STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Just Like the Ebola Situation, The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has Failed to Predict the Rise of the Highly Infectious Legionnaire’s Disease Outbreak in the Bronx and Elsewhere.

The CDC was once a great institution but it has now been degraded to just another money sucking, useless government entity. Never has a health agency costing taxpayers north of $7B, employing over 15,000 medical personnel failed so poorly as in the former Ebola Epidemic which was eventually curtailed by the brave initiatives of our U.S. Military who were sent by General Martin Dempsey (AFRICOM) to Liberia and surrounding areas to stop the spread of the epidemic. This dysfunctional CDC and its accompanying officer corps of the Public Health Service managed to showup for pictures in Africa after the epidemic was stopped by our military force. 

A while back, I met an extremely knowledgeable former Assistant Surgeon General. This individual told me well over a year ago that the CDC was again in default with regard to its duties. This discrete, highly talented infectious disease expert warned me about the imminent rise of Legionaires Disease in the USA.

How did this person know?
This person was an expert in the spread of infectious diseases here in the USA and abroad. They warned that Legionnaires was once again found in the HVAC systems located in hotels, apartment buildings, hospitals, and other large buildings; where air is mixed with water which often contains the gram-negative aerobic bacteria called “Legionalla pneumophilia”. 

Legionnaires is usually not a fatal disease. It affects those people who may have a compromised immune system, especially in the very old and very young. It does not travel from person to person. It has a far more insidious pathway, it is located in the air conditioning systems that have not been cleaned out on a periodic basis. Basically we breathe in the bacillus once we enter any large building and then we take our chances that we do not get infected. Once the incubation period of 2 -15 days has passed usually the most common symptoms are those of a typical flu-like virus—cough, fever, sweats, muscle aches, headaches, fatigue..

In the case of Legionnaires Disease, physicians can easily treat it effectively by quickly administering the proper antibiotics and fluid regimens. The real burden of proof that we have a potential Legionnaires Epidemic, rests with the highly incompetent CDC which should have picked up the pandemic course of Legionnaires well over one year ago, starting somewhere in New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s time for the Director, Thomas Friedman, MD, to quit or be fired [God forbid this Obama Administration would hold anyone accountable]. Next I would dismiss the entire PHS Commissioned Officers Corps which should have been deployed as soon as one outbreak was reported one year ago.
Remember Kathleen Sebelius? That was one disaster that was eliminated ASAP.

Now we have Sylvia Matthews Burwell, current Secretary of Health and Human Services. She is a former president of Walmart who also worked on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her finest non-qualification for this onerous job of monitoring our public health in America was as a ‘political aide’ to Governor Dukakis (Mass) and a ‘political operative’ for the Clinton Gore campaign. How such a resume qualifies her to protect our public health befuddles me. Despite the Harvard degree in government studies and the store bought Oxford degree on a Rhodes scholarship, Ms Burwell seems eminently qualified for nothing in the health related sciences or even conversant in epidemiology.  Or maybe we are counting the fact that her father was an optometrist?

Americans have an incredible amount of talented professionals in all parts of our society. Sadly, now, political loyalty is paramount to competency in government agencies originally set up to protect our citizens. Most of our governmental institutions have degraded into employment agencies for political friends and relatives of same. Skin color nor gender should dictate who is the most qualified to hold leadership positions in key public service institutions. Neither should how much money you’ve brought into the wallets of your politician friends. Remember, we have two medical doctors running in the presidential, Dr Ben Carson and Dr Rand Paul, why not ask one of these qualified physicians to set up to the task of protecting our country’s health? Now that’s a great resume builder.