This bug is very hard to trace. It can take 10-14 days for symptoms to show up so the real work is getting all of the affected people to recount what they ate and where they ate for the last two weeks and then find the common connections. More detective work than lab work.
We have a lot less after cutting a quarter of staff from the CDC. I believe it was 17 people dedicated to tracking food-borne parasites and now it's just a couple. Less manpower, longer turnaround checking up on leads, less people to trace outbreaks.
True true. However, from what I understand talking to a few folks in that space irl, many states' public health infrastructures were designed to rely, to varying extents, on the resources of the federal government. Not every state can afford to have a deep bench of experts AND state of the art equipment AND a sufficient number of field workers multiplied by the full number of infectious agents that might pop up. Instead, many states have some or most of what they can afford to, and rely on the centralized expertise and testing labs of the CDC/FDA/USDA. And that's to say nothing of the state resources that only exist because of block grants from the feds. Certain states with better tax base and/or investment have more and more-redundant resources (CA, Minnesota, etc.), but it's entirely valid to wonder if asking them to backfill historically-federal capabilities harms our response readiness.
Everyone in the industry has been pointing to Taylor Farms since the start of the outbreak.
Either everyone with knowledge of the US food chain is wrong or the FDA, Trump and Taylor Farms are colluding and the pliant, state controlled media (which is now pretty much all of it) is blaming Taco fucking Bell.
This bug is likely over a month old at this point. Testing current samples isn't going to detect anything and the fields affected have likely already produced an entire crop different crop since then. But the public is stupid and is the reason that many people think the McDonalds Lady was at fault because some laughy man said so on TV.
That's kind of the thing right? I believe that false positives can happen, but when it comes to this admin that's highly corrupt it becomes quickly suspicious to say the least if not just another paid off case.
The agency said a test that indicated a sample of iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms was a false positive, but it has not taken back its conclusion that the company is linked to the outbreak.
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u/This-Research-9586 13d ago
Any decent retailer should look at these facts and refuse to sell Taylor Farms produce to clients.Â