I just got through leaving a note about this in MRSA Adaptation and Survival. I read every entry again today taking notes and was really disturbed that those of us trying to band together to fight this monster are on so many different pages. You have to have a unified front to win a war and we don’t have that going on there at all. I know it is all intended to be people’s opinions but these are mine! I think everyone writing in there should stop trying so hard to downplay this disease just like they are also complaining that the doctors are guilty of doing. I also wonder if they do it to reassure themselves that they can’t die and that their family won’t get sick from being around them although at least ten writers there alone tell of their entire family being infected. One woman even writes that we should sue a school that turns away an infected child instead of making sure the child tests negative before returning to school although a microbiologist writes that staff there have to test negative to return to work. I remember clearly the last time this country downplayed a emerging disease and now thousand have died of AIDS, many of them contracting it while it was a “gay” disease. No one knows how differently this disease might have spread if everyone had been alerted and afraid of it when it first emerged although we can clearly see what further negligence would have done to us by looking at countries like Africa. I find it odd that people seem to get offended or something when I compare this to HIV but I honestly would rather be diagnosed with HIV than full blown MRSA like my daughter has. At least HIV finally got the recognition it needed and funding for medications until people with it can live semi-normal lives for ten to twenty years now. I wrote in the Survival in Adaptation page that I believed fear was motivation and I feel very strongly about it. I want people to be afraid of getting and spreading the disease. I want a junkie to be terrified of sharing needles. I want people to insist on a preventative nasal spray when admitted to a hospital for anything. I want everyone singing Twinkle Twinkle while they wash their hands. I want all medical workers to be tested. I want the people’s voices in this country to rise in terror until it is heard throughout the government and funding is in place to at least try to imitate the Netherlands success in eradicating MRSA. I don’t want to wait until this disease mutates further and becomes a plague noting can stop and VRSA is already here. I want to know how in the hell a bird flu that might get here someday got so much news coverage and MRSA which is already here gets so little? No airtime for that! But hey! Look at this bird flu over there! I started all of my research and work on MRSA out of pure fear. I light this fear into everyone I meet, even someone I share a bus seat with for a few minutes. Some people say I am obsessed and I am so intentionally because I now feel it is my mission in life. I didn’t ask for it but it became so when I first learned of it when this ugly thing raised it’s ugly head in my family. I am the head of a large family and it is my job as such to safeguard them when I can and it is now my duty to humanity to spread the word and the fear until the monster is gone. I would hate to think that my part in this was to do like the doctors we hate and downplay it like it is the common cold. It might be common but it’s no cold. It is MRSA. The Super Bug. The Flesh Eating Disease. The New Plague. Lets call a spade a spade.