First Aid sign at train station, Tokyo 2011
There are very few news stories that make it across the ocean. According to my research, these often include very specific types of stories: mass killings of teens stranded on islands in some kind of hell dimension, Sarkozy's latest mid-life crisis, riots in another EU country about to go bankrupt, and/or penguins that have escaped the zoo one too many times.
Even fewer stories from upstate NY reach Europe, which is why this one caught my father’s attention. Rochester was being featured on Polish news and for something truly astounding…stupefying…staggering?! I guess shock value can be something to be proud of.
Also, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. hah!
REWIND (or FAST FORWARD). YOU'RE 18.
It is that special day. That day when you turn 18 and you think, I can die for my country today, I can vote, I can buy spray paint, I can donate blood, I can give (or get) a lap dance, I can drink almost everywhere on earth except Puritan riddled America, I can start a 401K and… I can get a tattoo. Let's be real. We have all had those thoughts on that day and many have even followed through.
So, now the question of symbolism. Say you go with wolf. This is a pretty safe one as it represents an inherent oxymoron. How many other animals are regularly described as both 'lone' and in a 'pack'? The beauty is regardless of your personality type: intro or extrovert, you are set.
You find a picture of this famed hunter, go in to the parlor, talk to the artist creating your wolf, lay still for a few hours and BOOM, you get tuberculosis.
As my very eloquent staff members from the summer would say, sucks to suck. And for what? What is that tattoo of? My initial thought was: mosquitos, but upon further reflection, I realized you would have to be a whole new level of crazy to get the culprit behind rising West Nile deaths in the US branded upon yourself (40% increase in cases & 61% increase in deaths = 66 deaths this year. HUH? This is NOT the TROPICS.). Dandelion spores dancing in a summer breeze? Congratulations sir, you are now taking androgyny to a whole new level. If I was going to get TB from a tattoo, I would really hope it would be for something that screams BAD ASS not BAD TASTE.
This brings us to our feature presentation: tuberculosis.
Based on a 2011 CDC report on TB, infections with this sneaky nondescript (its neither gram+ or gram-) bacterium have been declining overall in the US (10,521 new cases in 2011 representing an incidence of 3.4 new cases per 100,000 = 6.4% lower rate overall) with discrepancies based on the origin of the 'human' vector. New cases in US born citizens saw a 10% decline in 2011, while foreign born declined only about 3% with most new cases coming from Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, India and China. Over 50% of new TB cases in the US are in FL, TX, CA, and the focus of this article, NY. If you live in these states beware of those with productive coughs and fevers, but all in all, this disease is not a cause for too much concern in the US (where it really rears its ugly head is in the form of MDR-TB and in those co-infected with HIV, but that's just way off topic).
whew. Those statistics just got me a bit sidetracked from the point of this story, which is... how did a tattoo parlor with seemingly perfect hygiene standards infect 19 people with M. chelonae? In the end, it has nothing to do with the parlor, it all had to do with the ink. Apparently the distilled water used to create the sterile sealed ink bottles was likely the source of the tuberculosis i.e. the contamination existed before the ink was EVEN OPENED, which is scary stuff- especially when you consider the fact that the FDA does supposedly regulate that.
The moral here is unclear. As for the title, that I can answer: Immanuel Kant and Ringo Starr both suffered from tuberculosis. One revolutionized Enlightenment thinking while the other was a member of the 'best selling band in history'. Maybe the moral is to keep those MOM tattoos coming because even with tuberculosis, you will be in good company.
