and get rid of all government. Every man for himself and if you can't deal with it, fuck off and die.

Ok so maybe that was a bit overboard, but you know what i find funny? It's when someone bitches about social programs all the time and then is the first in line for unemployment or the low income clinic when they lose a job. I see it all the time and it's also funny how they rationalize it.

Anyway, you keep on fighting the good fight against your fellow man and pray you don't have bad luck.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[DarkOx]

All the social programs, health care, welfare, unemployment insurance... all of it, would be amply funded without costing a single taxpayer dollar if during those aforementioned periods of economic prosperity, the unused funding for those programs was diverted into investments.

That only works provided whoever is managing those funds invests well. ANY investment offering positive returns will pose some risk to the capital. Witness all the big city pension funds that are in serious trouble because they lost money is supposedly safe sovereign and municipal bonds; to say nothing of those who took terrible beatings in commercial bonds and equities. When Bush 43, suggested handling SS this way liberals jumped all over him for wanting to game with the bread stuffs of dependents. The problem is naturally that if those funds run dry as a result someone is going to suggest tax payers are obligated to make up the short fall from general revenues.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[TubeSteak]

You said:

In other words, the outbreak allegedly was kept secret to protect the homeless from being ostracized. But the Slashdot-linked story only mentions the first paragraph, implying that Republicans had suppressed the information about these cases because it only affected an underclass. That may end up being true, but it's not a given from the original story.

TFA said:

[Duval County health officials] spoke about CDC's report Friday, only after weeks of records requests from The Palm Beach Post. The report was released late last week only after a reporter traveled to Tallahassee to demand records in person. The records should be open to inspection to anyone upon request under Florida Statute 119, known as the Government in the Sunshine law.

There's a different between not-publicizing an outbreak and actively-keeping-it-secret
Sometimes the facts speak for themselves.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because you disagree with him?

I'm fairly certain it had more to do with the attitude of Mr. Fuckerlord over there with his "army of social workers hand holding everyone". He doesn't realize that he's being hand held in many areas of his life too, and being condescending towards other people for the same reason is just completely retarded.

I'd probably be the reason they called Daniel in the first place.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Chris Mattern]

Spain has a robust social security program; Every person in the country is guaranteed social security. You know how much they pay into the system for that? Nothing. Nodda.

Spain also has 24% unemployment and is desperately trying to stave off financial collapse. This is the model you want us to follow?

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[CrimsonAvenger]

It's the same thing with unemployment insurance and food stamps, and other forms of economic assistance; During times of economic prosperity, these services go largely unused, so they can stockpile funding for periods of economic downturn, and in so doing, moderate the highs and lows inherent in a capitalist system.

Alas, that turns out not to be the case. In general, those sorts of service are funded based on best guesses as to the amount they'll have to pay out.

Which means in times of prosperity, very little money goes to food stamps and suchlike.

So, no, there's no magic investing of spare income for the future by government - this year's taxes pay for this year's services, next year's taxes will pay for next year's services.

And when they spend more than the take in, they just borrow the difference. And never pay it back in good times (last time the US National Debt declined was before I was born, and I was born before Gagarin went up in Vostok)....

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[shiftless]

He doesn't realize that he's being hand held in many areas of his life too,

Maybe he does, and maybe he's fucking sick of it?

Don't automatically assume everybody wants to be a serf, as you apparently do.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[shiftless]

It has nothing (or close to nothing) to do with public services.

I'd say it's more like you have no clue what you're talking about. The housing bubble is just a convenient excuse, and the straw that broke the camel's back. The problems run much, much deeper than that.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[shiftless]

Every fiscal problem is a direct result of social spending and that is the direct result of too many poor people getting rich (I know, logic, right?) off of government spending

No, idiot.

The problem with this social spending is it keeps people poor. These people become dependent on aid, and unable to subsist without it.

No problem in the history of humanity has ever been solved by the hand of government. It only gives us different problems. The problems that we face today are the same problems humanity has always faced for thousands of years, and will continue to face until we either die off or change into something else entirely.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[shiftless]

never mind the millions of people that the programs help.

What about the millions that they hurt?

Nothing is free in life my friend.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[shiftless]

50% youth unemployment is because of excessive borrowing?

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[tomhath]

There's a different between not-publicizing an outbreak and actively-keeping-it-secret

What is the typical turn-around time for a request? Without knowing that it's impossible to say if this was "actively-keeping_it-secret" or getting hysterical at normal bureaucracy. My guess is the latter.

Bottom line is 1) the outbreak occurred at roughly the time of the announcement to downsize the Health department and close the TB hospital, so it's not at all clear if those changes will make any difference (obviously the old system didn't prevent the outbreak); and 2) The headline says Florida is accused of concealing the outbreak - but the accuser is the author of the article, a misleading headline at best.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[tomhath]

The fact that we've given them tax cuts for 30 years and they haven't created any jobs in a meaningful sense

Yea, the US only added about 40,000,000 jobs in the past thirty years; should be a few million more than that but the number has shrunk during the current administration.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[baegucb]

99.9% of TB cases are treated as an out patient. When i got sick, I was put in a pressurized room for a few days while they confirmed the diagnosis. Once I started on the TB antibiotics I was allowed to be around other people. Having a dedicated hospital just for TB is unneeded.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[girlintraining]

Spain also has 24% unemployment and is desperately trying to stave off financial collapse. This is the model you want us to follow?

My house is painted muave, and the war on Iraq cost us trillions. Therefore, we should ban the color purple.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Red Flayer]

99.9% of TB cases are treated as an out patient. When i got sick, I was put in a pressurized room for a few days while they confirmed the diagnosis. Once I started on the TB antibiotics I was allowed to be around other people. Having a dedicated hospital just for TB is unneeded.

The reason 99.9% of cases can be treated as outpatient is because the 0.1% are quarantined so their drug-resistant strain doesn't spread. Allowing these sufferers in the general hospital population is a big mistake... not just because of the contagion aspect, but also because it increases the chances for worse drug-resistant strains to develop.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[khallow]

I'm fairly certain it had more to do with the attitude of Mr. Fuckerlord over there with his "army of social workers hand holding everyone". He doesn't realize that he's being hand held in many areas of his life too, and being condescending towards other people for the same reason is just completely retarded.

Well, how does he keep from being "hand held"? Last I looked, a lot of social programs are mandatory with no opportunity to opt out. So it's very hard for this guy to keep from being nannied by some state without serious effort such as disappearing into wilderness or some such.

I'd probably be the reason they called Daniel in the first place.

Why don't you call Mr. "Fuckerlord's" bluff? You claim he doesn't understand what it'd be like without the state helping him out, but you're willing to inflict serious injury to keep him in the dark. Sounds like a serious case of cognitive dissonance there.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anguirel]

No problem in the history of humanity has ever been solved by the hand of government.

Except sanitation, environmental regulation, basic infrastructure... all those basic things the government seems to be quite capable of managing. The government of Rome built roads, solving problems with transportation. Also aqueducts and fountains. Government, the basic public entity solving basic public problems.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[khallow]

In other words, what government does, hasn't really changed from the days of the Roman Empire. What everyone else does, has changed radically. I do agree that government has a reasonable solution to certain "public" problems. But one needs to ask what current government "solutions" have to do with any problem?

For example, what do we need an ACTA treaty for (aside from enriching a minority that's paid the right bribes)? This seems like a lot of solutions looking for problems (perhaps even creating them in order to justify their existence) to me.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[nobodie]

Sorry dude, but I'm in Florida and happened to be a bystander to a small corner of the TB epidemic. Here at USF in Tampa we have had a number of students with TB. No the public was not told until they were in hospital and under care, but it clearly is an outbreak on a large scale for us here in Tampa.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[KingBenny]

belgium gained about 100% unemployed in only one year ... no news about that on national tv, its visible to anyone who gives it a search ofcourse. Imo, people aren't really a-pathic as much as so scared they just don't want to know how bad things are. If so, most politicians would be lynched for throwing money at foreign nations just to look as if able to play with the big boys. Humans, same thing everywhere

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Anguirel]

Oh, no question that some government actions are the problems, not the solutions, and others are poor solutions to trivial or non-governmental problems. I'm just saying that rhetoric going as far as "No Government" being the best state, or that government has never had a solution to public problems is inherently unsound. There's a definite (albeit much smaller) level of government that I believe is the best state, and that some aspects need to be larger than just local concerns and local implementation (e.g. water allocation along major rivers, interstate infrastructure, pollution regulation, coordination of law enforcement, possibly some public research). Still, nothing much beyond the Romans there.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[sjames]

Enjoy you're drug resistant TB! You'll probably contract it when one of those un-coddled masses coughs on you. Perhaps while you're kicking him out of your way for having the audacity to collapse right where you wanted to walk.

Re:Florida TB hospital closed too

[Jimbob The Mighty]

Leave Whoopi alone!

Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[American AC in Paris]

Dear Editors and NotSanguine,

When you copy and paste an entire paragraph from a linked source without actually citing that source as the author of said material, you're committing plagiarism. NotSanguine did not write this blurb; Muriel Kane of Raw Story did.

Respect authorship.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, if you quote an article you should put quotation marks around the text and link to the original source. Wait...

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[American AC in Paris]

It's somewhat pedantic, I know, but I work in education and this is something that far, far too many people a) don't get, b) don't care about, and c) don't appreciate its importance. When making a direct quote, you need to do more than simply drop a hyperlink to an original source to avoid plagiarizing your sources; you need to also name the original author.

It's really, honestly as simple as adding "Muriel Kane of Raw story writes:" at the start of the paragraph. Make a habit of giving proper credit where it's due, especially if you do a lot of writing. It's easy to do and gives proper credit and respect to the person who took the time to write the words you're using.

Yes, I have better things to do. No, I have no plans to try to sic Ms. Kane's lawyers on you. To be frank, there's a reason the editors were listed first there: it's their job to know this kind of thing inside out as a matter of professional competence, whereas you're just Random Person On The Internet. Still, it's important, and something worth knowing. That's worth at least a mention, yeah?

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[1u3hr]

It's really, honestly as simple as adding "Muriel Kane of Raw story writes:" at the start of the paragraph.

Slashdot's style is to credit the submitter, not the actual writer. This is is wrong, but they won't change.

Much worse than this is the increasing tendency to cite and link not the original source, but some plagiarising asshole who copied the story from a real publication, and put it on their spammy blog, and submitted that to Slashdot for the ad hits. Not only is it stealing the story, they often misrepresent or sensationalise it to make it more dramatic.

For example, yesterday: Paul Vixie On DNS Changer: We're Dealing With Malware the Wrong Way That story is credited to ibtimes.co.uk on the same day, but it actually is a dumbed down and mangled version of a blog post made 4 months ago.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[American AC in Paris]

Not a teacher--a multimedia designer who's been reviewing one too many presentations on "how to avoid plagiarism" lately. Do forgive my...let's call it heightened awareness at the moment.

Also much too late. Sleep.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[sociocapitalist]

Dear Editors and NotSanguine,

When you copy and paste an entire paragraph from a linked source without actually citing that source as the author of said material, you're committing plagiarism. NotSanguine did not write this blurb; Muriel Kane of Raw Story did.

Respect authorship.

Funny how slashdot is up in arms over plagiarism and yet thinks (generally speaking) that pirating copyrighted material is for the common good.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[Raenex]

It's really, honestly as simple as adding "Muriel Kane of Raw story writes:" at the start of the paragraph.

It used to be common to see: 'From the article: "blah blah." ' Slashdot got lazy and now the vast majority of articles are pure copy and paste without any separation between the submitter's words and quotes from the article.

I wouldn't start with "author writes" in submissions, because then it looks silly when you have "submitter writes, 'author writes, ..."

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[Raenex]

That said, this is not a term paper, a newspaper piece or a scholarly article. It's a post on a news aggregation and discussion site.

Even if you're just writing a comment on a discussion site, if you copy and paste some text, you should quote it. It only takes a second, aids to clear communication, and is respectful.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[tqk]

Funny how slashdot is up in arms over plagiarism and yet thinks (generally speaking) that pirating copyrighted material is for the common good.

Generally speaking, sweeping generalizations are always wrong. Every time a story shows up here touching on the issue, a very lively debate takes place between the Imaginary Property Maximalists and the Freetards. Those precious few such as myself who preach boycotts instead struggle to make ourselves heard.

You're painting with way too wide a brush.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[chilenexus]

Plagiarism is representing someone else's writing as your own. By putting it in quotes or quote markup, you're indicating that you didn't write it. If slashdot was a reporting organization or a school instead of a discussion forum we might want to consider that, but since it's not - there's no good reason for it. We don't need to reproduce the effort of the work already done by the authors in TFA.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[EnsilZah]

Well, speaking for myself, I wouldn't get up in arms on sloppy quoting like that, but as a general rule I'd find someone taking credit for my work a lot more offensive than using it without permission.

I'm not really part of the open source community but as an outside observer it seems to me this sentiment is exactly how many of the licenses work so it doesn't seem an inconsistent view at all for people on a site like Slashdot.

Re:Editorial Review: An Introductory Guide

[sociocapitalist]

Maybe, maybe not - it seems to me that you are the exception and that the brush is not too wide. I did not claim that it was 100% of those on slashdot and I think that most people on slashdot are supporters of pirating.

Consumption

[regular_guy]

Looks like their thoughts on consumption didn't have much... gumption? IGMC

Re:Consumption

[Black Parrot]

Looks like their thoughts on consumption didn't have much... gumption?

At any rate, they didn't function.

Re:Political correctness in action

[NotSanguine]

Umm..This was in Florida. And there are Republicans in the Governor's mansion *and* majorities in the state legislature. Nice troll though.

Re:Political correctness in action

[MightyMartian]

Of course, the Republicans have a solution. They'll just get rid of the CDC, so there's no centralized data gathering, and that way, fifty TB cases could pop up a day, and until you started coughing up blood, you'd have nothing to worry about!

Isn't this the Libertarian paradise the Ron Paul legions envisage?

Of course, Florida!

[CheshireDragon]

Florida is always fscking something up! Weather, voting machines, elections....

Re:Of course, Florida!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it has a Bush

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! And maybe freedom of sapples and freedom of soranges too!

Re:Political correctness in action

[bit trollent]

The Governor of Florida, where the TB outbreak was kept secret in violation of the law is a Republican , you fucking moron...

Like most Republican politicians, Florida's governor is a secretive, ignorant, corrupt waste of humanity.

Your pathetic attempt at blaming this failure of Florida's state government on President Obama is both funny and stupid, which we all know is a hallmark of the Republican party.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[medv4380]

Yep, we just need the good old CDC and Health Departments that actually ensured everyone got a Small Pox Vaccine. My Evil half just wants this to result in a highly contagious version that is Antibiotic Resistant and make it so everyone has to get the TB Vaccine. The irony of a disease coming into existence from this kind of nieve plot to kill innocent people. Really, the "Lets do nothing and let the Poor Die" plan doesn't work. Then again a lot of people will have to die for us just to relearn the lesson that Small Pox taught us.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[Kagetsuki]

That's the CDC, and they tried....

Re:When will they stop?

[NotSanguine]

I know this is Slashdot, and no one reads the articles, but this one shows an unbelievable story of Democrat corruption. They pushed to conceal the truth about TB and it was incredible.

What's wrong with you AC? What's with trying to get people to read TFA by lying about what's in it? Geez! I posted TFA and *I* didn't even read it. You should so get banned. In fact, they should take your username away from you! :)

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

PPACA doesn't have anything to do with disease control, it just ensures that everyone gets decent healthcare.
And it's not Democrats vs Republicans either : both sides wanted it, just had different views on it, and what you have now is a decent compromise ( not perfect, but workable ).

The above on the other hand ( not reporting tb outbreak ) is incompetence leading to disaster.

Some things are more important than politics : health is one of them.

Re:Democrats

[Black Parrot]

According to the article, the Democrats were the ones who suppressed this information. How do you Democrats feel now?

Probably pretty much the same as they did the first time you posted that. Though perhaps a few felt a change in the few seconds between reading the two posts.

Re:Political correctness in action

[HangingChad]

But don't worry, this is all the evil Republican's fault.

One of the reasons I abandoned the Republican party was because they could never face up to their own failures or take responsibilities for their mistakes.

Think about that when you're standing next to the coughing homeless person at the train station or one of your kids gets diagnosed with antibiotic resistant TB. It would serve you right for sticking up for governor Penis Head.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Swampash]

I fail to see the relevance. This is not a political problem. The Lord will cure these people. If they cause an epidemic, killing millions, that's obviously just His will.

What the fuck are you talking about?

[moosehooey]

None of the linked articles even have the word Democrat. You're a spamming sack of shit.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[El Puerco Loco]

Currently just about every one of our southern states is racing toward third world status just as fast as they can and you think giving them more power is a good idea? You don't have states like Mississipi and South Carolina in Canada.

worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[jklovanc]

I hate relative terms when there is no indication as to what the term is relative to. For example, if the second worst outbreak in the last 20 years involved 80 people then this one could be the worst and involve 99 people.

What I would rather see is how important is this outbreak. The fact that it is the worst in 20 years does not mean that it is something to be concerned with. The questions to ask are as follows;
1. How much of the population is at risk?
2. Would spreading the information cause more harm than good. Will the populous be more frightened that necessary.

The 13 death tole can be misleading too. Are most of the deaths in people who live on the streets, avoid contact with health facilities and have compromised immune systems. I am not saying to ignore them but health warnings would not help as they would be ignored.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as population goes, tuberculosis is VERY transmissible. It doesn't usually get very far in most people, due to decent nutrition and health care, but it could. It's never good to have a very communicable disease like that hanging around waiting for something to allow it to catch on to the big leagues. Most people fend it off, but some people in poor health can succumb to it pretty easily. Anyone with a compromised immune system, poor nutrition, or just plain fighting off other diseases at the same time. It generally affects the lungs and the main problem is that when the disease is cleared from an area by the immune system, that area is replaced by scar tissue. This reduces lung capacity quite a bit. Also, it can spread to other parts of the body, and do the same thing. About 1 in 10 people who are exposed and infected progress to an active and obvious infection. The rest spread it silently. See the problem? It isn't immediately obvious or even noticeable..so the real elephant in the room is, how many more people have it than just the people that died?

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[dcollins]

"Well, American educational system in action. Someone on one side of country farted, half country in another are affraid to sleep."

Great example! (no articles; missing preposition; "affraid").

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[nbauman]

20 years ago we had drugs to treat TB. Now it's becoming resistant to all those drugs. When people are affected by multiple-drug resistant TB, they can't be treated, and they usually die. That's why it's a big deal.

99 illnesses is a lot. 13 deaths is a lot.

The main targets for TB are the homeless, people with AIDS, and people in prison. It can also affect newborns, and people being treated for cancer or autoimmune diseases (who can get infected in hospitals). The US is a tinderbox. We have people flying around the country on airplanes. We have illegal immigrants who aren't eligible for health care (and are afraid of the authorities besides). It could spread across the country, killing off large numbers of people in those groups.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[wisnoskij]

"It doesn't usually get very far in most people, due to decent nutrition and health care"
So what you are saying is that Americans should be very afraid.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[sociocapitalist]

I hate relative terms when there is no indication as to what the term is relative to. For example, if the second worst outbreak in the last 20 years involved 80 people then this one could be the worst and involve 99 people.

What I would rather see is how important is this outbreak. The fact that it is the worst in 20 years does not mean that it is something to be concerned with. The questions to ask are as follows;
1. How much of the population is at risk?
2. Would spreading the information cause more harm than good. Will the populous be more frightened that necessary.

The 13 death tole can be misleading too. Are most of the deaths in people who live on the streets, avoid contact with health facilities and have compromised immune systems. I am not saying to ignore them but health warnings would not help as they would be ignored.

3. Should the politicians who closed the TB hospital and then buried the TB outbreak for political reasons be held accountable?

The medical side of this is not the only consideration here.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[jklovanc]

Take a look at the CDC TB site before making those statements. According to the site the incidence of TB had steadily dropped from a high of 25,107 in 1993 to a low of 12,904 in 2008. The number of multi-drug resistant cases has also steadily dropped from 484 in 1993 to 103 in 2008. Deaths have also steadily dropped from 1050 to 243 in the same period. The incidence rate in Florida steadily dropped from 1,646 to 954.

So looking at the real statistics 99 is not a large number of cases considering Florida had over 900. The death rate is a little concerning but that could be an anomaly due to the demographics of this outbreak( a higher percentage having compromised immune systems and/or not coming for treatment till it is too late).

We have had people flying around in aircraft for years and no major outbreaks. Yes the homeless, people with AIDS, and people in prison are vulnerable but they don't generally fly if sick. It could spread but has not and probably will not. Things have not changed that much in the last 3 years.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[jklovanc]

That makes the assumption that not publicizing the outbreak was for political purposes. It is quite possible that the reason for not publicizing it was that the actual size was small and the harm would have been larger than the good.

As for closing the hospital, perhaps the reason the hospital in Florida was the last in the nation is that all other states realized that dedicated TB hospitals were not a good idea. Medical conditions are always better dealt with in local communities and local hospitals. Sending patients away to dedicated hospitals removes them from their support groups causing depression and worsening many conditions.
The hospital in question was not only used for TB. According to the American Hospital Association it was also used for elderly/disabled (Acute long-term care, Skilled nursing care and Intermediate nursing care), end-of-life services (Palliative care) and other outpatient services. The 50 bed hospital had 65 admissions last year. To me that looks like an underutilized hospital ripe for closing. It makes a great sound bite during a campaign but it does not mean it is a bad thing.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[nbauman]

The numbers are not important. What's important is the emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extremely-drug resistant (XDR) strains. MDR strains are difficult to treat. Some doctors say that XDR strains can be treated with great difficulty and expense, but I've read of cases of XDR that doctors couldn't treat at all.

Here's where I get my information from:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0908076
Review Article
Current Concepts
MDR Tuberculosis — Critical Steps for Prevention and Control
Eva Nathanson, M.Sc., Paul Nunn, F.R.C.P., Mukund Uplekar, M.D., Katherine Floyd, Ph.D., Ernesto Jaramillo, M.D., Ph.D., Knut Lönnroth, M.D., Ph.D., Diana Weil, M.Sc., and Mario Raviglione, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2010; 363:1050-1058
September 9, 2010

Actually, we've had people flying in aircraft for years, and that caused major outbreaks of many infectious diseases. AIDS Patient Zero, don't forget, was an airline steward. SARS was spread by airline passengers. Like a lot of infectious diseases, SARS went from zero to 900 deaths very quickly. (The movie Contagion was pretty accurate, according to the reviews in the science magazines.) People are flying into the US every day from third world countries, and a lot of them have MDR and XDR TB. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcp1005750

As the NEJM says, the only way to deal with MDR and XDR strains is prevention. It's difficult (sometimes impossible) and expensive to treat MDR and XDR. Patients don't like to take the drugs for good reason -- isoniazid and rifamycin have serious and sometimes dangerous side effects, particularly liver damage, which is dangerous for patients with HCV or alcoholism. Many of them have latent disease, which means they feel OK but are transmitting TB. They don't want to take a drug for 6 months that makes them sick.

Science magazine had even more pessimistic articles about XDR. They sent a reporter to the former USSR, where they have no functioning health system and herd TB patients, AIDS patients, and drug addicts into the world's largest prison system (the largest after ours). They had XDR patients they couldn't treat even when they had the drugs.

The problem with Florida is that the Republican governor and legislature just closed down the very hospital they need to treat TB at a time when XDR is emerging as a real threat. They're privatizing health care, like the Russians and Chinese did (with disastrous results, and their antibiotic-resistant infections are threatening us). According to TFA, they're putting up TB patients in motels!

And you can't just treat people for their TB, you have to provide comprehensive health care. Which the Republicans are also cutting back.

This country is spending more money to fight Hollywood-fantasy bioweapons attacks than we're spending to fight real, documented, extremely dangerous diseases. There was a new bioweapons "sniffer" that cost I think $100 million, and turned out to be useless because of its false alarms. Who needs Al Qaeda when you've got the Republicans?

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[tomhath]

3. Should the politicians who closed the TB hospital and then buried the TB outbreak for political reasons be held accountable?

The outbreak happened before it was announced that the hospital would be closed, so the answer to the first half is obviously "No".

There's no evidence of any coverup, for political reasons or otherwise. The Raw Story author claims there was one because the requests by the Palm Beach Post took a few weeks to be filled. I wouldn't call that a coverup, especially without know how long it normally takes.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[tibit]

+1 Funny

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[jklovanc]

SARS went from zero to 900 deaths very quickly.

In an eight month period 900 people died of SARS. In an average year during the same period 167,000 to 333, 000 die from the common seasonal flue. This is an example of how using technical terms such as pandemic can blow things out of proportion. TB is not a new disease and neither is resistant TB. In the US the incidence of resistant TB is declining. In the last year reported there were 103 cases of resistant TB in the US. And no "outbreaks" of resistant TB.

The problem with Florida is that the Republican governor and legislature just closed down the very hospital they need to treat TB at a time when XDR is emerging as a real threat.

Prove this statement. How does closing down a 50 bed hospital have a major impact on an outbreak. You also need to justify the statement that "XDR is emerging as a real threat" when the actual numbers say something completely different. Show me how it is an emerging threat in North America.

As the NEJM says, the only way to deal with MDR and XDR strains is prevention.

I think you have very much oversimplified NEJM's position of XDR-TB. Here is an actual quote from a NEJM article;

All evidence suggests that XDR tuberculosis reflects a failure to implement the measures recommended in the WHO's Stop TB Strategy.5 This strategy emphasizes expanding high-quality DOTS programs, addressing HIV-associated tuberculosis and drug resistance, strengthening health care systems and primary care services, encouraging all providers to follow good practices, empowering patients and communities to improve health, and enabling and promoting research.

Prevention is only one part of the above strategy.

Many of them have latent disease, which means they feel OK but are transmitting TB

Here is an example where your information is completely incorrect. Here is a quote from the CDC fact sheet'

Persons with latent TB infection are not infectious and cannot spread TB infection to others.

Please get your fact straight.

Science magazine had even more pessimistic articles about XDR.

Care to cite any of these "science magazines"?

They sent a reporter to the former USSR, where they have no functioning health system

I believe there is a "functioning health care system" in North America so any comparison with the former USSR are invalid.

According to TFA, they're putting up TB patients in motels!

TB has a contagious stage and an non-contagious stage. The thing is that many people do not take their medication during the non-contagious stage and need to be watched. Putting up non-contagious patients who need to complete the second part of their treatment in hotels so proper medication can be ensured is not a bad thing. Many are homeless and all they need to have done is be fed and given medications at regular intervals. One does not need a hospital bed to do that. In cases of people with homes this would be done in their homes. I would much rather see a $50/day hotel used than a $3000/day hospital bed that could be used by an acute patient.

The numbers are not important. What's important is the emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extremely-drug resistant (XDR) strains. MDR strains are difficult to treat. Some doctors say that XDR strains can be treated with great difficulty and expense, but I've read of cases of XDR that doctors couldn't treat at all.

So fear mongering about a crisis that may never happen and is not happening now is more important that real facts and figures. This just plays into the hands of drug companies who w

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[nbauman]

SARS went from zero to 900 deaths very quickly.

In an eight month period 900 people died of SARS. In an average year during the same period 167,000 to 333, 000 die from the common seasonal flue.

900 deaths were the beginning tail of the curve. We didn't have an epidemic because of an aggressive international effort led by WHO to stop it, by isolating patients. That effort led to the deaths of many doctors and nurses, of whom Carlo Urbani was only the most prominent. It's impossible to prove that the outbreak would have spread with an exponential increase, but the judgment of the doctors who were managing it was that it was highly likely, and they believed it strongly enough that they were willing to risk and give their lives to stop it. There was a good chance of a worldwide outbreak of a viral disease with 10% mortality, and they stopped it.

This is an example of how using technical terms such as pandemic can blow things out of proportion. TB is not a new disease and neither is resistant TB. In the US the incidence of resistant TB is declining. In the last year reported there were 103 cases of resistant TB in the US. And no "outbreaks" of resistant TB.

The problem with Florida is that the Republican governor and legislature just closed down the very hospital they need to treat TB at a time when XDR is emerging as a real threat.

Prove this statement. How does closing down a 50 bed hospital have a major impact on an outbreak.

I don't know what burden of evidence you would demand to prove it, but WHO says that one part of the strategy is, "strengthening health care systems and primary care services". Florida's policies of cutting health care budgets and privatizing services are doing the opposite. The underlying problem is that health care in the U.S. is driven by politics, not rational policies, and while the Democrats are pretty bad, the Republicans are the worst offenders.

You also need to justify the statement that "XDR is emerging as a real threat" when the actual numbers say something completely different. Show me how it is an emerging threat in North America.

According to my reading of NEJM and Science, XDR is appearing in many parts of the world in which TB is treated inadequately, such as Russia, and when it appears, it often can't be treated at all, the TB progresses and the patient often dies.

As the NEJM says, the only way to deal with MDR and XDR strains is prevention.

I think you have very much oversimplified NEJM's position of XDR-TB. Here is an actual quote from a NEJM article;

All evidence suggests that XDR tuberculosis reflects a failure to implement the measures recommended in the WHO's Stop TB Strategy.5 This strategy emphasizes expanding high-quality DOTS programs, addressing HIV-associated tuberculosis and drug resistance, strengthening health care systems and primary care services, encouraging all providers to follow good practices, empowering patients and communities to improve health, and enabling and promoting research.

Prevention is only one part of the above strategy.

The relevant part is:

strengthening health care systems and primary care services

The Republican policies are weakening health care systems and primary care services, particularly among the TB-vulnerable populations.

Many of them have latent disease, which means they feel OK but are transmitting TB

Here is an example where your information is completely incorrect. Here is a quote from the CDC fact sheet'

Persons with latent TB infection are not infe

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[jklovanc]

Every one of your arguments are taking small statements out of context, adding them together and creating a crisis where none is present. How about you look at the whole picture instead of putting blinders on to what is working.

According to my reading of NEJM and Science, XDR is appearing in many parts of the world in which TB is treated inadequately, such as Russia, and when it appears, it often can't be treated at all, the TB progresses and the patient often dies.

How does that statement relate at all to the US? The former USSR didn't even have a functioning health care system to start with thane they tried to change it. The US is nowhere near that. Yes, there are cuts in some area so that funding can be used more efficiently elsewhere. Comparing the US to USSR is not accurate. What is happening in the rest of the world and what is happening in the US are very different thing. Care to quote those articles that supposedly support your claims? Without quotes I will have to assume they do not exist and you are merely making things up.

Eventually people like you will be seen as "Chicken Little" and not believed. The health system in the US is not disintegrating as you seem to believe. It is nowhere near like it is in China and the former USSR

You're comparing the cost of an ICU bed with the cost of an ordinary hospital room with infectious precautions.

According to this site It costs at least $37,574 for a Tib Fib break with an average 4.8 day stay. That is $7827/day. Even if it cost $15000 to set the initial break that would be $4700/day. Hospital costs are high because nurses, doctors, pharmacists, etc are working 24/7, There is a lot of very expensive equipment that needs to be paid for , etc.

I think we as a society should spend at least as much for the active infectious diseases as we do for the theoretical risks of biowarfare.

The difference between an active infectious disease and biowarfare is that biowarwafe is designed to have a 90%+ mortality rate, spread extremely quickly and overwhelm a country before it can respond. Naturally occurring diseases are no where near that contagious or lethal.

I don't have all the details on whether the closing of that hospital was a good health care policy, or whether it was medically appropriate to keep those TB patients in motel rooms, so I'll have to suspend judgment until I get all the facts.

Considering that you do not know the facts them please do not comment on them and make them look like poor decisions. The facts are easy to find. Just use Google and critical thinking.The reason for closing the hospital was that it was costing $10 million/year to support 50 beds that were only ever occupied half the time. That money is much better spent on hospital isolation wards in areas that people are getting sick.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[nbauman]

Considering that you do not know the facts them please do not comment on them and make them look like poor decisions.

In science it is a matter of intellectual integrity and custom to acknowledge the limitations of your knowledge. I suggest you adopt that practice.

Re:worst tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years

[jklovanc]

Since you can not attack the argument you attack the person. Perhaps you should look up ad hominem. I do know a huge amount of information; it comes from being OCD about research. What I don't know I look up. If you "acknowledge the limitations of your knowledge" then why did you comment in the first place on how bad the practices were. There are two valid ways of dealing with lack of knowledge; don't comment or do research. I prefer research. It seems you prefer to comment when you know you don't have the knowledge. If you are unsure of something please look it up before posting.

Sack of shit paid spammer

[moosehooey]

None of the linked articles even contain the word Democrat.

Re:Political correctness in action

[i_ate_god]

to be fair, freedom of speech necessarily implies that anonymity be protected.

Political Correctness????

[voss]

Whos the governor of florida? Republican Rick Scott

Which party controls both the florida house and florida senate...Republicans

Who voted to defund the TB hospital in Florida...Republican state legislators

Which governor said he would not accept federal "Obamacare" funding to expend medicaid which provides TB medication ....Republican Rick Scott.

Re:Political Correctness????

[Black Parrot]

Whos the governor of florida? Republican Rick Scott

Which party controls both the florida house and florida senate...Republicans

Who voted to defund the TB hospital in Florida...Republican state legislators

Which governor said he would not accept federal "Obamacare" funding to expend medicaid which provides TB medication ....Republican Rick Scott.

See, just like he said: it's all the Democrats' fault!

Re:Political Correctness????

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you turned this political, which state's unemployment rate is dropping, Florida's, and so is every other state that elected a republican governor in 2010.

Ah, this nice quote. Literally true, perhaps, but absolutely misleading. It's funny, but this meme seems to be making its away around the noise machine of late, almost as if it was a deliberate effort.

And then you check it out:

In fact, we also found that the unemployment rate has fallen in every state but one (New York) in the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So, in other words, despite the implication in Robitaille’s shorthand claim, there’s no apparent link between the party affiliation of the governor and a decline in the unemployment rate.

http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2012/jul/11/john-robitaille/former-ri-gubernatorial-candidate-john-robitaille-/

Ouch, thanks for giving us something that's true, but misleading. It shows what you care about.

Re:Political Correctness????

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you turned this political, which state's unemployment rate is dropping, Florida's, and so is every other state that elected a republican governor in 2010..

...and so is every state that elected a Democratic governor. What is your point?

Re:Political Correctness????

[theRunicBard]

Ah, but who let them get away with it? Democrats. Your move, logic-users.

Re:Political Correctness????

[Anonymous Coward]

And nearly every republican state also has the shortest times you can be on unemployment you drop off. Those unenployment statistics are virtually worthless on reflecting on whatis really going on.

Re:Political Correctness????

[demachina]

"Its not like you can'tget the TB treatement at any hospital, you can."

The chances a privately owned hospital is going to house dozens of homeless black men, many with mental issues, for six months for a TB regimen are vanishingly small, unless the government makes them and the government picks up the staggering tab they will generate.

You pretty much need a charity hospital or a state run hospital, which is why closing down the state run hospital that was housing the probably homeless people quarantined by court order probably caused a problem. The fact is the state run hospital probably did run up some huge bills for this kind of treatment which is why the Republican legislature and the Republican governor decided closing it was a convenient way to balance their budget. Hopefully there are other state run or charity hospitals that would pick up the slack, but since they started putting the homeless in to motels to try to force them to take the antibiotics with regular nurse visits, there is an implication that maybe the hospital facilities might not be there any more in Florida.

Having a TB epidemic spiraling out of control is REALLY expensive, especially if you are a state that is heavily dependent on tourism.

Just a guess but if anyone was trying to intentionally cover up this outbreak it was probably because they were worried what damage it would do their tourism industry if word got out, which it apparently just did.

Seems kind of like a classic case of being penny wise and pound foolish. You probably should spend whatever it takes to control a TB outbreak, and catch it early, because the consequences of it spreading, and the damage it can do to your economy once it spreads, and the news of it spreads, is enormous.

Re:Political Correctness????

[sociocapitalist]

Whos the governor of florida? Republican Rick Scott

Which party controls both the florida house and florida senate...Republicans

Who voted to defund the TB hospital in Florida...Republican state legislators

Which governor said he would not accept federal "Obamacare" funding to expend medicaid which provides TB medication ....Republican Rick Scott.

And anyone would subsequently be surprised at a cover up of a TB outbreak in Florida?

Re:Political Correctness????

[dcherryholmes]

This is, at best, half-true, but mostly false.

http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2012/jul/11/john-robitaille/former-ri-gubernatorial-candidate-john-robitaille-/

Re:Political Correctness????

[dcherryholmes]

Sorry, meant to reply to the AC grandparent making the claim that unemployment had dropped in states electing Republican governors. It's not an inaccurate claim, but it is incomplete, and the implication he tries to make is false.

Re:Political Correctness????

[Darinbob]

Agreed. If Obama would just voluntarily resign then the republicans could stop all this posturing and obstructionism and get back to actually running things properly.

Sack of shit spammer

[moosehooey]

None of the linked articles even contain the word Democrat. What the fuck are you talking about?

Re:Sack of shit spammer

[Black Parrot]

None of the linked articles even contain the word Democrat. What the fuck are you talking about?

He's talking about Republican Reality (tm).

Probably his dad is paying him to watch Slashdot and intervene whenever he can.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[cheater512]

The case could be made that a 'massive power grab' is a hell of a lot better than no health care at all.

Mind you I'm from Australia. Needed 2 stitches recently, went in, showed my Medicare card, got the stitches and walked out end of story.
Too easy.

Bunch of Lungers...

[ilikenwf]

Doc Holliday back from the grave and sleeping around? He's your huckleberry.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

...and they're still identical for all practical purposes. If it weren't for the fact that I have been following politics for three decades I might expect Republicans to rejoice at their epic success in passing their vision of health insurance reform and the utter defeat of single-payer healthcare, the existence of which is a defining characteristic of first-world nations and absence thereof a prime indicator of third world shitholes. Instead the rabid rage exhibited as democrats embrace Heritage Foundation/Romneycare is exactly what I expect of the fiscally, intellectually, and morally bankrupt band of psychopaths that make up the entire Republican party.

Vaccination?

[whoever57]

Perhaps it is time that the vaccine was recommended for all people?

Re:Vaccination?

[El Puerco Loco]

The vaccine doesn't give 100% protection and it also causes a positive reaction to the skin test for TB, so it makes it harder to detect cases of latent TB.

FUCK MY LIFE

[Yosho-sama]

I'm in Miami and I've had a cough for 2 weeks. I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday. This is NOT what I needed to read.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[jklovanc]

If you mean this Canada Health Act then no it does not fit on a 8"x11" sheet of paper. Also the Canada Health Act grew out of provincial plans for universal health care. There are no equivalent plans in the US. There are no state health care acts that require every citizen to pay premiums for health care as there were in some provinces in Canada. The Canada Health Act defines what must be done by the provinces and the provinces implement it. It is this way because the British North America Act 1867 stipulates that health care implementation is a provincial area. I know of no similar law in the US.

Right now most health care in the US is provided to people who have private health insurance usually paid for by their employers. That puts many people in the US without adequate health care. Perhaps if there was a better way of providing health care for everyone in the US than obanacare might agree but as of now there is not.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

How about fuck you, anonymous. Too many people equate liberal with liberty when, in fact, the opposite is quite the case - they're a mutually exclusive arrangement.

Only if you're using the FOX notions of what liberal and liberty mean.

The more that people see this, the better off this country will be. Not that Repubs are much better, but they are. Libertarian is the way.

Libertarians are just Republicans who aren't pretending to be on a Mission from God.

Don't like my opinions or what I post, use your mod points or stfu.

Or maybe reply? But no, your notion of "liberty" is "my way or the highway".

Re:Political correctness in action

[DeadCatX2]

And when you can't pay the fine, because you can't afford that either, you'll go to jail

This is straight from the law itself, under section 5000a, page 131:

‘‘(2) SPECIAL RULES.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law—
‘‘(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.—In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.
‘‘(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.—The Secretary shall not—
‘‘(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or
‘‘(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.’’.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Kagetsuki]

NO. Freedom of speech implies you can say whatever you want without having to put on a Guy Fawkes mask. It means you can speak freely as yourself. The right to remain anonymous is another issue.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

Gaah I am so sick of you libertards

It's "libertardians". Otherwise people will think you're talking about standard "libtards".

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

Isn't this the Libertarian paradise the Ron Paul legions envisage?

I don't know, I've never been to Somalia.

Re:Political correctness in action

[demachina]

Uh, this article indicates 11 people were quarantined in Florida under court order last year to treat TB. If the people involved are willing to self quarantine at home and take the meds its preferred to not quarantine because its very expensive and punishing to people who are victims, not perpetrators of anything. In this case the outbreak was a worst case scenario because it was among homeless people, the first case being a schizophrenic, who can't self quarantine, can't get good health care, and about whom most people could care less.

A problem seems to be the Republicans who control Florida closed the hospital where TB cases were quarantined. They've apparently been putting the infected homeless in motels as an alternative which isn't the greatest idea since they will come in contact with a lot of people, but it is less bad than homeless shelters and wandering the streets. They are trying to send nurses around to make them take the antibiotics, so it helps they are in a fixed location, but still.

Duval County is historically Republican, though its pretty evenly divided now. Florida has been under Republican governors since 1999, The legislature has been Republican dominated since the mid 90's.

Its incredibly pointless sit here and play our stupid partisan game on this issue, but if any party is to blame it would probably be the Republicans.

To be honest /. discourse in particular, and in America in general, is getting so sickening its getting hard to read, and the posts tonight just reaffirms. A very sad and disturbing crisis turns in to another round of shrill partisan trolling and you, jmorris, always seem to be the right wing ring leader kicking it off. There are some left wing ring leader that don't particularly help but they pale in comparison to you.

It would probably be better if we all stopped being Democrats and Republicans, and started being Americans, and start working on ways to fix our inceasingly screwed up country. In particular our government is going broke at all levels, large numbers of our fellow citizens are going broke, we can't seem to provide even basic services that most would take for granted in the world's supposedly richest and most powerful country, a very small number people are getting fabulously wealthy and most of them apparently could care less if their country is unraveling around them as long as life in the gated communities is still good.

Not the only outbreak.

[Areyoukiddingme]

Tuberculosis isn't the only disease making a comeback this year. Pertussis is also coming back.

Across the United States, 8,159 provisional pertussis cases have been reported to the CDC as of May 5, 2012, representing an 87 percent increase compared to the same time period in 2011. Pertussis cases reached epidemic levels in Washington state this year, and cases are trending high in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.

From MarketWatch.

So fear not. If you've been coughing for weeks, it may only be whooping cough, which does little or no damage to your lungs, instead of tuberculosis, which can do major damage to your lungs.

Also, if you're coughing, do your best to get into a meeting with your CEO/CTO/CFO/VP/etc. Really, any major corporate officer will do. Biological warfare is a fine answer to class warfare.

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[gmhowell]

One cannot mention pertussis without also mentioning the Jenny McCarthy Body Count. (Also valid for diphtheria, measles, etc, etc.)

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[circletimessquare]

when the rich change the laws so they stay rich, you have class warfare

you then see violence because the poor and middle class have no legal means to get the fair share that was stolen from them by the rich

now watch republican initiatives on tax cuts and corporate welfare and their support for rent seeking parasites (health insurers) that add nothing to society, and, in the case of health insurers, actually make money while the middle class dies. that it isn't a guy with a gun or a club doesn't mean there isn't a war, and it wasn't started by the poor and middle class

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[circletimessquare]

that's the most amazing part, how many fools swallow faux news, which is basically corporate propaganda, at the expense of their own health and financial well-being

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'm sorry. Obviously my phrasing confused you. I made it sound like there was a choice.

There isn't.

When a substantial fraction of the population is infected, the chances of being exposed go up exponentially. This means you are likely to be exposed even if you are rich. Being rich may mean that your access to superior healthcare will enable your survival. It does not, however, ensure it. You may catch a strain resistant to antibiotics and die anyway. Being rich, you may assume that you are invulnerable to everything, or that money can fix anything, and put off getting diagnosed or treated until it's too late. There's plenty of ways to die when a plague is loose in the land, no matter how rich and privileged you are.

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[siwelwerd]

whooping cough, which does little or no damage to your lungs

My wife, who has chronic bronchitis stemming from when she had pertussis in college, would disagree with you.

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[TubeSteak]

that it isn't a guy with a gun or a club doesn't mean there isn't a war, and it wasn't started by the poor and middle class

It was most certainly started by the poor and middle class.
Over 100 years ago as a matter of fact! That's when the riff raff started demanding things like:
clean drinking water, uncontaminated food, weekends off and a 40 hour work week,
safe working conditions, an end to child labor, decent wages, and an endless list of similar profit killing demands.

The nerve of "those people"

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[circletimessquare]

exactly!

what is the point of civilization? what is the purpose of your life?

to enrich some guy who's dad was rich too, that's the point!

Re:Not the only outbreak.

[celle]

"Also, if you're coughing, do your best to get into a meeting with your CEO/CTO/CFO/VP/etc. Really, any major corporate officer will do. Biological warfare is a fine answer to class warfare."

    Don't forget your congressional and local representatives. Especially the conservative ones for enhancing this situation.

PS. I'd say mumps instead but by the time these bastards get in government far enough to do damage they've already had kids.

By the way, you do realize by closing the specialized hospital that you guarantee wider exposure to the general population because people with TB will be intermingling in numerous hospitals with members of the public who already have weakened immunity/injuries hence the reason that they are there.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

Ronmey care -- supported by a majority of the state's citizenry, and passed by a bipartisan majority in a state legislature.
ObamaTax -- crafted in closed-door meetings, opposed by the majority of citizens, not understood by congress at the time of the vote, and "reconciled" into existence, whatever the fuck that means.

Uh... if you followed the news with a third-grader's attention span you'd know that Republican committee members wrought *massive* changes to the bill before it came to a vote. (And then voted against it even after the Democrats caved on almost every point.)

And I don't know why people call it "Obamacare". He wasn't exactly out there using his bully pulpit to make sure we got a good law out of the process.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

When the British ruled the US, they routinely tried to come around the pubs and bars and get 'patriots' to commit their names to ledgers so they could go after them.

The engaged in some pretty shady espionage to get that same information, and the 'patriots' would go to great lengths to conceal their identities.

So... yes it's exactly what the freedom of speech was meant to do. It's just that you don't understand history or the purpose of the rule of law.

Given that you probably aren't American, that make sense. If you are American, you apparently like to be politically harangued.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[glassware]

You're completely delusional. My relatives in Ireland, England, and Australia have much better healthcare than we have here in the US. They don't have to waste ages filling out forms; they just get care because they are citizens. And you know what? They pay less for their healthcare than we do.

Yes, you heard that right: we pay as much in taxes for Medicare & Medicaid as they do for universal healthcare. Plus, on top of medicare/medicaid, we also pay private insurance. Here's a breakdown of how we pay through the nose for our stupid healthcare system.
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/oecd042111.cfm

We should stop paying private companies and make Medicare universal. There's no reason healthcare in the US should be so miserable. If you still want a private plan, great, but stop making me pay twice what my cousins pay.

Oh, and by the way, Australia is not a depressed economy. And no, doctors don't consider quitting over "Obamacare". Creating a phony survey isn't the same as actually doing real work:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/10/comically-awful-survey-says-83-percent-of-docto/187029

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

One of the reasons I abandoned the Republican party was because they could never face up to their own failures or take responsibilities for their mistakes

I don't think those are failures and mistakes. The Republican political philosophy is that "the proper role of government is to help the rich get richer". They rarely fail or make mistakes on that particular topic. Poor people starving or dying because they can't afford medical treatment isn't a problem for them.

They just can't come out and say what they really stand for, or they'd never win an election.

And they certainly aren't going to admit that their party's actual name is Government Of the People(, By the Rich, For the Rich).

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Prisoners receive better medical care than most Americans, and it's illegal to let them go untreated. I don't know where you got your info, but it's fucked.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

NO. Freedom of speech implies you can say whatever you want without having to put on a Guy Fawkes mask. It means you can speak freely as yourself. The right to remain anonymous is another issue.

Posting under a bullshit pseudonym isn't any different than posting AC.

Re:When will they stop?

[Black Parrot]

The Democrats did it! The Democrats did it! The Democrats did it! The Democrats did it! I am going to shout it at the top of my lungs until

you die from TB?

Re:Political correctness in action

[mug funky]

...AIDS...patients with no self control.

how the fuck do you draw that conclusion?

Right facts, wrong interpretaton.

[raehl]

Freedom of speech was meant to protect you from the government taking any action based on knowing you were saying things the government may not like.

It affords you protection from the government, but not protection from your fellow citizens thinking you're a moron.

Re:Right facts, wrong interpretaton.

[Registered Coward v2]

Freedom of speech was meant to protect you from the government taking any action based on knowing you were saying things the government may not like.

It affords you protection from the government, but not protection from your fellow citizens thinking you're a moron.

Actually, your are incorrect. the correct statement would be:

It affords you protection from the government, but not protection from proving, by what you say, to your fellow citizens you're a moron.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Svartormr]

Reading the article they did get court orders. Too bad the TB hospital was closed and there wasn't enough funding for proper medical staff.

Democrat delenda est.

About your quote and its relationship to the original, "Carthagio delenda est." You do know that later Romans consider their wanton destruction of Carthagio in the 3rd Punic War to be a pivotal event in the decline of their republic, don't you?

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[ravenshrike]

Of course, the easiest way to fix the problem would be to drop the employer health insurance tax credit, strike down the interstate barriers to health insurance(Oddly enough, a power the commerce clause was actually meant to have), give a 3 year amnesty to move to a private health insurance plan with the health care providers unable to say no, force hospitals to itemize their bills and have price lists available for non-emergency care, and have the feds take care of the less than 10% of people who health insurance won't insure at all.

Re:Political correctness in action

[tofubeer]

"Then we decided we couldn't force people into quarantine to ensure they got proper treatment and to prevent the spread of such a readily transmissible disease"

And

"But don't worry, this is all the evil Republican's fault. ObamaCare^WTax will fix all these problems."

Welcome to the Nanny State?

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Mashiki]

Thanks for noticing. I didn't even bother to read any more of it, I knew that kind of clause would be somewhere within it.

You just proved the point.

That's nice. Too bad you didn't read the the preamble which supersedes s.22. Get back to me when you do okay? I don't want you do look anymore of an ass, if that's possible. Remember, in law. S1 can never be superseded by s.2, and the highest law of the land is always the charter.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[tofubeer]

We have Alberta though... damn Easterners!

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Anonymous Coward]

Delusional would imply that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Do you have any sources, case studies, journal publications, examples or real numbers for this?

There seems to be a lot of facts about government run healthcare that makes it look good. I have not seen evidence of the opposite. Just appeals to authority I don't know nor see a reason to trust.

Re:Political correctness in action

[drkstr1]

Good point, I should go vote for the party that says I don't own my own body and censorship is a good idea! Ron Paul 2012!

Maybe I need to work on my reading comprehension, but are you saying Ron Paul believes you don't own your body and censorship is a good thing? If so, I beg to differ.

Ron Paul is the only hope we have to cast off our corporate overlords. Unfortunately, this is exactly why he doesn't have a chance in hell for the presidency.

Srsly

[Cyfun]

Am I the only one who's gonna say it? Fine then.

Fuck Florida.

Let them all die off as a result of their stupidity.

Re:Srsly

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who's gonna say it? Fine then.

Fuck Florida.

Let them all die off as a result of their stupidity.

And what about the millions of Floridians who recognized all along that Rick Scott is a dangerous fool, told their benighted tea-partyin' neighbors that he was a dangerous fool, do what they can every day to minimize the destruction of their children's futures in this state, and hope that Scott, the Tea Party, and all the nastiness that the Jebushites have spawned will be one day tossed out?

Oh, and what about, say, someone from Seattle who happens to share a plane flight with someone from Austin who shared a taxicab with a New Yorker who happened to share an elevator with a Floridian who happened to stand on a street corner next to one of the TB-spewing folk that Scott and his gang turned out on the street (and ignored and then covered up signs of the impending disaster)?

Shall we say f*ck all those in that chain of misery? TB doesn't much care about your political awareness or abjection. It cares if you have *lungs* or not.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[tFunc]

(some provinces have better care(those with more money)
(aka income tax and GST--nationwide sales tax)
(aka territories, or natives, or military, the federal government shall provide said care.

Please balance your parentheses. It's driving me crazy.
Signed,
lisp guy

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[i_ate_god]

Quebec contributes significantly to the country.

Quebec would have to declare bankruptcy though, but that's not an indication of the productive output of the province, but of rampant government corruption and mismanagement, across both the Quebec LIberals and PQ.

How is it that the most taxed jurisdiction in North America has to deal with massive social unrest due to hiking a heavily subsidized tuition?

I'm a quebecker, it makes no sense...

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[i_ate_god]

what is this obsession of yours to having one government be responsible over another government?

Federal, state, province, county, municipal, bouncer at the fancy club, it's just politics man.

Re:Political correctness in action

[interkin3tic]

TB was pretty much a solved problem in the 1st world. Then we decided we couldn't force people into quarantine to ensure they got proper treatment and to prevent the spread of such a readily transmissible disease.

Because we have a vaccine.

Today we generally don't forcibly quarantine people even though we aren't vaccinating because it's only contagious for a few weeks after treatment has started, and it's easy enough for people with TB to isolate themselves and or wear a mask. Also the disease is not life threatening and it's treatable.

There are exceptions, and quarantine does happen in those cases

Best I can tell from what passes as thought in the politically correct set, diseases got rights or something. Or people got the right to not get treated and to pass on the crap they catch. I really can't decipher it.

Maybe then you should avoid jumping to the dumbest possible conclusion before doing the slightest bit of research. Actually, given your track record here, maybe you should just avoid making conclusions period.

But don't worry, this is all the evil Republican's fault. ObamaCare^WTax will fix all these problems.

Something tells me you'd be opposed to the government spending money to start vaccinating people against tuberculosis again. So I'm guessing how you'd deal with this outbreak would be to implement the usual republican healthcare plan: "Don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly."

Re:Political correctness in action

[phantomfive]

Its incredibly pointless sit here and play our stupid partisan game on this issue,

Well said.

but if any party is to blame it would probably be the Republicans.

Oh well. Drink to pointlessness!

Re:Political correctness in action

[TapeCutter]

I can handle "funny and stupid", angry and stupid not so much.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[jklovanc]

Of course, the easiest way to fix the problem would be to drop the employer health insurance tax credit

and increase the costs to people who have health insurance.

strike down the interstate barriers to health insurance(Oddly enough, a power the commerce clause was actually meant to have),

Take a look at this article

give a 3 year amnesty to move to a private health insurance plan with the health care providers unable to say no

It does not matter how long is given if people can not afford the coverage

force hospitals to itemize their bills and have price lists available for non-emergency care

So hospitals itemize care thet the general public can not afford. How does that help?

have the feds take care of the less than 10% of people who health insurance won't insure at all

What about the other people who can be insured but can not afford it? Sixteen percent of the US population does not have health insurance. Another point is that having health insurance does not mean it is adequate. Some healt insurance has such low caps that a major illness or accident can still be financially devistating.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Boronx]

No thanks, if we're going to stick with some horrible frankenstein private plan like Obama care, I don't want insurance companies that only have to abide by Mississippi law operating in my state.

Re:Political correctness in action

[spiffmastercow]

The problem with Paul is that he fails to see that 'official' power (i.e. government) is no different really than 'de facto' power wielded by corporations. I'm wary of the government, but I'm downright afraid of what multinational corporations would do if given free reign.

Re:Political correctness in action

[symbolset]

The founding fathers of the US didn't feel that way, and published their "Federalist Papers" under pseudonyms. Freedom to be anonymous guarantees freedom of speech. It also focuses the audience not on the speaker, but the message. With modern tech anonymous speech can't be prevented anyway so there's no point in trying to banish it unless you want to be The Best Korea.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[climb_no_fear]

Sorry but the BCG vaccine doesn't work in most adults and there's a lot of work going on to find out why (here's a recent paper with a possible hint:
 
  http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/myvu/news/2009/05/21/study-of-ineffective-tb-vaccine-may-lead-to-new-vaccines.80590/
 
and therefore treating the disease when it appears becomes crucial.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Fulminata]

"Or you do it right, and let states decide what, when and how they should do it. Instead of faceless bureaucrats in washington."

Where does this delusion that the states are better at handling things than the federal government come from? The bureaucrats in my state capital are just as faceless as those in Washington, and are far more susceptible to corruption than federal employees because they're under far less scrutiny.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Z34107]

I know this is lost on some of you here, but there's a continuum between "world's largest inmate population" and "anarchy."

I'll leave guessing which end we're at as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

I know this is lost on some of you here, but there's a continuum between "world's largest inmate population" and "anarchy.

Truly, there's no reason a nation as special as us couldn't have both.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Z34107]

Verily, that's where we're headed.

Re:Political correctness in action

[umghhh]

Och so iDecade is gone we have now sDecade or at least sPost? Just wonder what this 's' stands for - different ideas come to mind here, some more appealing t han others.....

Re:Political correctness in action

[umghhh]

that GP recognizes the difference between right to free speech and right to remain anonymous is a sign s/he is an educated person with some analytic skills. You post shows the opposite qualities - not only you attack GP's right to use whatever name he wants but you ignore the fact that using a particular (self chosen or not) name in certain context and in a consistent way has nothing to do with anonymity that you imply with your post. In fact every time you address GP by his userid on this side we will know who do you mean so what is problem do you have here?

Re:Political correctness in action

[WilliamBaughman]

You have your facts wrong, but in an interesting way. We never decided that we couldn't force people into quarantine. One of the first pieces I ever read on drug resistant tuberculosis included an interview with a guy shackled to a bed in a New York hospital because he repeatedly skipped his meds. I didn't dig up that story which my quick search, but I did find this NOVA timeline. Check it out:

• New York City detained more than 200 people who refused TB treatment in the 1990s.
• The powers to involuntarily quarantine people were expanded after 9/11.

And a direct quote (from the as of 2004 part):

• The Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, part of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, controls quarantine issues in the United States today. The Division oversees eight national quarantine stationsâ"in New York, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. At present, federal, state, and some city health officials have the right to isolate or quarantine individuals who are ill or may become ill with a potentially lethal infectious disease.

So we never stopped quarantining people. Anyway, political correctness has nothing to do with TB treatment, or with drug resistant strains of TB. From my readings, drug resistant TB incubates in Russian Prisons and Mexican day laborers, and in India. Given your self professed aversion to political correctness, I'm surprised you skipped over those populations and leapt to "immune compromised patients with no self control." You may have meant inmates in the aforementioned Russian prisoners, who literally have no control over their surroundings or their treatments, but it sounded like an unsubtle swipe at gay people. That part of your comment sounded an awful lot like 90s-era hate speech, which had moved from "AIDS is God actively killing homosexuals to", "HIV isn't a problem because it only kills people who lack self-control [and have un-Christian sex before marriage]". I have never heard, anywhere, that people with AIDS are contributing to drug resistant TB. If they stop taking their meds, they die.

Lastly, you seem to be upset about "ObamaTax". That's okay. But to clarify, did you really think a government that can force people people to buy insurance couldn't already force them into quarantine? Or is the costs aspect that upsets you? Maybe you have some nuanced views, but you sure seem like a troll, so I don't mind feeding you LMGTFY links. But even if you are, I didn't want you worrying about our government not being able to quarantine people ;-)

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[umghhh]

seems like you have half way (that is already a good sign) reasonable approach to this. I cannot understand why a law has to be written on thaousands of pages - seems to be a system thing. Germans here have the same sickness - they even have an act of law to simplify acts of law so that acts of law can get all tidy :) Not sure if this is because our political and law system has been fucked up by occupying forces (US apparently designed big part f it) or it is original German idea - maybe combination of those? Still I believe we do not have an act of law spanning over 1000pages (I hope at least).

Only in USA

[anared]

As a western country, USA is pretty third world

Re:Only in USA

[bussdriver]

Depends on how you measure 3rd world. Many statistics place the USA in that category. If you broadly count abortions as child mortality then you get 3rd world on that stat plus the lifespan numbers drop as well... As the middle class shrinks the stats will get worse. Then you should think about what is 3rd world today; should whatever metrics that used to describe it remain the same? Education has improved greatly all over the world, so should the previous 3rd world level from 60 years ago still be used as the baseline?

One could make it appear 3rd world overall; but the real point is the USA is at the bottom of the "top" and continually dropping while the rest largely progress upwards.

Republicans: now in Rich flavor

[TiggertheMad]

I fail to see the relevance. This is not a political problem. The Lord will cure these people. If they cause an epidemic, killing millions, that's obviously just His will.

That is the poor Republican response. The rich Republican response is: Fuck em, they are the poor and probably brown people to boot.

Re:Republicans: now in Rich flavor

[Anonymous Coward]

You just replace "the Lord" with "the Free Market". Same basic idea. I think they used to call this "Free Market" person "Mammon" or something? He's in the same general league, anyway.

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

According to a few recent articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, the main reason TB is coming back is that the areas of the world with the greatest incidence are the areas that can't afford the drugs. TB is becoming resistant to the older, cheaper drugs. Some TB is resistant to every drug they've got, and there's no effective medical treatment. That resistance is due to over-use and inappropriate use of antibiotics. People take the drugs for a while and quit before the TB is eradicated. Or they buy drugs in the free market and get sub-therapeutic doses.

If anybody refused to get treated, health workers wouldn't force them. They can't afford enough drugs for everyone who needs it anyway.

Civil liberties had nothing to do with it. In those places with enough money, they keep TB patients in hospitals, and treat them directly, and those patients are often glad to have a comfortable place to live.

The only place I know that puts people into quarantine is Cuba. When AIDS hit Cuba, Castro quarantined everybody with AIDS in separated villages. They were kept very comfortable, well-fed, in nice houses, so they had little incentive to leave. Cuba successfully avoided an AIDS epidemic.

That's what you're advocating, right? Dictatorial power? No politically correct individual freedom for you.

Bullshit alert: 83% of doctors

[nbauman]

83% of doctors have considered quitting over obamacare.

That story about 83% of doctors threatening to quit under Obamacare is bullshit.

Slate had a nice story about it. http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/07/09/about_that_83_percent_of_doctors_hate_obamacare_so_much_they_might_quit_poll.html

About That "83 Percent of Doctors Hate Obamacare So Much, They Might Quit" Poll
By David Weigel
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012, at 5:12 PM ET

"Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association."

What is the "Doctor Patient Medical Association"? Short answer: A bunch of right-wing Republican wackos, like Kathryn Serkes and Mark Schiller, who previously claimed Obamacare would kill off elderly sick people.

"The survey was conducted by fax and online from April 18 to May 22, 2012. DPMAF obtained the office fax numbers of 36,000 doctors in active clinical practice, and 16, 227 faxes were successfully delivered... The response rate was 4.3% for a total of 699 completed surveys."

Translation: 83% of 4.3% said they considered leaving under Obamacare. That's 3.6% of those polled.

But most people who have taken a college statistics course would throw a survey with a 4.3% response rate in the shredder.

They "considered" leaving medicine. What were they leaving medicine for? Real estate sales? Financial planning? Opening a restaurant? There aren't too many other occupations that can bring in a doctor's salary in the US. Doctors are always threatening to leave, but few do.

Re:Bullshit alert: 83% of doctors

[Jesus_C_of_Nazareth]

Serkes is formerly of the AAPS, which alone should ring alarm bells. AAPS is a right-wing pseudo medical association, with Andrew Schlafly (of Conservapedia infamy) as legal counsel. The AAPS is pushing quackery and a lunatic tightening agenda. Schlafly himself is no stranger to statistical mendacity, or perhaps he's just making the kinds of mistakes that'd shame a high schooler. Curiously enough, he also asserts expertise in medicine and pretty much everything, and with each pronouncement he demonstrates dishonesty and ignorance. The thing is, we don't even need to know this in order to reject the findings of the survey. As Bauman said, the survey is deeply flawed. The analysis is either utterly incompetent, or dishonest. Given Serkes' record, I believe the latter to be the case. This survey would be just as flawed and worthy of rejection if it came from the AMA, signed by me.

Captain Poe to the rescue!

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

And that's why I will refrain from responding to this ignorant WHARRGARBL

"Worst in X years" could indicate a trend change

[F69631]

While I mostly agree with you, I wouldn't dismiss relative terms completely in this short of cases. For example, if outbreaks have been in very steady decline for several decades and then we suddenly get worst outbreak in twenty years, it might tell us something very important (Is the trend turning? Has someone/-thing just made a very serious fuckup that caused it? How likely is it that it's just a statistical anomaly?) even if it doesn't tell us how worried we should feel about acute problems.

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

Prisoners receive better medical care than most Americans, and it's illegal to let them go untreated. I don't know where you got your info, but it's fucked.

Nonsense. There was a series of articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Andrew Skolnick about prison medical care, which is basically terrible. There are similar investigative stories every year or so.

Prison doctors are the worst doctors in medicine. Many of them are criminals themselves. States used to have a practice of convicting doctors of crimes, and limiting their license to practice in prison.

Many prisoners have died because their nurses, or the prison guards, ignored basic care, like giving insulin to diabetic patients, or let them lie in a cell with a heart attack or stroke without examining them. There have been a few lawsuits, but they're not too successful. It's hard to get a big judgment (or any judgment) when the victim is a prisoner, and the courts are stacked against it.

You can search Google News and find cases every month of a prisoner who died for lack of medical care.

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

Not only that, the Republican legislators and Governor closed down the only hospital in Florida that was treating the poor, homeless, substance abusers and mentally ill people who are the main ones who get TB, according to TFA. The Republicans knew about the CDC report as they pushed to close the hospital. That's why they concealed it.

Now, even if they wanted to confine them, they would have no place to put them. Or rather -- they're putting them up now in motels. You realize that hospitals have special laundry equipment to sterilize the laundry. Motels don't.

This is a time bomb. They're growing drug-resistant TB, which is incurable.

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

Either you keep the population healthy, or you die. All. Of. You. It really is just that simple.

That's why Adam Smith said that health care was a proper government role, in Wealth of Nations.

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

About your quote and its relationship to the original, "Carthagio delenda est." You do know that later Romans consider their wanton destruction of Carthagio in the 3rd Punic War to be a pivotal event in the decline of their republic, don't you?

Probably not. Conservatives don't study Latin any more.

or, The Market Will Decide?

[fantomas]

or perhaps it's the Invisible Hand of the Market that is deciding? ;-)

I thought when the "political correctness!" cry is made, it is generally associated with concerns that a centralised government authority has too much power over the citizens.

Interested to hear you use it in the context of 'too much citizen choice, not enough regulation'.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Anonymous Coward]

Ireland is not a great example. Medical cards are available to people of very strained means, while for the rest of us we'll be paying for most of our care. Dentists are far from cheap, GP visits have an automatic fee (not including costs for x rays and referrals, and a trip to the emergency room too has a flat fee). Granted, emergency room stuff is relatively cheap, as this can cover many follow-up visits for treatment. Private insurance is highly recommended, and most professionals would expect this as part of an employment package. As an example, I can pay 50 odd euro just to talk to my GP, paying more if tests must be run. If seeking treatment, bring your credit card.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Kagetsuki]

I think you misunderstood me: With freedom of anonymity comes freedom of speech, but freedom of speech does not guarantee anonymity. You shouldn't have to be anonymous to be able to speak freely, and it is to America merit that you have freedom of speach both anonymously and otherwise.

And I am certainly not trying to banish it. My point above about not posting as AC is that with freedom of speech you should not be ashamed or fearful of making your opinions and views known as yourself.

Sounds like something out of the 3rd world

[gweihir]

A TB outbreak is an emergency. No making immediately sure all affected are treated is just stupid. In the modern wold, nobody messes with this stuff. People that refuse treatment or do not take their medication go to closed hospital wards within a few days, and that does not require a court order initially.

Mess with TB, and what you get is resistant strains that often cannot be cured anymore and people will start dying. This is one area where saving money initially is very, very expensive.

Re:Sounds like something out of the 3rd world

[gweihir]

Hehe, nice spot-on irony! I like it.

Re:"Worst in X years" could indicate a trend chang

[jklovanc]

In 2008 there were a total of 12,904 cases of TB in the US reported to the CDC. The number reported in Florida was 954. The 99 in one area seems to be a cluster rather than a concern.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Registered Coward v2]

You're completely delusional. My relatives in Ireland, England, and Australia have much better healthcare than we have here in the US. They don't have to waste ages filling out forms; they just get care because they are citizens.

I also have relatives in the EU and Australia and have seen the EU's healthcare system up close and personal, while there is much to like about it there are also some downsides. Emergency care is great - simply go, get treated and leave, in emergency rooms that aren't crammed full of people using it as their primary care doctor because that's the only way they can get care. The down side is they ration care by availability while we ration it by ability to pay. Unless it is a serious health issue you may have a wait to see a doctor. In some places, doctor can have private practices and as a result their is a two tier system. Personally, while I think universal coverage is a better system overall it isn't perfect either.

And you know what? They pay less for their healthcare than we do.

Yes, you heard that right: we pay as much in taxes for Medicare & Medicaid as they do for universal healthcare. Plus, on top of medicare/medicaid, we also pay private insurance.

Excellent point - people forget they pay 100% of their insurance costs - either by a deduction from their pay or by a lower salary that factors in what the employer pays.

One downside of universal care is the system will set prices for things like drugs; driving down the profits and incentives for research. We cant argue whether or not that is a good thing but it will be one unavoidable economic result from the US adopting such a system. In effect, much of the world will stop getting a free ride from the higher cost of drugs in the US.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[sociocapitalist]

Yep, we just need the good old CDC and Health Departments that actually ensured everyone got a Small Pox Vaccine. My Evil half just wants this to result in a highly contagious version that is Antibiotic Resistant and make it so everyone has to get the TB Vaccine. The irony of a disease coming into existence from this kind of nieve plot to kill innocent people. Really, the "Lets do nothing and let the Poor Die" plan doesn't work. Then again a lot of people will have to die for us just to relearn the lesson that Small Pox taught us.

Vaccines are not anti-biotics so this shouldn't be related.

Also, it's not 'Let's do nothing and let the poor die". It's "Let's get ourselves and our families immunized and we won't think about the poor because it's their own fault that they're poor in this wonderful country of opportunity". /ironyoff

Couldn't

[ThatsNotPudding]

Couldn't care less. Couldn't. Once might be an accident; twice is... careless.

Natural disease cycle

[backslashdot]

Hey republicans claim global warming is part of a natural cycle. So why can't this TB outbreak be part of a natural cycle too? I mean we just had the hottest year on record ever, while this TB thing is just a 20 year max? Just asking.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[VeryVito]

Holy crap, 8.5x11 must be HUGE in Canada!

No way that would fit on what the U.S. calls 8.5x11-inch paper. Obviously, the metric system provides a much better ink-to-paper conversion rate.

Re:Political correctness in action

[tbannist]

The 's' stands for simpletons who can't spell speech, yet insist on lecturing other people about how important it is.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Samantha Wright]

As an evolutionary biologist, I cannot help but agree with you. With double or possibly triple sarcasm.

Re:Political correctness in action

[tbannist]

Ron Paul is the only hope we have to cast off our corporate overlords.

Oh really? His new "Internet Freedom" campaign is all about giving corporations the freedom to restrict the Internet in the name of profits. If he's fighting "our corporate overlords" by campaigning to give them even more power, I think he's doing it wrong.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Troyusrex]

I'm exactly the opposite. I'm wary of multinational corporations but I'm downright afraid of what government can and does do when given free reign. The difference being that at least I can switch the company I'm dealing with but the government is the ultimate monopoly and represents the ultimate tragedy of the commons where people vote themselves goodies without caring how it affects the overall health of the economy.

Re:Political correctness in action

[E_Ron.Eous]

What a crock of shyte. Florida Sunshine Laws have been getting diluted every year by Republicans who have managed to screw up the state since taking over. The Florida Republican Party should be indicted under RICO.

Re:Political correctness in action

[KevinIsOwn]

The difference being that at least I can switch the company I'm dealing with but the government is the ultimate monopoly ...

Please do tell me how you plan to "switch the company" you're dealing with when said company is, for example, poisoning your well water through fracking, or polluting a river or the air around your house. A strict libertarian philosophy has no solution for externalities, other than hand-waving, i.e. everyone can form class-action lawsuits! Or the invisible hand will magically deal with it!

The solution is simple: You should be wary of both corporations and government and support checks and balances on both.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[medv4380]

Years ago I would have agreed with your comment. However, the word Vaccine is being used in a context that wasn't apart of your High School Biology or maybe even College. Try this from the CDC. See the word Vaccine being used in relation with a Bacteria so the word Vaccine has Evolved beyond just a preventative measure for a Virus, and now means a Preventative Measure for a Disease. They weren't using that Vaccine in that fashion ether since it's not used in the US unless you're going into a diseased area like Florida. Now for that uncomfortable day when the CDC and "others" show up. This will be an uncomfortable day.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[medv4380]

Hopefully they improve it before this gets worse. Otherwise, lots of death.

Re:Political correctness in action

[oh_my_080980980]

So you want to lock up Americans....nice.....

Re:Political correctness in action

[spiffmastercow]

I'm exactly the opposite. I'm wary of multinational corporations but I'm downright afraid of what government can and does do when given free reign.

Most of the really terrible things (Western) governments do these days are in the name of corporate profits, because corporations have gained power over government. At least doing things for the public good is in the mission statement for government. The corporation's only interest is in acquiring as much of the pie as it can for itself and its investors. If you don't see a conflict of interest between absolute greed and the common good, then you've drowned in the kool aid.

The difference being that at least I can switch the company I'm dealing with but the government is the ultimate monopoly and represents the ultimate tragedy of the commons where people vote themselves goodies without caring how it affects the overall health of the economy.

Because corporations would never do something for themselves at the detriment of the economy as a whole, right?

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[oh_my_080980980]

You got a complaint take it up with the Heritage Foundation. This was their plan. Republican supported it until Obama did.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[oh_my_080980980]

Wow a Herman Cain supporter.....

Re:Political correctness in action

[oh_my_080980980]

You mean more frightening that four more years of Bush.....

Re:Political correctness in action

[mabu]

Ron Paul is against government regulation. His policies would only make corporate overlords more powerful and have less authority to answer to.

Re:Political correctness in action

[MozeeToby]

You realize that hospitals have special laundry equipment to sterilize the laundry.

You mean like... bleach? There are lots of reasons they should be in a hospital over a motel, this is a rather weak choice of argument.

Sensationalism

[DaveV1.0]

Where should I start?

How about with the reporter's misrepresentation of the facts? The CDC doctor's report was acted on, just not effectively. The reporter makes it look like the Florida Department of Health did nothing. They underestimated the danger.

How about with the post's title? Florida is not accused of concealing. It is being said they didn't publicize the outbreak.

How about with the submitter's apparently lack of knowledge about the Sunshine law. It says documents must be available. It doesn't say the documents weren't available. The article says that the reporter had to travel to Tallahassee to get the documents. The reporter and the submitter imply that the government was hiding the information when they could have been serving the requests of people in the office first, and the mailed requests in order.

I also notice that the article talks about the closure A.G. Holley hospital, but fail to mention that it only has 55 beds and was being closed to be consolidated with other facilities. According to the article, less than half of the infected could be housed at that hospital.

Seriously, the submitter, the reporter, and many slashdotters seem to have forgotten Hanlon's Razor.

Re:Sensationalism

[Qzukk]

It says documents must be available.

Sure, they were on file all this time, on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard. Man, you'd think the newspaper had never submitted a request for information before and had no idea how the thing was supposed to work.

and was being closed to be consolidated with other facilities. According to the article, less than half of the infected could be housed at that hospital.

"Last year, Duval County sent 11 patients to A.G. Holley under court order. Last week, with A.G. Holley now closed, one was sent to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. The ones who will stay put in Jacksonville are being put up in motels, to make it easier for public health nurses to find them, Duval County health officials said."

I'm not sure that the local Motel 8 counts as "consolidating with other facilities".

They underestimated the danger.

I agree.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[NormalVisual]

And in brief it says: The provinces shall cover healthcare.

I'm not sure this would work in the U.S. After all, this whole article is about my state closing down a TB hospital and suppressing evidence of the reasonably expected consequences having occurred. There's really no reason to expect our wonderful governor would have done anything different if he'd been given a federal mandate.

Once again, government should fear the governed...

[Jawnn]

... not the other way around. This nonsense began when we started changing the notification rules for HIV patients. Before that time, dangerous communicable diseases were dealt with in a way that valued the health of the public higher than the "privacy" of infected individuals. Now, I understand the issue, and we all saw Philadelphia, but the result is that, clearly, we have gone too far, and in Florida, people are going to die because of it.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[compro01]

He never specified the font size.

Bath Salts Cannibal, Contagion Outbreak... ZOMBIES

[eepok]

It's all a cover up. Start buying your canned food, ham radios, solar panels, guns, shields, melee weapons, and buy a bug-out cabin because we're about to hit the zombie apocalypse, people!

At the very least, Florida will be the first to go. Anyone wanna go down there and prevent the destruction of wang of America?

Ya... didn't think so.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[Hatta]

Really, the "Lets do nothing and let the Poor Die" plan doesn't work.

From the perspective of the .1% who run this country, what actually is wrong with that plan?

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[Hatta]

The defining feature of a vaccine isn't whether it's against a virus or bacteria. A vaccine is something that primes your immune system to deal with a threat. TB is a bacteria, but the TB vaccine is a weakened form of that bacteria that primes your immune system to be ready for actual TB bacteria. That's a vaccine.

Antibiotics on the other hand are directly toxic to bacteria or fungi.

Re:Political correctness in action

[dcollins]

"Think about that when you're standing next to the coughing homeless person at the train station or one of your kids gets diagnosed with antibiotic resistant TB."

Conveniently, Republicans hate trains.

Re:Political correctness in action

[DeadCatX2]

They just can't come out and say what they really stand for, or they'd never win an election.

I just got into a debate with my wife's brother over those new Voter ID laws. I have to give him kudos, he doesn't even pretend it's about voter fraud. He's quite honest about the fact that he thinks people who don't have ID don't deserve to vote because they "obviously aren't contributing to society".

Yes. He actually came out and said "not everyone deserves to vote". I was quite stunned.

He also claims to be Libertarian.

One Word

[cHiphead]

Republicans.

Re:Political correctness in action

[r00t]

"own your body", hmmm?

I expect this refers to abortion. OK, so how about the child? Doesn't he own his own body? You people always ignore this, probably because it blows your arguments to pieces.

Given the situation of pregnancy, it's impossible to avoid having at least two of the three people give up some rights. Ignoring the father, it comes down to a choice between a woman being annoyed and a child being killed. What is the greater loss of rights? Would you rather be annoyed or killed?

Now add in the fact that the child didn't cause the awkward situation. The child is 100% innocent. The woman had control, but she chose not to avoid the awkward situation while she could. Essentially, she made a choice that she now regrets and she wants to undo that choice. Well, that choice was her consent. Now she isn't the only person involved. There is a 100% innocent person for which this is literally a life-or-death matter. Normally we protect people; we take unwilling people (unconcious, suicidal, etc.) to the hospital all the time under the assumption that they will later be glad that they were saved.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Anonymous Coward]

It would probably be better if we all stopped being Democrats and Republicans, and started being Americans

Speaking from the outside, I'd settle for just 'people'.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Qzukk]

Best I can tell from what passes as thought in the politically correct set, diseases got rights or something.

Well, here's the truth, and nobody's gonna like it: Bipartisianship brought us this current state of affairs. Liberals said "it's mean to imprison people because they're sick" and conservatives said "who the fuck's gonna pay for this? Not me!" and so with much fanfare and accord, they closed down mental and medical institutions nationwide and there was much rejoicing thanks to bipartisianship.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[yodleboy]

"Now tell me, where do you come up for the money on that?"

Oh, let me think here. How about we stop fighting pointless wars in the middle east? Then, maybe our elected reps can stop acting like a bunch of children and FINALLY trim pork and earmarks from the budget instead of using them as a way to attack the other side. Then let's go after those feelgood but useless agencies like the TSA that do nothing but suck money and create controversy.

Don't be fooled, the money is there. It's just being wasted to enrich companies and the politicians they've purchased. In the meantime, the machine will keep us all fighting each other over REALLY IMPORTANT stuff like gay marriage and abortion and Janet Jackson's nipple on TV.

What's depressing the US economy is a government that will not compromise and a bunch of selfish, self centered citizens that always want more but are never willing to give something up.

Re:Political correctness in action

[DesScorp]

How about fuck you, anonymous. Too many people equate liberal with liberty when, in fact, the opposite is quite the case - they're a mutually exclusive arrangement.

Only if you're using the FOX notions of what liberal and liberty mean.

The more that people see this, the better off this country will be. Not that Repubs are much better, but they are. Libertarian is the way.

Libertarians are just Republicans who aren't pretending to be on a Mission from God.

Don't like my opinions or what I post, use your mod points or stfu.

Or maybe reply? But no, your notion of "liberty" is "my way or the highway".

I'm not a fan of Libertarians, but to say that Libertarians are just "conservatives without a mission from God" is, frankly, stupid. It's not even close. Libertarians were just a faction of conservatism decades ago, but starting in the 90's, the whole movement did a 180 on social issues. It would be way more accurate today to say that Libertarians are liberals that want low taxes and minimal government. On every single social issue in dispute today... abortion, homosexuality, drug laws, hostility to religion... you name it... Libertarians line up almost exactly with liberals. This is why many conservatives call them liberaltarians right now. The movement is basically libertine with an anarchist streak. We don't even agree on taxes and scope of government anymore. Conservatives want lower taxes and a smaller government that does a few things well. Go peek in some libertarian forums, and you'll see that they think we're big government imperialists because we want to keep a defense department, when they basically want a militia-based defense with no standing army. We want lower tax rates... preferably a flat tax. They want NO tax rates and all government expenses paid via tariffs and fees (which, being free traders is basically contradiction in and of itself). These are not minor differences. The two schools of thought are very, very different. Libertarianism is as different from conservatism now as liberalism is different from conservatism. Libertarianism is no longer the "larval stage" of conservatism. It is its own movement, hostile to conservatism.

For all of your hypocritical noises about "Fox notions", maybe if you'd pry yourself away from MSNBC for a little bit, you'd have noticed that the conservative/libertarian split has been going on for years now. So wander off the liberal reservation for a little bit, and go to Reason.com, and then NationalReview.com; compare and contrast. You'll find Radley Balko spending most of his time at Reason ripping conservatives. The two movements are far more opposed to each other than related now.

Re:Political correctness in action

[dkhoo]

Refusing to put blame on the correct party is a form of partisanship. Trying to pretend both sides are equally at fault when one side is clearly wrong is precisely a "stupid partisan game". Being willing to call a spade a spade and basing debate and policy on facts, regardless of how it makes each party looks, is how one gets past partisanship.

Re:Political correctness in action

[phantomfive]

And saying something is pointless but then proceeding to do it in the very same sentence is hilarity.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[DesScorp]

Currently just about every one of our southern states is racing toward third world status just as fast as they can

Is that why all the jobs are moving here? Is that why we're getting all the business investment in new factories?Is that why Texas is the number one state in business growth? Is that why Apple just expanded in Texas? Is that why Airbus is building a factory to produce A319 airliners in Alabama? Is that why Austal is building Littoral Combat Ships there for the Navy? Or why Thyssenkrupp is building a steel plant there? Have you noticed all of the auto plant construction in the South in the past two decades? Ever been to the huge shipyards in Mississippi? The aircraft plants in Georgia? The South is racing towards "Third World Status"? Try California. You know, the progressive model for America that's 3 billion in the hole, but is racing ahead to build a bullet train to nowhere at a commitment of $100 billion. The same California where jobs and people are leaving at a steady clip. You keep your progressive paradise. We'll keep taking the jobs, thanks.

Re:Political correctness in action

[T Murphy]

Like most governors, Florida's governor is a secretive, ignorant, corrupt waste of humanity.

As a resident of Illinois, I believe that would be the more accurate statment.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[haruchai]

Fucking idiot AC. Quebec has exports of $150 billion and is as large an economy as Norway's.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[deadweight]

AFAIK you don't have *states* at all! (provinces maybe)

Re:Political correctness in action

[Black Parrot]

Yes. He actually came out and said "not everyone deserves to vote". I was quite stunned.

Some of the prevailing political philosophies in the USA don't actually subscribe to American values.

Re:Political correctness in action

[tbannist]

You can be inarticulate and still be right.

But would anyone know?

Re:Political correctness in action

[spiffmastercow]

i.e. everyone can form class-action lawsuits!

Don't worry. The state Republicans are hard at work stopping those nuisance lawsuits from interfering with free enterprise in the future.

On the contrary, they love class actions. A class action lawsuit means that nobody is justly compensated. Had a loved one die from a medical device that the manufacturer knew was defective? Well guess what, you'll get a shiny new $300! Employer illegally held your pay and caused you to lose your house? You'll get 30% of the pay you were due!

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

You realize that hospitals have special laundry equipment to sterilize the laundry.

You mean like... bleach? There are lots of reasons they should be in a hospital over a motel, this is a rather weak choice of argument.

Like high-temperature washers and dryers, which have to meet specifications and inspections. There's a difference between laundering and sterilizing.

And you need special handling procedures for contaminated laundry before it's laundered.

The reason I mentioned laundries is that I read about a case in which a small hospital was using a regular commercial laundry (in violation of health regulations) and ran into these troubles.

They might run out of people to do their work

[publiclurker]

After all, the non-poor people's salaries cut into their profits.

your delusions of adequacy

[publiclurker]

would be funny if your were seven. As someone who thinks they are an adult, it's kind of sad and pathetic.

Re:your delusions of adequacy

[khallow]

As someone who thinks they are an adult, it's kind of sad and pathetic.

Um, compared to what usually passes for adulthood? Not at all. The point of adulthood is that you're able to take on a great deal of responsibility for your life. If you can't or won't, then you're just a very old child.

Re:your delusions of adequacy

[khallow]

Social programs aren't always meant to replace people's responsibility, sometimes it's just not viable to expect people not to have support in certain situations that may be beyond their entire control.

Intent doesn't usually match result when it comes to social programs. Sure, I agree that they aren't usually meant to replace peoples' responsibility. That's an unintended consequence especially with programs that activate even when you don't need them.

Re:your delusions of adequacy

[khallow]

I never said every single social program in existence is perfect and devoid of that problem

That's a remarkably out of touch statement. We're not speaking of minor blemishes, but grievous flaws. I'm not quibbling over whether the checks should be made of recycled paper or colored something more pleasing, but whether the program causes more harm than benefit. I think a spectacular harm of these programs is that they replace a population of adults with over-sized children, crippled for dealing with adversity.

Re:your delusions of adequacy

[khallow]

Am I replying to a brick wall?

I agree with you that social programs have issues

Have "issues"? What really does that mean? As I see it, death and hangnails are both issues, but one is a bit more significant than the other. So are we talking death issues or hangnail issues?

My view is that most though not all social programs have flaws so serious that they would be ended or radically altered, if they were addressed rationally. In other words, most social programs suffer from death issues rather than hangnail issues.

you forgot to add

[publiclurker]

according to fox news and my fellow teabaggers. although, with such a deliberate misuse of facts, we already figured that out.

I think you mean

[publiclurker]

the millionaire who had their jet fund slightly lowered. I know, I know, leaches like you just don't feel like paying for the society that is responsible for their self-important, parasitic existence.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Darinbob]

There are a lot of views within the republican party. There has to be, with only 2 major poltiical parties each one has to encompass a huge number of views because the world can not be split up even into a binary choice. So you have pro corporate people stand along side those who distrust big corporations alongside poor people who have specific social agendas and so forth. Both major parties probably are good believers in having less government except for where they want more government.

Overall, the parties split based on where they feel they can get the most voters. Over time this has led to basically having the populace even split between the parties. If there are fluctuations where one party is in the lead then there's some maneuvering until things are more evenly split again. Which annoys the really idealistic people who don't want to see things become centrist but who really do want far left or far right or far libertarian.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Darinbob]

We can vote out governments, but we can't vote out corporations.

Re:Political correctness in action

[JaiWing]

Rape, Dangerous Pregnancy.
Sometimes the woman doesn't have a choice or has her life in mortal danger. So I throw it back at you; who's life do you choose to protect? who's innocence gets to be protected?

It is simply not fair to tell a women that she MUST continue to be pregnant, or for that matter must have an abortion.

As a loose analogy, would be okay for someone to tell you that you MUST provide blood or organs to prevent another from dying? That by refusing to do so you condemn that person to death, because there is no other person that can provide the required material, and then are made criminally responsible for it?

Yes, as a father and husband, I am part of the trio involved. But in the end my opinions about abortion mean NOTHING. I am not the pregnant party. I would like to think that I will be listened to and my arguments for or against an abortion carefully considered, but finally it is not my choice.
I do feel that after a certain point an abortion should be highly restricted (notice that I did NOT say disallowed), but I don't know that I CAN know when that would be, so any law about it will be flawed.

In the end women are not property. They are sentient, thinking beings with the right to make decisions about their actions, person, and possessions.

Re:Political correctness in action

[digitalsolo]

I wonder where this is, because the local jail in my city is visited by doctors from the local hospitals daily. Their nursing staff is well educated, proper RNs (at a higher count vs. LPN than most retirement homes in the area) and they use cutting edge electronic health records for tracking prisoner ailments and dispensing medication.

I know this, because I was part of the implementation team for the electronic health record. I can't say that they have a high end cancer treatment program, but they'll give you dialysis if you need it, which is not particularly cheap. Same with your coumadin for your heart etc, etc.

Certainly not all jails/prisons are like this, but I find it unlikely that ours is the exception.

Re:Political correctness in action

[nbauman]

I'm glad your local jail is well-staffed, although I don't know where it is. If it's a good program, it's unusual.

According to the Journal of the American Medical association, prison health care is bad around the country. One of the problems is that services are contracted out to a few big corporations, like Correctional Medical Services, which according to JAMA was providing incompetent care which led to many deaths. Another problem is sheer budget-cutting.

http://www.aaskolnick.com/jama/28oct98a.htm
http://www.aaskolnick.com/jama/28oct98b.htm
http://www.aaskolnick.com/jama/28oct98c.htm
http://www.aaskolnick.com/baddoc1.htm
http://www.aaskolnick.com/baddoc2.htm
http://www.aaskolnick.com/baddoc3.htm

That was the most comprehensive series. Here are some more recent stories:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/03/jailhouse_doc.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/3/4/harsh_medicine_new_york_times_exposes
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/11/care-prison-healthcare.html

Parent said, "Prisoners receive better medical care than most Americans, and it's illegal to let them go untreated."

It's not true that prisoners receive better care than most Americans. If it is, I'd like to see the supporting data.

It may be illegal to let them go untreated. So it's illegal. Prisons do it all the time. Many organizations are suing prisons over health care, and often getting court orders. Sometimes the prisons respond to the court orders, and sometimes they don't.

If they get arbitrary 10% budget cuts, as they did in Texas, they couldn't improve their health care even if they wanted to.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Troyusrex]

True but what happens when government is doing the polluting? There's a reason why the China and Russia have such terrible pollution problems while Korea, Japan and the US don't it's because a very strong central government is ok with the pollution. Companies in the Us may have some influence to allow them to pollute more than they should but it's nothing compared to China.

Re:Political correctness in action

[drkstr1]

Your opinion on this does not matter, nor does mine. The mother is the one who will have to make that decision, and live with the consequences for it. No one but she should make that decision, especially not the government.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Red Flayer]

The founding fathers of the US didn't feel that way, and published their "Federalist Papers" under pseudonyms.

Actually, some of them did feel that way. Those that did published anonymously or under pseudonyms largely because they didn't have free speech; the recognized right to free speech under the US Constitution obviated the need for anonymity.

You did touch on the other reason for pseudonyms, which was to separate message from messenger -- and IMO this will always be required for exercise of potentially unpopular free speech.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Troyusrex]

We can vote out governments, but we can't vote out corporations.

You most certainly can vote them out. You can vote with you wallet or you can get government on some level to kick them out. Try telling private student loan issuers (shut down as part of the Obamacare bill) that they can't be voted out. Look for them in the unemployment line.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Red Flayer]

Ron Paul is the only hope we have to cast off our corporate overlords.

Horseshit. Ron Paul would hand us all over to corporations, in the name their freedom. Just look at his stance on net neutrality legislation.

If Ron Paul got his way, corporations wouldn't need to control government... government would be powerless to stop them.

Re:Political correctness in action

[drkstr1]

I think the reason why Paul's ideas are so hard to swallow (they were for me, a former Democrat, for quite awhile) is because we view them through the context of our current system. I agree that simply stripping the government of the power to regulate would be a disaster. What we need is a government that empowers the individual to regulate against concentrated power, in all its forms. The problem is that is that our current system is not designed for this purpose, but rather to further concentrate power in the hands of overly ambitious individuals (the modern day Napoleons and Alexanders). Instead of the government focusing all of its attention and energy on regulating, it should be focusing its attention on empowering the individual to make smart, informed, decisions, and fairly adjudicate wrong doing.

The national debate keeps being narrowed in focus more and more, so we are squabbling about abortion and gay marriage, when we should be talking about a fundamental shift in the role government plays in our lives. I strongly believe that the president who will challenge the system is the president this country needs.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Anguirel]

Currently just about every one of our southern states is racing toward third world status just as fast as they can

Is that why all the jobs are moving here? Is that why we're getting all the business investment in new factories?Is that why Texas is the number one state in business growth? Is that why Apple just expanded in Texas? Is that why Airbus is building a factory to produce A319 airliners in Alabama? Is that why Austal is building Littoral Combat Ships there for the Navy? Or why Thyssenkrupp is building a steel plant there? Have you noticed all of the auto plant construction in the South in the past two decades? Ever been to the huge shipyards in Mississippi? The aircraft plants in Georgia? The South is racing towards "Third World Status"? Try California. You know, the progressive model for America that's 3 billion in the hole, but is racing ahead to build a bullet train to nowhere at a commitment of $100 billion. The same California where jobs and people are leaving at a steady clip. You keep your progressive paradise. We'll keep taking the jobs, thanks.

Yes, yes it is. Getting FoxConn to move in because you've dropped your regulations below China's is pretty much the definition of regressive. I know it's hard to remember, but Nixon, a staunch conservative, enacted the EPA. Stripping it of power and allowing wanton destruction of the environment in the name of getting "more jobs", along with removing any concept of worker or consumer protections, will get you business, it's true... until the area is stripped bare, everyone is in severe poverty while working (and then completely destitute when they're fired under at-will clauses) and therefore unable to afford, well, anything, they're all sick from the pollution in the air and water (and therefore costing the company more to keep around as productivity drops), and then some other government gives the corporate CEO a better blow job, and you end up like Detroit. Do you want to be the next Detroit?

Re:Political correctness in action

[Red Flayer]

On every single social issue in dispute today... abortion, homosexuality, drug laws, hostility to religion... you name it... Libertarians line up almost exactly with liberals

That begs a bit of a No True Scotsman fallacy, doesn't it? Plenty of self-proclaimed libertarians would protect the right of a state to establish restrictive abortion laws, or even to establish a state religion... which, by nature, precludes from being a true libertarian.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[Red Flayer]

Is that why all the jobs are moving here? Is that why we're getting all the business investment in new factories?Is that why Texas is the number one state in business growth? Is that why Apple just expanded in Texas? Is that why Airbus is building a factory to produce A319 airliners in Alabama? Is that why Austal is building Littoral Combat Ships there for the Navy? Or why Thyssenkrupp is building a steel plant there? Have you noticed all of the auto plant construction in the South in the past two decades? Ever been to the huge shipyards in Mississippi? The aircraft plants in Georgia? The South is racing towards "Third World Status"?

The answer to all your questions is a resounding YES. They are locating plants in those states because those states have lax labor laws, lax oversight of business, and cheap labor. Just like third-world countries. It's just more publicly palatable to source your labor in a third-world-like American South than it is to source your labor in the actual third world. Furthermore, political patronage is a major reason for some of the location of those plants (especially the Austral plant in Alabama). Just like a third-world country, the politicos and elites siphon off most of the cash by exploiting cheap labor.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[Red Flayer]

Antibiotics on the other hand are directly toxic to bacteria or fungi.

Not all of them. Some are simply bacteriostatic (like tetracyclines and macrolide antibiotics) -- they don't kill the bacteria, they just keep them from reproducing.

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[Anguirel]

Those poor also are their gardeners and cooks and golf caddies and shoe polishers and so on, and at some point, those sick people will enter their lives in some fashion. Worse, some of those poor won't die -- they've been living in less hygienic conditions for so long their immune systems might just be capable of trucking right along, turning them into carriers. If you don't manage the disease properly, it will certainly spread right into the 0.1%'s lives and due to their rarefied life, the chances of such a person having an immune system capable of fighting off such a disease is going to be low. The plan has to either be "Be proactive and treat the sick," or "Be proactive and shoot them, then burn the bodies." "Do nothing" is the only bad option (from their supposedly callous perspective where the above "Do nothing and let them die" plan might be considered a good plan).

Re:Political correctness in action

[drkstr1]

Net neutrality would not be an issue if it wasn't for government protected monopolies. Freedom of choice is a prerequisite to freedom from tyranny.

I agree with Paul's stance on net neutrality in spirit, however, I disagree that this is the right time for it. We have been placed in a tricky situation, and to be honest, I don't know the best way to get out of it. I do know that way will be one that promotes freedom of the individual over concentrated power, and that our current system is counterproductive to that goal.

Re:Political correctness in action

[digitalsolo]

FWIW, my experience is with a jail, as opposed to a state or federal prison. Different situation I suppose.

Re:Political correctness in action

[spiffmastercow]

True but what happens when government is doing the polluting? There's a reason why the China and Russia have such terrible pollution problems while Korea, Japan and the US don't it's because a very strong central government is ok with the pollution. Companies in the Us may have some influence to allow them to pollute more than they should but it's nothing compared to China.

Okay, first lets clarify something -- those are corporations doing the polluting in China and Russia too. Some of them are subsidiaries of the government, but they operate with a great deal of autonomy. Remember that thing about poisoning baby formula in China in order to make it appear higher in protein? That was a corporation. Remember all the toys with the lead paint? That was a corporation. And the poisoned dog food from China a while back? Corporation.

Second, we're in no danger of a totalitarian regime in the west, so the comparison with China and Russia is a moot point anyway.

Re:Political correctness in action

[spiffmastercow]

I was a Libertarian before it was cool (registered since 2002, haven't bothered to un-register). Then life happened -- we found out that my son was autistic about a year ago. There's a proven treatment, ABA therapy, which is proven to work most of the time if you intervene early. It's especially effective on kids like my son, who are autistic but not mentally retarded. It's also prohibitively expensive -- about $50k/year. 22 states have laws on the books stating that health insurance companies must provide services for autistic children, but the state I live in isn't one of them. I don't have the money to get him help, and since my mortgage is underwater, I can't even take out a loan to pay for the therapy he needs. Unfortunately, my son will not get that treatment, and might not be able to live a normal life, all because of the right wing agenda on cutting social policies.

Libertarians don't seem to get that you can go through life doing everything right and still get unlucky. And when you bitch about "social programs", just remember that you're bitching about allowing people like my son to have a chance in life.

Re:Political correctness in action

[drkstr1]

I think bitching about social services is more of a neo-con thing. All the libertarians I know (the ones who introduced me to the philosophy) are more concerned with the erosion of our freedoms. Personally, I think social services should be one of the primary (of a very few) roles our government fills. I realize this is not a universal belief among libertarians, but at least in my area (Northwest Washington) it is. Up here we are more of the anti-{WTO,war on drugs,corporatism,etc.} variety of libertarians.

I hope your son can get the care he needs. I for one would be delighted if my tax dollars went to that, rather than all the other shit our government has their hands in.

Re:Political correctness in action

[spiffmastercow]

You might find yourself agreeing more with the Scandinavian model.. They tend to focus on individual freedom with a strong social safety net and a focus on cost reduction. For instance, instead of simply providing unemployment insurance if you lose your job that stipulates that you must look for work, they allow you to go to school to retrain for jobs that are in demand. Basically the idea is that governing is hard work like any other job, and not the place for ideological battles. As a result, unemployment is low, wages are high, crime is low, and happiness is high.

I appreciate your concern for my son. I regret moving away from Portland, not so far from where you are, as the laws there do require insurance to cover autism.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Red Flayer]

Net neutrality would not be an issue if it wasn't for government protected monopolies.

I disagree 100%. Natural monopolies exist. Oligarchic situations would also require net neutrality legislation to provide freedom of communication.

Re:Political correctness in action

[drkstr1]

I would rather the government focus their energy on preventing monopolies than regulating them. You are correct that we can't have a hundred different companies running their own lines, so why don't we give this responsibility to the government, and lease out access to those lines to any mom and pop ISP that feels they can do it better than the next guy? Maybe "net neutrality" will result in better service for the end user, maybe not. Let's let the market decide (which, admittedly, is not possible right now, so regulation is the next best thing, in this specific case).

Re:Outbreak? Really?

[sociocapitalist]

I don't see anything in your reference that says antibiotic.

My understanding is that a vaccine is a controlled exposure to a living or dead form of the disease that the body is able to fight off in order to trigger immune response in the immunized person resulting in antibodies that stay in that person, thus immunizing them. This doesn't put the bacteria through the Darwinistic survival of the fittest that is the result of antibiotic use against bacterial infections and so no, I continue to believe that use of vaccines has nothing to do with the increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

The ABA industry just *claims* it's "proven"

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

The associations that profit from selling ABA services to understandably scared parents claim that it's "proven" because the kids they use it on show development. Note the lack of any controls or rigorous scientific studies -- the research on autistics is full of poorly-designed studies without controls, unfounded assumptions, charlatans and so forth. (Anyone interested in the topic should check out the blog of researcher Michelle Dawson.)

The few times researchers have tried to compare treatment approaches, they've found that ABA isn't any better than other interactive methods like Floortime, and in some cases (like a major study in the UK a few years ago) the ABA kids end up falling behind other groups. That's because being autistic doesn't mean not developing any further, it means having a brain wired to function & develop differently from that of non-autistics.

You should seek out the many other parents online that aren't using ABA; they've been finding their way together online with the help of autistic adults (some of whom are also parents), and doing quite well. The best person to start with would be Estée Klar; she knows where all of the resources/groups are online for different approaches, and her blog/site is quite interesting/informative to boot.

Re:The ABA industry just *claims* it's "proven"

[spiffmastercow]

I should clarify that the state I live in does not require insurance to cover *any* autism therapy. The law here states that "insurance providers shall provide the same benefits to an autistic child that would be available to a non-autistic child", which is weasel words for saying that they don't have to cover anything. And since they don't *have* to cover it, they don't. And I can't afford the therapy on my own, regardless of what's available, except for quack cures that won't actually work.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Lord of Hyphens]

Gaah I am so sick of you libertards

It's "libertardians". Otherwise people will think you're talking about standard "libtards".

I read that as "libtardis", and wondered how someone talked the Doctor into sharing the source.

Re:I'm going to overlook a large portion of your b

[sjames]

Funny thing, according to Medpage, most doctors support Obamacare.

So, who should I believe, a bunch of investors or a bunch of doctors?

Re:Political correctness in action

[sjames]

And even that is better than the treatment some of our citizens who have not committed a crime get.

Re:Political correctness in action

[Bing Tsher E]

That was frightening. What we have now is just disgusting.

Crony capitalism by the Chicago Political Machine. Scaled up.

People better get used to the fact that historians are going to work through the history. Tammany Hall II is what I suspect it'll be considered eventually. Ol Big Ears won't make it to a coin or stamp, except maybe an 'all the Presidents' chronological series. Neither will Bush, of course.