More than 900 people in Washtenaw County, Michigan have been sickened with cyclosporiasis since mid-June.Linda Kim, a public health nurse, has spoken to more than 100 of them.
This story was produced in partnership with KFF Health News.Almost everyone's said the same thing: It's excruciating, and one of the worst illnesses they've experienced.But on a Wednesday in July, she called one man who said he wouldn't mind having it again, actually."You're enjoying the weight loss?" Kim said, laughing as she took notes in a small conference room at the Washtenaw County Health Department building, just outside Ann Arbor."Well, I'm glad to hear that.
At least you got something good out of it!"Normally, Kim's supposed to be working downstairs in the clinic, where families wait in the gray plastic chairs in the lobby for free or low-cost immunizations.But she hasn't been there in months.In March, Kim was transferred to a different department to help deal with a local measles outbreak that sickened seven people in the county, five of them children.
It was an all-hands-on-deck situation; everyone worked overtime.The state issued an advisory urging families in Washtenaw and surrounding counties to get their babies 6 months or older vaccinated ahead of schedule, if possible.Those contact-tracing calls for measles could be contentious, Kim said.
People were suspicious, asking her how she knew they had tested positive, or why they should give her any information."People were like, 'Oh, you're just trying to restrict my life,' or 'You're just trying to get information out of me and get me in trouble,'" she said."It's like, no, we're actually not doing that at all."As she tried to explain to them, tracing the spread of the highly contagious virus and publicizing possible exposure sites was an effort to "keep it contained, so it doesn't become something huge."The county's measles outbreak ended in late May.
Then in June, reports of cyclosporiasis cases started pouring in: more than...