TB is difficult to diagnose - the bacteria grow slowly, and thus do severity of symptoms. And it is difficult to treat - the bacteria wrap themselves in a waxy sheath, which stops the drugs getting through so they have to be taken over a long period, and the drugs have unpleasant side effects, so people don't like taking the long courses. It's spread by people living in close proximity for quite long periods, such as may be the result of living in poverty.
This all makes it very difficult/impossible to eradicate.
Speaking as an ex TB lab technician, but not for a long time past.
Its cool that so many people are blaming immigrants and foreign policy and border policy instead of the lack of accessibility to healthcare and affordable treatments or accessibility to preventative care.
We truly are in the fuck you and it’s your fault I don’t have mine era.
The US spends more on public healthcare per capita than any nation on the planet. (We also spend a lot more privately). I think this is a very and incorrect point of blame that has no basis in reality.
> We truly are in the fuck you and it’s your fault I don’t have mine era
Yes, but please don't blame people for feeling that way. People don't feel safe.
When people are insecure, they look to authoritarians for simple solutions. And both major political parties are happy to oblige.
When people are secure, they can care more about other people and issues beyond themselves. But they have to feel safe first. Unfortunately, lack of safety is something people can campaign on and campaigning on "things are good enough already" just never works - even when it's true.
We are in an era where we keep giving up more and more of our civil rights for a promised safety that is never delivered.
Lately, I often think about that drawing where three people are at a table. A blue-collar worker (mine worker or construction worker), a black sad looking black person (immigrant), and a rich guy in suit.
The blue collar worker has a single cookie on his plate, the immigrant no cookies at all, and the rich guy a plate full of cookies. The rich guy with his plate full of cookies, looking at the worker, points to the immigrant. “He wants your cookie”.
No immigrant who turns up at the US border has paid any taxes or contributed anything to US society. It's ridiculous to suggest otherwise. Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point is that if you enter a foreign country it's your responsibility not to bring any diseases with you.
> No immigrant who turns up at the US border has paid any taxes or contributed anything to US society. It's ridiculous to suggest otherwise. Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point is that if you enter a foreign country it's your responsibility not to bring any diseases with you.
This is so laughably silly I don't even know where to begin.
First of all, I was a temporary immigrant to the US and I immediately was on the hook for a bunch of money as part of my visa application process. So immediately I'd argue your first point is incorrect on that technicality anyway, not to mention I was basically moving to the US to start a business so then spent the next two years dumping money into the economy.
What is your expectation of responsibility here? You can be sick and not know you're sick. You can be sick and asymptomatic. You can be sick and think you're sick with something basic like a cold but it's actually the flu or COVID or something else more sinister.
Pretending that anyone is going to adhere to an undefined system of responsibility at the best of times, let alone when it comes to moving overseas into a different country, seems ludicrous to me - I'm supposed to cancel might flight and re-arrange my immigration plans because I have a runny nose?
If you want to have a healthy country you need publicly accessible healthcare for everyone. We literally just had an object lesson in this with the COVID pandemic - indeed, we're still in the middle of the object lesson, where people's sense of "responsibility" towards others when it comes to communicable diseases is visible everywhere you look.
You said "paid any taxes or contributed anything". I'm just pointing out that you're wrong, right out of the gate.
And even if you were right, which you're not, you'd be wrong about 10 minutes after the average immigrant turns up when they first have to buy something and pay sales tax.
The "sense of entitlement" exists in your head. I'm noting that if you want to have a healthy society, a plan to look after sick people is a necessity. Your sort of thinking is exactly why almost one in three hundred Americans died in the first year of the pandemic.
FWIW I left the US for the UK in 2016. Before arriving there I had to pay into their national health insurance scheme. If you object to immigrants coming and not paying their way you could agitate for such a scheme. But I assume that's not the point.
Anyway, looks like you're going to get what you want and nobody is going to come to the US any more. You'll get to see what it's like when it works like that.
Look, I object to the idea that the host country is responsible for the spread of diseases that are brought by immigrants, which is what you're implying when you blame the spread of diseases on the lack of affordable healthcare. I didn't know this was controversial.
It's totally normal for countries to screen for this stuff both at border entry and as part of the immigration process. In Australia we check at the border if you're coming from a country where they have certain diseases (e.g. yellow fever). If you're applying for some immigration status you need medical checks if you're from certain countries to screen you for certain conditions (e.g. tuberculosis).
It is absolutely the host country's responsibility to do this to keep their own citizens safe.
It's not "people traveling" as this phrase is commonly understood, that is the issue; it's "relocation of 5% of a small country's population (Nicaragua for example) into the USA".
>Most tuberculosis (TB) cases in the US are diagnosed in foreign-born persons, and undocumented foreign-born may face particular barriers to timely access to health services.
When leaving the USA, getting TB vaccine is highly recommended and (at least in my experience) free and easy. I think it's fairly clear GP meant folks coming into the USA, and not for short periods, from areas that are not able to supply vaccines regularly.
This very well might be an issue. UNICEF and other aid organizations work dilligently to eradicate TB and other poverty-adjacent diseases, so perhaps individuals and the US Gov should increase their aid to other nations.
TB is a disease of poverty, it doesn't spread that easily, but the risk goes up for people in overcrowded living situations and for those who are chronically malnourished.
It's not a great surprise that one would find TB in cross-border migrants, but it's an indictment of the system that the disease continues to spread over here.
oh, but wait! it is actually endemic among native armadillos (USA) and native red squirrels (UK) - you almost never see a red squirrel in the UK, so don't worry.
My brother-in-law in the Philippines died from it in 2021. My own brother nearly died from it in the 1950's, was treated for 2 years. Our dad worked 2 FT jobs for years to pay the medical bills. He later suffered from 2 heart attacks but made it through thank God.
The Philippines has "XDR TB" as well, the extremely drug resistant form. It is sometimes found in a different part of the lung (higher up) and thus not every radiologist will catch it, either.
I’d think the answer here is rather simple… Americans are extremely unhealthy, eat garbage, don’t get sun or exercise, don’t sleep enough, and therefore have weakened immune systems. The last of those appears to be a rather significant indicator for immune health btw, so make sure you’re sleeping enough.
It is true that sufficient exercise can boost the immune system to where it can fight off a chesty invasion within a few hours, but the level of exercise required for a sufficient effect is intense exercise daily, not just moderate exercise, but also without going overboard to the point where it is a detriment. And yes, I agree about the other factors, but they're insufficient without intense exercise.
Legal immigrants are screened for TB if they are from high risk countries. The illegal immigrants don't get screened and are the sole cause of the explosion of TB cases in the US. Stop putting your head in the sand.
Specifically, illegal immigrants who are not subject to a lung scan. As for legal immigrants, they're already fully subject to a lung scan, although a ten year visa adds risk.
It would not be so political if there weren't some basis in illegal immigration and subsequent treatment of those immigrants being a source of the rise. Oh, and the inability to acknowledge that
Withholding medical treatments for profit? Allowing media to knowingly lie about the risks and benefits of medical treatments for short term financial gains?
We could’ve a world without TB not just a few nation states without it. Pathogens don’t recognize lines on maps unless draconian border security prevents all hosts from crossing said lines. I don’t think you want to close all sea- and airports, built and maintain a continuous line of watch towers and minefields, enforce shoot to kill orders and pay for it all right? It wouldn’t just be immoral and stupid, but also more expensive (in case you don’t give a fuck about people that don’t look like your immediate family).
> I don’t think you want to close all sea- and airports, built and maintain a continuous line of watch towers and minefields, enforce shoot to kill orders and pay for it all right? It wouldn’t just be immoral and stupid, but also more expensive
Quite. But some people here do seem to want this.
TB is not a moral disease (there are no such), not a disease of immigrants (when I worked in Edinburgh in the 1970s it was all over the place among Scots), and is very treatable if you can a) pay for the quite cheap treatment and b) educate people to keep taking it. You can also immunise against it.
The second highest is Hawaii. I think it's interesting that the two highest states are states that are so different from each other.
They are both disconnected from the other 48 states, but so is Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico's TB rate would put it around 45th lowest if it were a state so I don't think being disconnected has anything to do with it.
Strange — I could seemingly post comments, but not submit an article. (Tried right before making the previous comment.) Is article submission weighed differently?
Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. We've had to ask you this more than once before.
This all makes it very difficult/impossible to eradicate.
Speaking as an ex TB lab technician, but not for a long time past.