Loading ...LEPROSY PANDEMIC WARNING !!
From Jeff Childers
This week an alarming story exploded all over corporate media about a brand-new outbreak of a loathsome and terrifying disease — leprosy — in Florida. But, is it just another Monkeypox false alarm? Or is it a serious health threat requiring masks, lockdowns, and mass vaccination?
And before you ask, YES — of course — they have a vaccine for it:
We need answers, fast! Should you run out and get your BCG (leprosy) vaccine?? Now, I know what you’re going to say, but keep an open mind. You never know.
According to widespread and coordinated corporate media reports, this week the CDC issued a stark warning to visitors to the Sunshine state: “Travel to this area, even in the absence of other risk factors, should prompt consideration of leprosy in the appropriate clinical context.”
That’s not going to be good for Disney’s theme park business.
To begin, let’s first look at a handful of recent headlines, to get a sense of the level of media hysteria and panic.
The New York Times, it’s too late:
From Science Alert, leprosy “appears” to be spiking (“appears” is doing a lot of work in that headline, as we’ll see):
Where did this spike in leprosy suddenly and unexpectedly come from? The answer is the stories were based on a single “Research Letter” published this week in Emerging Infectious Diseases, titled “Case Report of Leprosy in Central Florida, USA, 2022.” One case. And the diagnosis was already a year old.
“News.”
The Research Letter described a single case of a 54-year-old Central Florida man who had minor clinical signs of leprosy for five years before he finally went into his dermatologist for a rash, and wound up leaving with a leprosy diagnosis. According to the Research Letter, the patient lived in central Florida his entire life, works in landscaping, and spends long periods of time outdoors.
Remember “landscaping.”
Before you ask, he’s doing fine. They gave the intrepid landscaper a standard drug cocktail to treat his leprosy infection, and that was it. No hospitalization necessary. No amputations or stints in the leper colony. In fact, if you read far enough, CNN admitted “the infection is curable, but treatment involves a combination of antibiotics taken over a few years.”
So it’s curable. But still, it’s leprosy. The logical first place to look was the Florida Department of Health website, where one would expect to find critical, up-to-the-minute disease updates about the new outbreak. There was nothing on the home page so I searched for it:
1921! Remember that date. It seemed weird that the media is panicking about leprosy in Florida but the state’s Department of Health had nothing to say about it. I dug deeper.
My entire life I’ve heard that back in the day — before air conditioning — Florida was one of the places they SENT lepers. According to Bard AI, there were two colonies, both located in Central Florida:
[T]there were two leper colonies in Florida. The first was the Florida Leper Home, which was located in Orlando. It was established in 1898 and closed in 1949. The second was the Apopka Sanatorium, which was located in Apopka. It was established in 1914 and closed in 1985.
In fairness, no search engines returned results for either of those colonies, so it’s either been scrubbed or Bard may have made it up. But either way, leprosy in Florida is not “news.”
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, baffles science (unlike covid-19, about which Science instantly knew everything). They aren’t sure where it comes from or how people catch it. But the bacteria that causes leprosy is identical to bacteria commonly found in armadillos. So one theory is that contact with armadillos may be the cause.
Armadillos come out at night, they are cute little fellas, but they have a bad habit of digging holes in feshly-manicured grass lawns. My neighborhood has long been ‘entertained’ by the occasional early-morning shotgun blast as my across-the-street neighbor blows armadillos away in his yard. He can’t stand them.
That’s life in Florida. What can I say?
Some of the articles, like the Guardian UK’s report on the “outbreak,” made the connection to the pesky little diggers, and their ubiquitous presence in the region:
Nine-banded armadillos carry leprosy and are common in central Florida, which suggests possible animal-to-human transmission (although most US patients in the new study did not report close contact with the creature).
Notwithstanding that, none of the articles connected the Research Letter’s patient’s occupation — “landscaping” — and armadillos, which are all over the place in Central Florida landscapes.
In fairness, the Research Report said the patient denied contact with armadillos. But he works in landscaping, said he is outside all the time, and his (mild) symptoms started over five years ago. I find it hard to believe he never ran across an armadillo all that time; it seems more likely he just doesn’t remember. I don’t work in landscaping, and don’t work outdoors, but I’ve been within touching distance of the armored critters dozens of times over the last few years.
But still. Even if it’s hard to catch, leprosy sounds highly inconvenient, and the headlines were super scary. How much risk is really there? CNN provided the answer, if you bothered to read past the third page in its alarming report, that is:
Experts agree that leprosy is becoming endemic in the region. But that need not cause a public health panic, said Dr. Nicole Iovine, chief hospital epidemiologist at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital. “Endemic” simply means there are regular levels of a disease in a region but not that rates are climbing, she explained.
“It’s really rare still,” Nathoo said. “These numbers are still relatively super low here. We’re not that concerned with it.”
So it’s news from 1921, and Shands doctors are NOT concerned, contradicting WBAL’s headline. But what about the CDC, which issued a travel advisory for Florida? The Guardian UK’s report on the story, quoting the New York Times, itself quoted CDC officials, who didn’t seem to be super concerned:
[A] spokesperson for the CDC told the New York Times that the agency “does not believe there is a great concern to the American public” as the current number of leprosy cases is “very small”.
Oh. So let’s count them up. The doctors at Shands — a major Central Florida research hospital affiliated with the University of Florida — aren’t that concerned about leprosy. Florida’s Department of Health isn’t that concerned about leprosy. Apart from its ridiculous travel advisory, CDC doesn’t seem that concerned about leprosy.
So why is corporate media so concerned about leprosy?
The media’s hook, which is difficult to identify, is that there appears to be a new etiology of the disease, meaning a few people recently seem to be catching (or showing) leprosy without the usual causes, like cuddling with armadillos. For some baffling reason. Again, from the Guardian:
How did the spate of new cases start?
According to Carrie Kovarik, a professor of dermatology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the CDC’s new information suggests a change in how people acquire leprosy in the US.
A change? The now-infamous Research Letter’s patient lived with his leprosy “symptoms” for five years before going to see his dermatologist. I started wondering: what caused things to suddenly get bad enough for him to go to the doctor now? And, why are the numbers of cases ticking up (a little)? I dug some more.
The very first footnote cited in the Research Letter linked a 2017 scientific article on leprosy that mentions this important fact:
Lepromatous leprosy occurs in infected individuals with impaired T-cell immunity resulting in anergy.
(“Anergy” is defined as the “absence of an immune response to a particular disease.”)
Ah. Well. Isn’t that interesting. Immune problems. The CNN article also reported, way down in the story: “Roughly 95% of people aren’t susceptible to the infection because their immune systems are genetically programmed to resist it.”
So almost all regular folks are immune, but … immunocompromised people with T-cell impairment are at higher risk of contracting the disease — or having a previously harmless, dormant infection flare up.
Gosh. What does that sound like?
It only took a little digging. Take a gander at the title of this peer-reviewed PLOS journal article, published yesterday:
Uh-oh! That doesn’t sound good! (Writing this, I felt a little disappointment because I know that, by this time, the connection to jabs did not surprise you. It’s getting hard to keep up the drama these days.)
Anyway, I’ll let the study’s first two paragraphs speak for themselves:
Our landscaper with latent leprosy that just flared up in 2022 neatly fits the study’s description of events, wouldn’t you say? But none of the media reports could make the same connection that I easily made with just a few minutes’ mild effort this morning.
And — particularly take note of the third sentence in the second paragraph: “BCG vaccination is associated with the development of leprosy in a small proportion of healthy contacts of people with leprosy within twelve weeks of administration.”
How about that?
The researchers slapped that warning about leprosy vaccines right after explaining that the covid vaccines can spur a latent infection. They seem to be warning that jabbed people might not want to take the leprosy vaccine, unless I’m reading that wrong. That warning might be helpful and important information to include in widespread media reports about leprosy outbreaks. What do you think?
Given past experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if this paper is taken down any minute now. You might want to save a PDF copy if it interests you. Here’s the link: https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0011493.
So what can we conclude from all this? First of all, leprosy is curable. It’s hard to catch. It’s super rare, and it only threatens immunocompromised people. Second, you may want to hesitate before taking the leprosy vaccine, especially if you’ve been jabbed. And third, marvel at the media’s brazenness to keep using this same fear-mongering tactic on us over and over. It won’t work on you, because you are thinking for yourself, or you wouldn’t be reading this. But consider that the media wouldn’t use this disease psyop unless it worked on some proportion of the population.
Who are these people falling for these disease panic stories? Why do they still believe, even after all we’ve been through? These are unanswerable questions.
I’ll end with this link to Peggy Hall’s brilliant debunking of the leprosy psyop, which is a little long (about 45 minutes) but is very entertaining, and includes a different take and different information than today’s post did.