Thursday, October 18, 2007

Wash your hands...

Okay, so the news that a super resistant strain of staph has made the move from hospitals to public schools is freaking me out.

Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!

Lawd, have mercy.

Anyhoo….nasty!

Whew.

Anyhoo, The Today Show dedicated a segment to this staph thang today and they had the Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH from the CDC (can a bitch overdose on acronyms?) on who said the most curious thing about how to reduce the spread of the drama.

She said the usual about washing hands and covering thy mouth when coughing…and then she mentioned the need to see a physician if a cut gets red or begins to puss and so forth.

Blink.

See a physician…and be proactive.

Staph spreading in public schools kept bouncing off of the need for folks to see a physician sooner rather than later is their wound gets funky in my mind.

It has been bothering a bitch all fucking day!

And then...just about 20 minutes ago…I realized why the advice of Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH of the CDC pissed me off.

Because our government can’t commit to insuring every American child but an agent or an arm of the government recommends going to the fucking doctor to prevent death by staph infection.

Gawd damn it all to hell, that’s the ever fucking point!

When millions of Americans are uninsured then millions of Americans do not proactively go to the doctor. They wait…until they have to…until they can’t stand the pain anymore and then they go to the emergency room where what was once a minor thing is diagnosed to be a ‘shit, I never thought I’d see **insert medical horror** outside of a textbook’ situation.

Not insuring children doesn’t change that shit one bit. If we have a whooping cough outbreak…and millions of children are uninsured…then families will have to weigh making rent with going to get that shit checked out. Treatment delayed is prevention delayed which is like winning the lottery for your average nastified disease.

And I sure as shit hope the CDC factors the uninsured into their worst case scenario because it doesn’t look like Mr. Support a Culture of Life is going to be granting that support or any part of his budget to healthcare for children any time soon.

Fuck this fucking shit.

Fubar is spreading through the homeland and looks to be contagious as a motherfucker...

11 comments:

AOB said...

Oh I guess I shouldn't tell you about how doctors overbill insurance companies by 25-30% and if you pay cash you can get a big discount.

I guess I shouldn't tell you that hospitals will cut up to 50% off of your bill if you are uninsured.

I guess I don't need to tell you that the entire system is just broke broke and totally FUBAR.

Of course not having insurance myself means that I don''t go to the doctor unless WEB MD tells me to...like that brown recluse spider bite..and then the overdose on the anitbiotic and then ...ah to hell with it....the system is broke.....

I just don't see repukelicans and dementedocrats solving the problem though....

I do have two daughters that are nurses....I am blessed...

Unknown said...

Let me just say this about that -- bout time someone stood up and said just why this whole "if we give people insurance, then they'll be insured" or whatever idiotic argument they're using this week is isn't just bad policy, but is hurting us as people and as a country.

Great post. And nice blog. Found you via Secrets of the Red Seven

TwinsGoddess said...

EXACTLY.

Dandy said...

Ain't no telling what Skimpy, the Deciderm, will do next. The bastard has admitted that part of the reason he vetoed the Schip health care bill for kids is that has to DO SOMETHING TO STAY RELEVANT in his last year in office!!!!

Can anyone in their sane and sober mind imagine that someone holding argueably the most powerful office in the world would bend to a level---for his own recognizance (sp)----that denies health care to the most vulnerable citizens.

What did Skimpy say about Sadaam killing his own people, and that if he has the total lack of compassion to hurt his own men, women, and children, then, what could the rest of the world expect of this killer???

Hold on, folks, this madman still has a year left to show the world his relevancy!!!!

Elizabeth said...

And George Bush actually said, all happy-like, in a speech, that if you don't have insurance and get sick you can "just go to the emergency room!"

No problem. If you'll just pay the bill for it George. How did this over-privileged, cluless, bonehead get to be president? (Oh yeah, the supreme court gave it to him for Christmas. The perfect present for that man who has everything!)

Anonymous said...

Because our government can’t commit to insuring every American child but an agent or an arm of the government recommends going to the fucking doctor to prevent death by staph infection.

A-fucking-men.

My employer just changed our health insurance plan; and on its face it was a good move-- ostensibly more coverage for less money.

But now I find that medications that my recently-replaced-heart-valved wife has been using to deal with the residual chest/breast pain (for open heart surgery, they crack you open like a lobster and then staple it back together-- ouch!) has been disapproved by the new insurance provider.

Theoretically we can get it sorted out between her doc and the insurance company, but in the mean time she has to live in pain-- and that pisses me off just to no end.

And this-- Shark Fu, you're so fucking right. Here we are, paying the most of any damn country in the world for health care and getting what for it?

Americans should be streaming up to capitol hill with scythes, pitchforks and torches.

Renko

Saskia said...

I can't stand the lip service that politicians pay this issue... so transparently about electability and promises destined to be broken. Even worse, I suppose, is when politicians ignore a major issue altogether. Gail Collin's column in yesterday's NY Times on child care (and its absence from discussion among presidential candidates) was deeply depressing but a must-read.

Thanks, as always, ABB, for keeping these issues on the front burner and for your commitment to calling out the hypocrisy in it all...

SagaciousHillbilly said...

The upper class has always wanted a class of people around who would clean their houses, wash their cars, mow their lawns, sweep their offices, etc., etc., but they've never been willing to support these people either through wages that provide for a decent lifestyle (which includes good health care) or through tax based programs that provide well managed and comprehensive basic human services.

As for hand washing. . . this country has turned into a bunch of slack jawed ignorant proles that flit from one preoccupation to another guzzling whatever jizz they are fed at the time. Things like personal hygiene have been cast aside. I hate to even shake hands with anyone these days. When I do I am aware of it until I get an opportunity to wash my hands.

Nicole said...

In this month's Fast Comany, Bill McGuire, former CEO of United-Health (currently embroiled in just a bit of scandal) brought up what I thought was a really good point. His response to the question "Is universal case possible" was:

"It has to come from the President. Somebody has to stand up and say we expect accessible health care for all people. Not just insurarance for all people - that doesn't get you health care if you can't afford the insurance, or there aren't enough facilities and practitioners, or you don't have a way to get to them. Insurance isn't enough."

In the world of politics slinging issues and never really addressing problems, I had to say "amen." Out loud.

Here's the full interview.

Aimee said...

Having taken a microbiology class and studying these bacteria, such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), which I think is what you're talking about here, I have been extolling the virtues of hand washing for years. So many people take it for granted. In the 17th century people, particularly women giving birth in hospitals were dying at an incredible rate because the doctors were not washing their hands. They were literally going from autopsy of women who died from childbed fever straight to the beds of laboring women, giving them vaginal exams without washing their hands in between. A doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis figured out the connection and tried to convince his colleagues to wash their hands between patients. He was ridiculed and ended up in a mental institution where he died of a contagious disease because the people running the institution didn't wash their hands.

It's amazing to me that, with all the medical technology developed since Semmelweis, it really comes down to washing your hands. If you wash, you could be preventing an entire outbreak. It may be a simple cold virus or it could something a serious as MRSA.

And health care...as a mother with no health care insurance for my family, don't get me started...
Luckily I have a lot of preventative tricks up me sleeve. The least of which is hand washing.

Anonymous said...

What the higher-ups can't see, because they lack foresight, is the risk they are under by being exposed to uninsured/untreated people with an infectious disease. It really will hit them hard when the disease is a super-bug. Oh....

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