A couple weeks ago, when I
spoke to Glen Nowak, director of media relations at the CDC, about the Andrew Speaker/Tuberculosis situation, he emphasized the need to further the public's education on testing for the disease.
“Tuberculosis testing isn’t like pregnancy testing – it’s not an either you are or you aren’t – it’s more complicated,” Nowak said. “So we’ve had our experts explain what’s involved. Another challenge is people don’t realize there aren’t rapid diagnosis tests.”
Today comes a lengthy
story in the
New York Times explaining the difficulties involved with TB testing. The piece sheds a lot of light on just how difficult a task the CDC had in communicating with the public in the wake of the Speaker situation.