From Staph News:
Two years ago, Morris Yomtov contracted a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection while clearing hurricane debris from his Florida yard. This week, he’s out of a job.
Yomtov was chatting with coworkers and mentioned that he acquired an antibiotic-resistant strain of staph when he scraped his arms two years ago, he told Miami’s CBS 4. Before the day was over, Yomtov had been fired by a supervisor who erroneously believed that Yomtov must still be contagious. The infection was successfully treated by a medical professional two years ago, but Yomtov’s boss would hear none of it, insisting that MRSA is a new disease that wasn’t around years ago.
At the request of his employer, The Hollywood Telemarketing Company, Yomtov provided a note from an infectious disease specialist certifying that he was no longer infected with MRSA. However, his boss refused to accept the note from Yomtov’s hand, directing him to fax it to the company. No one from The Hollywood Telemarketing Company has spoken to the media.
While the “superbug” threat is real and anti-biotic resistant Staph is currently spreading like wildfire through New Jersey schools and and is becoming such a concern in Virginia that they’re launching an initiative to track the treatment resistant infections, the real danger to people in this situation is the panic caused by misinformation. The above man lost his job because his boss know nothing about Staph infections, except some rumor about it being a biblical plague.
Panic endangers people more than anything else in an emergency. Stay calm, get the right information and act accordingly.