Leprosy – Fearporn, Facts and Fiction
My friend and respected colleague Jeff Childers did a nice job summarizing the main-stream and alternate media fear porn surrounding one recent case of leprosy (Hansen’s disease) in Florida
This case was written up and published as a case study by a recently graduated medical student/trainee in a CDC-affiliated medical journal last week.
I wanted to just cross post his otherwise excellent Substack article, but… Jeff is one hell of an attorney.
However, by his own admission, he is not a physician or a scientist, and he got just some important details wrong regarding the science and medicine.
But his calling attention to the ginned up fear porn is super important and for that, I acknowledge his great work.
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is extremely rare in the USA. Using the official CDC tracker, there is no evidence that the disease is becoming more widespread anywhere in the USA.
Here are the facts about the disease from the CDC website:
Before moving on, let’s look at some of the related corporate media fear porn from this past week in August 2023:
Even the UK “Guardian” gets into the act, regurgitating the same fear porn found in earlier articles with some minor edits.
Getting to the Facts
First off, there is no “surge” of Leprosy cases in central Florida, greater Florida state, or the USA in general.
From the Florida Health Department website:
Do these numbers looks like a crisis? Nope!
Here are the numbers of cases in the USA for the past decade:
So, two hundred people get leprosy in the USA a year, each of which take years to develop into anything serious, and is an entirely curable disease with drug treatment.
Again, this is not a disease that deserves front page headlines for a week! In contrast, another mycobacterium-associated disease, tuberculosis, and in particular multi-drug resistant tuberculosis certainly merits attention.
But last time I checked, TB is a major problem in major urban areas like Chicago. But that apparently does not fit with the political agenda which is in play in Florida.
Cutting to the chase, to my eyes what we have going on here is yet another case of weaponizing public health by corporate media and various politicos to support an agenda, compounded by what can only be termed gross reporter incompetence.
What started all of this? An article titled “Case Report of Leprosy in Central Florida, USA, 2022” launched this whole mess.
This case report was published in the journal of Emerging Infectious Disease. The authors are not affiliated with the CDC. The Emerging Infectious Disease is a peer-reviewed, monthly peer reviewed journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This is a publication from a medical trainee in a scientific journal, not a policy statement from the CDC. Big difference. This journal does not offer guidance from the CDC. In that article, the authors state their opinion that:
“Florida, USA, has witnessed an increased incidence of leprosy cases lacking traditional risk factors.”
Note the phrase “lacking traditional risk factors”.
In another portion of the article, the lead author, Dr. Bhukhan -who just graduated medical school and is about to start a residency at the University of Central Florida/HCA Osceola Hospital – states that cases in the Southeastern USA have doubled in the last decade.
However, the citation given for the statement doesn’t actually state that. In fact, that website lists that the 159 cases in the USA in 2021 is a significant decrease from the year before.
This whole house of cards is built upon a flawed citation in a recently graduated medical student’s case history which was apparently not well peer-reviewed and got pushed into the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID).
As if we needed even more evidence that EID is really more of an in-house rag than it is a real peer-reviewed scientific journal.
This disease is SO exceedingly rare in the USA, it is hard to believe that this has been front page news for the past week! I can only conclude that we are seeing another case of weaponized public health fear porn, much like what happened with monkeypox, but even more blatant.
Or a case of sloppy peer review compounded by grossly incompetent reporting. It is always hard to tell the difference between nefarious intent and garden variety incompetence.
All this propaganda over a single sentence that was read incorrectly by a single reporter (apparently working for Fox News) which then went viral throughout corporate and alternate media.
Based on her bio, the journalist in question appears to be a fear porn specialist with a degree in journalism and english. No scientific or medical background. Color me shocked.
Then corporate media went even deeper into cra-cra land. Do none of these “reporters” know how to pick up a cellular device and place a call, or even just google “Hansen’s disease” and “CDC”?
The CDC website has explicitly clarified that there is NO travel advisory.
This again appears to come from a journalist reading the flawed case study article above, whose authors are not CDC employees. Then inferring that if something is published in this CDC-associated, “peer-reviewed” journal, then it represents the official policy position of the CDC.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how peer-reviewed scientific review process and literature works.
After the distortions of the peer review process during the COVIDcrisis, it is no surprise that an english/journalism major would be confused on this point.
For a fascinating history of leprosy in the USA, including details of the mandatory lifetime quarantine that used to exist before there was a cure – go here. But it is important to note, that even before there was a cure for leprosy, the number of cases in the USA was exceedingly low.
As described by the WHO, leprosy is hard to catch, most people are not susceptible and most cases in the USA are from migrants who contracted the disease elsewhere. If there actually was a spike in Florida lepers, it would most likely be the consequence of in-migration from Asia and Latin America.
But there also genetic evidence that a minority of cases in the USA are zoonotic. That is, people catching the disease from armadillos. To be clear, that would be less than 50 people a year catching the disease from armadillos.
Yet another reason to not pick up armadillos or roadkill, in case you needed a reason.
Basically the chances of catching leprosy are less than getting hit by lightning (yeh, I looked it up).
There is no question that being immunosuppressed is a key factor to contracting leprosy.
Therefore, as mRNA inoculations cause immunosuppression, it has been hypothetised that in some individuals this could pose a higher risk of contracting the disease after vaccination. But this has not been studied in countries where leprosy is endemic.
That said, there is small study that suggests that those who already have leprosy, may be more susceptible to more severe leprosy reactions after repeated COVID-19 “inoculations”.
See more here substack.com
Header image: The Leprosy Mission
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