A Tuberculosis Outbreak Exposes U.S. Postpandemic Vulnerabilities

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

It’s been five years since COVID was declared a global pandemic. Local, national and global public health agencies mobilized to contain the spread of COVID, but experts worry that backlash against measures like lockdowns have made today’s systems less capable of handling a disease of similar scale. Now the U.S. faces a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas that underscores the importance of public health infrastructure. Recommended reading: On COVID’s Fifth Anniversary, Scientists Reflect on Mistakes and Successes https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/on-covids-fifth-anniversary-scientists-reflect-on-mistakes-and-successes/ Read Michelle Mello’s research on how public health legal powers have changed since the beginning of the COVID pandemic: https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076269 And check out Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga’s ongoing health equity reporting: https://www.kcur.org/bek-shackelford E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with producer Fonda Mwangi. Our show is edited by Jeff DelViscio with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:31.2	For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman. This week marks the fifth
0:36.9	anniversary of COVID being declared a global
0:39.6	pandemic. So much changed about all of our lives then, and we're still feeling those effects
0:45.6	five years later. As we reflect on this anniversary, our producer, Fondamwangi, took a pulse
0:51.0	check on where the U.S. public health system is now and the lessons it's learned.
0:58.4	We're only a few months into 2025, and there has already been a number of infectious disease
1:03.3	outbreaks across the United States. There's measles in Texas and New Mexico. And of course,
1:08.7	we can't forget about the bird flu outbreak in poultry
1:11.4	in cows with several recent human cases too. But in Kansas, they've been battling tuberculosis.
1:17.6	The first cases associated with it were recorded in January, 24. The majority of the cases
1:24.5	were in Wyandotte County, which is an urban county.
1:29.0	It's part of the Kansas City Metro.
1:34.4	And then there were some other cases in Johnson County, also part of the Kansas City Metro.
1:39.3	And the thing that was different with this outbreak is that active tuberculosis cases, meaning the person can spread tuberculosis and is symptomatic, spiked up so quickly.
1:45.0	That's Beck, Shaka Ford Wanganga, a health equity reporter at Kansas News Service.
1:50.0	She actually first broke the story that Kansas was even having a TB outbreak.
1:53.0	As of last Friday, Kansas has seen 68 active cases of TB, and that's since the beginning of the outbreak,
	...

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