Gastonia, NC Correspondent- The CDC is actually one of the few departments within the federal government that gives more than it gets in terms of dollars spent.  The current epidemiological landscape is a truly terrifying one, with an increasingly mobile populace, mining and deforestation opening up potential caches of viruses and bacteria to which we have no immunity, overuse of antibiotics creating superbugs and “anti-vaxxers” waging the world’s stupidest war on herd immunity.  Rather than “making” the agency do anything, I’d say we should “let” it do its job with less hand-wringing and nit-picking over measures that are vitally necessary to save not just America, but the planet from a pandemic that will make smallpox look like a heat rash.  Part of that should absolutely involve hospital and clinic sanitation.  The fact that hospitals are choosing to release semi-healed patients to protect them from getting hospital-borne infections should be laughable, but instead it’s downright terrifying.  Civil and criminal penalties should be levied against health care workers and institutions that place the public in danger by failing to maintain basic sanitation. Continue reading →