(cross-posted at Daily Kos)
Once again bio-detectors in the United States are showing an airborne exposure to Tularemia, and once again officials are downplaying the event:
Public health officials are downplaying the detection of an airborne potential bio-terror germ in Santa Clara County, saying it probably came from a natural source.
On Sunday morning, an air monitoring station in an undisclosed location picked up a low reading for the presence of the tularemia bacteria, but at follow-up tests were negative, according to the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health. No other air monitors in the area picked up any readings.
Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County health officer, said today there was no danger to the public, adding that the source was likely a natural one. There is, he said, no reason to suspect terrorism based on one positive test detecting a low amount of the germ.
“All of our subsequent follow-up and testing and air monitoring have been negative,” he said.”
Sound familiar? Maybe that’s because it’s strikingly similar to two other occurrences in the last year where Tularemia was detected. The second one was in DC on the same day as the massive anti-war rally:
Routine air sampler detection system in Washington DC indicates results from possible disease agent
by D.C. Health Department, Leila Abrar (202) 841-9232
October 4, 2005Sept. 24 Test Results Indicate Tularemia Bacteria
(RICHMOND, Va) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notified the states of Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia today that an airborne form of Tularemia bacterium was detected by air sensors in the vicinity of the National Capital Mall during the weekend of Sept. 24 – 25. Since then, additional tests from these collectors have all been negative. Subsequent laboratory tests performed on the Sept. 24-25 samples have supported the presence of low levels of the bacterium in the environment. Public health officials do not believe the finding of low levels of the bacterium near the National Mall indicate a public health threat.Tularemia, which occurs naturally, is easily treated with common antibiotics. It cannot be transmitted from person to person. Tularemia is found naturally in the environment, and health officials are doing additional environmental sampling as well as reviewing other possible causes of the positive reading. State health departments have alerted local health departments, acute care treatment facilities, health care providers and veterinarians to be on the alert for signs of respiratory infections related to Tularemia. Also as a precaution, CDC and public health officials are alerting the medical community to be on the lookout for possible cases of Tularemia. To date, no cases of Tularemia have been discovered or reported.
As a precautionary measure, CDC and public health officials are recommending that anyone who visited areas around the National Mall between 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 24 and 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 25 should see a health care provider if they experience symptoms related to Tularemia, which include:
Sudden fever
Chills
Headaches
Muscle aches
Joint pain
Dry cough
Conjunctivitis
Pneumonia
People who do not have symptoms of Tularemia do not need to seek out medical attention.The Centers for Disease Control is the lead agency investigating this incident. Information about Tularemia is available from the CDC at www.cdc.gov http://www.cdc.gov/. Similar information is available on the Virginia Department of Health Web site at www.vdh.virginia.gov.
D.C. Health Department, Leila Abrar (202) 841-9232
Maryland Department of Health, Karen Black (804) 471-0842
VDH Press Pager (877) 573-9504
As this article about the San Jose incident notes, tularemia was also detected by bio-hazard detectors last year in San Diego:
A station in San Diego detected something last year, according to health department spokeswoman Joy Alexiou.
And to top it all off a San Diego school girl recently contracted Tularemia in San Diego in June of this year:
Dr. Nancy Bowen, county public health officer, said the girl had fully recovered, and that the county only recently learned of the incident, which occurred in June. Bowen said the girl was never hospitalized, but suffered swollen lymph nodes, headache and fever.
Bowen said the girl contracted the disease after pulling ticks off a wild rabbit that had been trapped and given to her as a pet.
. . . Health officials have worried that, like anthrax, the tularemia bacterium could be used as a biological weapon.
. . . Bowen said the disease is extremely rare, and the girl’s case was the first in San Diego County for “many, many years.”
Not sure how the Public Health official cited in this article knew she contracted it from ticks since her office only learned of the incident 2 months after it occurred. For myself, I am prone to speculate that something else might have played a role in this, since we now know of the subsequent detections in DC and San Jose, and the prior one last year in the San Diego area itself.
Oh, and also maybe because of the fourth detection of tularemia by bio-detectors (but the first in time, chronologically), which occurred in Houston, Texas in 2003:
Earlier this month [October 2003], the City of Houston’s environmental surveillance systems detected genetic material from a bacterium called Francisella tularensis.
Oh, and did I mention the tularemia outbreak in May 2004 among three Boston University researchers?
In May, 2004, two laboratory staff became ill with flu-like illnesses. After a third worker got sick in October, researchers discovered that instead of working with harmless bacteria, their specimens were contaminated with a virulent tularemia strain. On November 4, the University’s Biosafety Committee shut down the research project.
Why mention this here? Apparently, Massachusetts law requires immediate reporting of infectious diseases like tularemia, yet BU did not report the outbreak to the public health department until November 9. BU has been planning the construction of a Level 4 laboratory to study extremely virulent pathogens at a site in the densely populated South End of Boston. To gain approval for the new laboratory, BU filed an environmental impact report with the state Environmental Affairs department that claimed a perfect safety record for protecting workers against laboratory acquired infections. However, BU failed to update the report with information about the outbreak, despite state environmental regulations that require such corrections.
Now why would Boston University researchers possibly be working with virulent strains of tularemia? Well, maybe the same reason the Federal Government recently issued $60 million in contracts to spur development of a tularemia vaccine:
US funds tularemia vaccine research, secure labs
Oct 20, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – The US government has issued about $60 million in contracts to spur development of a vaccine against tularemia, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced recently.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of NIH, has issued two 5-year contracts for vaccine work, the agency said earlier this month. The agency also awarded $87 million in grants to build four biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) labs.
. . . Research to find and evaluate new tularemia vaccine candidates will be conducted by the University of New Mexico, with C. Rick Lyons, MD, as principal investigator, and by DVC LLC of Frederick, Md., with Robert House, PhD, as principal investigator. DVC LLC is a private company that develops biodefense vaccines and drugs for the Department of Defense.
. . . The four new BSL-3 labs will be added to nine other BSL-3 labs funded by NIAID in the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory program. The institutions receiving lab funding are George Mason University, Manassas, Va.; Tufts University, North Grafton, Mass.; the University of Louisville, Ky.; and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
So let’s review what we know:
- Tularemia is a bacterium that naturally occurs among rodent populations, especially rabbits.
- It’s natural occurrence, however, is extremely rare.
- Tularemia forensis is easily weaponized as a biological weapon.
- Environmental air monitors in 4 different locations around the country have detected it beginning in October 2003.
- The most recent incidents have come within 6 weeks of each other in September and October of this year.
- In each case Public Health officials have down played the significance of these detections and have suggested they arose from natural causes.
- Researchers (in Boston that we know of) are working with virulent strains of tularemia under federal grants.
- The federal Government has recently announced it is actively seeking the development of a tularemia vaccine.
- One of those contracts was issued to a private firm known to work for the Department of Defense.
Now I don’t know about you, but all of these facts make me exceedingly nervous. After all, this is the government that lied to us about what it knew about Al Queda’s intentions prior to 9/11, lied to us about the environmental toxins in the air around the World Trade Center recovery and rescue site, lied to us about the faulty pre-war intelligence leading up to our invasion of Iraq . . . need I go on?
So what do you think is going on here?
Me? I’m afraid to guess.
