Controlling the News 18OCT07

Controlling the News 18OCT07 Controlling the News
October 18, 2007
New York: I see matters haven’t gotten any better since I left the game. The war is still with us, Bush is still sliding down into the quarry and our press is still sucking up to the power elite as it has ever since the Roosevelt administration. Aside from an enormous flood of lies from every government agency, we have now something far, far more serious to deal with than a nut President. This is a super critical health problem now gathering steam in America. It is so serious that the media has been ordered, not asked, to keep as much of a lid on it as possible. This is not like the 9-11 coverups which have reached monumental proportions and which are causing a great public outcry. What we have is a massive and growing outbreak of a deadly, totally drug-resistant bacteria called MRSA. As of the end of September, 2007, nearly 125,000 Americans have died from this and at least another 200,000 seriously damaged by the infections. None of these figures, which we get in from federal health people but are considered to be too sensitive to even discuss in public, are being published. Since it is impossible to completely sweep these under the rug, like the dead in Iraq, the press is being told to mention this as little as possible and when they do, to minimize the reality of a burgeoning 1918-type flu epidemic. Here are some facts, straight from Georgia: MRSA is a deadly bacteria found in all American medical facilities such as hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. It's real name is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Currently, the death rate is about 85% and there is currently no, repeat no, known cure for it. The disease is very easily spread in medical facilities, even by touching an infected person. This disease attacks the immune system and the internal organs, causing a protracted and terrible death. Since infected persons exhibit no symptoms prior to the outbreak of the disease and are considered “highly infectious” according to the high-level reports, there is no way to quarantine people, no prophylaxis for the exposed, no vaccine for those who some into contact with an infected carrier. In addition, at least 350 doctors and about 1500 medical personnel like nurses and attendants have sickened and died. This disease, for which there is no cure, is now increasing geometrically in the population. It has already killed more than AIDS, cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s combined, and shows no sign of tapering off. On the contrary, federal health authorities now predict that at least 20,000,000 people could “expectedly sicken and die of MRSA” within a two year period (at the least.) What can be done? Nothing. Be sure you have a will in place and don’t worry about your family getting your insurance. Another aspect of this is that the major insurance companies will not pay out a dime if someone dies of MRSA. They have firms of lawyers who will see to that and since the insurance industry is so supportive of the Republicans, nothing will happen. There well could be so many dead that mass cremations will have to take place to prevent the spread of the infection. I wish I had something less deadly to report but I can’t pick and choose. And soon enough, I will be publishing some of the inside dirt on the 9-11 scandal that the press is forbidden to touch. The cover-up is really amazing!

Deadly Bacteria Found to Be More Common

October 17, 2007

by Kevin Sack

New York Times

ATLANTA, Oct. 16 — Nearly 19,000 people died in the United States in 2005 after being infected with virulent drug-resistant bacteria that have spread rampantly through hospitals and nursing homes, according to the most thorough study of the disease’s prevalence ever conducted The government study, which is being published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that such infections may be twice as common as previously thought, according to its lead author, Dr. R. Monina Klevens. If the mortality estimates are correct, the number of deaths associated with the germ, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, would exceed those attributed to H.I.V.-AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, emphysema or homicide each year. By extrapolating data collected in nine places, the researchers estimated that 94,360 patients developed an invasive infection from the pathogen in 2005 and that nearly one of every five, or 18,650 of them, died. The study points out that it is not always possible to determine whether a death is caused by MRSA or merely accelerated by it. The authors, who work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned that their methodology differed significantly from previous studies and that direct comparisons were therefore risky. But they said they were surprised by the prevalence of serious infections, which they calculated as 32 cases per 100,000 people. In an accompanying editorial in the medical journal, Dr. Elizabeth A. Bancroft, an epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, characterized that finding as “astounding.” The prevalence of invasive MRSA — when the bacteria has not merely colonized on the skin, but has attacked a normally sterile part of the body, like the organs — is greater, Dr. Bancroft wrote, than the combined rates for other conditions caused by invasive bacteria, including bloodstream infections, meningitis and flesh-eating disease. The study also concluded that 85 percent of invasive MRSA infections are associated with health care treatment. Previous research had indicated that many hospitals and long-term care centers had become breeding grounds for MRSA because bacteria could be transported from patient to patient by doctors, nurses and unsterilized equipment. “This confirms in a very rigorous way that this is a huge health problem,” said Dr. John A. Jernigan, the deputy chief of prevention and response in the division of healthcare quality promotion at the disease control agency. “And it drives home that what we do in health care will have a lot to do with how we control it.” The findings are likely to stimulate further an already active debate about whether hospitals and other medical centers should test all patients for MRSA upon admission. Some hospitals have had notable success in reducing their infection rates by isolating infected patients and then taking extra precautions, like requiring workers to wear gloves and gowns for every contact. But other research has suggested that such techniques may be excessive, and may have the unintended consequence of diminishing medical care for quarantined patients. The disease control agency, in guidelines released last year, recommended that hospitals try to reduce infection rates by first improving hygiene and resort to screening high-risk patients only if other methods fail. Dr. Lance R. Peterson, an epidemiologist with Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, said his hospital system in the Chicago area reduced its rate of invasive MRSA infections by 60 percent after it began screening all patients in 2005. “This study puts more onus on organizations that don’t do active surveillance to demonstrate that they’re reducing their MRSA infections,” Dr. Peterson said. “Other things can work, but nothing else has been demonstrated to have this kind of impact. MRSA is theoretically a totally preventable disease.” Numerous studies have shown that busy hospital workers disregard basic standards of hand-washing more than half the time. This week, Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, called for hospitals to begin publishing their compliance rates for hand-washing. Lisa A. McGiffert, manager of the “Stop Hospital Infections” campaign at Consumers Union, said, “This study just accentuates that the hospital is ground zero, that this is where dangerous infections are occurring that are killing people every day.” MRSA, which was first isolated in the United States in 1968, causes 10 percent to 20 percent of all infections acquired in health care settings, according to the disease control agency. Resistant to a number of front-line antibiotics, it can cause infections of surgical sites, the urinary tract, the bloodstream and lungs. Treatment often involves the intravenous delivery of other drugs, causing health officials to worry that overuse will breed further resistance. The bacteria can be brought unknowingly into hospitals and nursing homes by patients who show no symptoms, and can be transmitted by contact as casual as the brush of a doctor’s lab coat. Highly opportunistic, they can enter the bloodstream through incisions and wounds and then quickly overwhelm a weakened immune system. On Monday, a Virginia teenager died after a weeklong hospitalization for an MRSA infection that spread quickly to his kidneys, liver, lungs and the muscle around his heart. Local officials promptly closed 21 schools for a thorough cleaning. A major difference between the new study and its predecessors is that it compiled confirmed cases of MRSA infection, rather than relying on coded patient records that sometimes lack precision. The study found higher prevalence rates and death rates for the elderly, African-Americans and men. The figures also varied by geography, with Baltimore’s incidence rates far exceeding those of the eight other locations: Connecticut; Atlanta; San Francisco; Denver; Portland, Ore.; Monroe County, N.Y.; Davidson County, Tenn.; and Ramsey County, Minn. Dr. Klevens said further research would be needed to understand the racial and geographic disparities.