{"id":168675,"date":"2025-08-23T08:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/168675\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T08:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:19:11","slug":"health-department-failing-to-stop-legionnaires-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/168675\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Department failing to stop Legionnaires’ Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s yet another epic illustration of city government\u2019s routine dysfunction: The same disease \u2014 Legionnaires\u2019 \u2014\u00a0keeps hitting vulnerable communities<\/a>, even though our public health officials know exactly how to prevent it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When even the cooling tower at Harlem Hospital<\/a> \u2014 run by the Department of Health \u2014 tests positive for Legionella, the alarms should be ringing.<\/p>\n

All the key lessons should\u2019ve been learned from the 2015 Legionnaires\u2019 outbreak in The Bronx, but the DoH somehow forgot them.<\/p>\n

This is the same agency that locked playgrounds and shut down schools and churches during COVID, extending many mandates in the city far longer than in the most of the country \u2014 implicitly claiming supreme competence.<\/p>\n

Yet these geniuses have been conducting fewer than half the cooling-tower inspections they did eight years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ve basically stopped issuing violations to buildings that violate the law by not monitoring and disinfecting their cooling towers. <\/p>\n

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In 2017, DoH gave out 48,000 citations; this year, it\u2019s heading for about 800.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency lost a third of its inspectors these last three years and has failed to find replacements, even though the inspection office got a 30% boost in its budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Six New Yorkers have now died<\/a> from this latest outbreak of Legionnaires\u2019 Disease, with dozens more infected and hospitalized. \u00a0<\/p>\n

All, almost exactly a decade after the near-identical Bronx outbreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are transparent about our data,\u201d says Dr. Michelle Morse, the acting health commissioner. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe publish data about all the cooling tower violations and inspections, and admit we have fewer inspectors than we used to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s great, but data transparency isn\u2019t why we have a Health Department: It\u2019s there to prevent the transmission of deadly diseases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Morse says that building owners bear the burden for monitoring, treating and cleaning cooling towers. OK, but if the city fails to inspect them, the law doesn\u2019t mean anything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus, again, the city failed on cleaning the towers on at least four of its own buildings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So don\u2019t be distracted by the DoH\u2019s lectures about longterm disinvestment in poor communities and the social determinants of poor health for black and Latino people.<\/p>\n

Yes, asthma, diabetes and smoking \u2014 all higher in incidence in Harlem and The Bronx \u2014 are predictors for getting hit hard by Legionnaires\u2019 Disease, but this outbreak\u2019s cause was more about failures by the health department as well as private and public building managers in these communities. <\/p>\n

We expect the Health Department will now be on top of this problem . . . for the next few years. <\/p>\n

But unless city government sees some fundamental reform to stop it from forgetting again, you can bet on seeing yet another Legionnaires\u2019 outbreak by 2035 or so. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s yet another epic illustration of city government\u2019s routine dysfunction: The same disease \u2014 Legionnaires\u2019 \u2014\u00a0keeps hitting vulnerable…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":168676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,4691,5231,2041,3584,64166,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,881,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-168675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-editorial","10":"tag-harlem","11":"tag-health-department","12":"tag-hospitals","13":"tag-legionnaires-disease","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-opinion","21":"tag-public-health","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115077104539554862","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}