[MLUG - DISCUSSION] XDR TB cases?

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I have heard that the cable TV coverage of the case of the guy with
XDR TB who flew from Europe to the US has been pretty lurid, but we
don't get cable.

In any event, it's clear to me that cases like this do have some
importance because they expose an important problem with how people
evaluate risks and dangers. In this case, it is very easy to
concentrate on the probability of dying if you actually contract
XDR-TB. Numbers on that vary, but we are apparently talking about at
least a 20% death rate in the US, and much higher where treatment is
less good. But the current odds that you will get the disease here in
the US are still in the millions to one (against) range. Everything is
basically okay as long as the odds are that long.

On the other hand, XDR TB is very difficult and expensive to treat; if
we ever had a million cases of this in the US, we could be forced to
spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year on this in direct care,
and many billions more in attempts to prevent new cases from entering
the country or spreading within the country. This is not a likely
result, but it is a significant incentive to do "whatever it takes" to
prevent XDR TB from becoming firmly established in the country.

But then reality strikes: the CDC, counting every possible activity
and funding source/transfer, gets less than $8 billion per year, which
is less than $30 per person per pear. Given that a lot of the budget
goes to things other than TB, there is surprisingly little we are
immediately ready to do about something like XDR TB. This is not going
to be easy, in the long run.

jking

_______________________________________________
discussion mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/discussion