I'm pretty ticked off, but I made sure that the following just relates to my WORK.
There will be quite a few folks that will notice if there is a shutdown. Just these past two weeks, my outbreak response lab coworkers and I have assisted the following:
Families of infants in a neonatal ICU in New Jersey trying to figure out why their children are still getting sick from waterborne Pseudomonas infections.
Patients in Nebraska that can't have endoscope procedures in their lungs because the facility is trying to trace a source of wax-coated bacteria that don't respond to antibiotics.
ICU patients in Puerto Rico actually DYING at the rate of 1 a week from a multi-drug resistant superbug that also doesn't MIND being dried out for months on end and floating around the hospital.
A hospital in Washington trying to figure out if a GI tract scope is making their patients sick.
North Carolina has a dialysis clinic dealing with blood infections in their already very sick patients.
Kentucky has a hospital trying to find out WHY patients are getting surgical site infections in joint surgery patients!
Guess what ALL of those have in common?
ME, and MY WORK. We SPECIALIZE in tracking down these hard-to-find bacteria because getting them out of water, medical devices, is a HELL of lot HARDER than just taking a blood sample or swabbing someone's mouth. States COME to us to help them do DNA fingerprinting on these things to FIND the source of these infections. A lot of them can't even afford a FRICKIN GUIDEBOOK to do proper antibiotic resistance testing!
Guess WHO isn't going to be working? ME and my co-workers!!! We LOVE our work. We're darned good at it, and yes, it IS important.
For those of you tittering about how no one's going to notice a difference, you are DEAD WRONG. Literally. By the time the outbreak investigation gets to us, it means that 1.) The hospitals can't figure it out. 2.) the local and state health departments can't figure it out. Those patients are SCREWED without us. I don't give a damned flying brick about the paycheck, I will be fine for 2 months or so. But there are a LOT of people whose WELL BEING depends on me being ALLOWED to work. I will not even be allowed to LOOK AT MY FRICKIN EMAIL or VOLUNTEER to continue doing my work!
