View Full Version : Subway and HIV
Not far from here there's a little town with a Subway store. One of the new-ish employees just informed the owner/boss that he was HIV positive. The boss let him go.
Now there's a federal lawsuit against the store for discrimination.
Supposedly you can't catch HIV from eating a little infected blood. :confused:
I don't know..........I would tend to not want to eat there anymore.
What would you do?
Ultralight
9-30-15, 11:02am
Have all employees wear surgical gloves.
It is really hard to get the HIV from eating a sandwich someone made. At any given time many people who prepare food have the HIV. You have eaten it many times. Everyone has.
Have all employees wear surgical gloves.
It is really hard to get the HIV from eating a sandwich someone made. At any given time many people who prepare food have the HIV. You have eaten it many times. Everyone has.
Yup.
I think they've been wearing gloves for several years now.
You're more likely to catch that nasty bug that is spread when employees don't wash their hands after using the bathroom :D
Ultralight
9-30-15, 11:19am
Yup.
I think they've been wearing gloves for several years now.
You're more likely to catch that nasty bug that is spread when employees don't wash their hands after using the bathroom :D
I caught salmonella once. You don't want it! The health department tracked me down and took a testimony. They wanted to know everything and everywhere I ate...
Ultralight
9-30-15, 12:16pm
My dad worked in an STD clinic from roughly 1978 to 1984. I have very, very early memories of him talking about AIDS. As a nurse practitioner he explained in-depth the nature of any and all communicable diseases to both my sister and I.
I also had an uncle with HIV. He caught it early on in the plague (I think about 1982 or so, but others told me he caught it closer to 1988; because of the way he conducted his "social life" it would be hard to know). He managed to stay alive with each drug advance. After 1996, with all the anti-virals on the market, he was sitting pretty.
Eventually he passed on from a major heart attack, not AIDS. This was about a year ago. He was estranged from the family, I think because he was gay and had HIV back in the 80s. He never reconnected. I found him on Facebook. He and his life partner had obviously quit going to "church" and had developed a taste for fast food and anything deep-fried.
sweetana3
9-30-15, 12:20pm
There are much more easily caught diseases that I would be afraid of in public. Drug resistant TB, hepatitis, etc.
Most people are so concerned about the "in your face" little restaurants where you can see the food preparation and give zero thought to the places where the food is processed in the back out of sight or the food processing plants both of which have caused far more illness.
Ecoli and botulism, both of which have caused many deaths, come from poorly processed foods both personal prep and commercial prep. This is a big reason for all the laws around food preparation.
Ultralight
9-30-15, 12:23pm
It is pretty easy to make a "Subway"-style sandwich at home too. That might cut down risks. Also, Subway is not that yummy.
I thought this sort of irrational fear of HIV went away in the 80's. Especially since the current treatments for HIV cause most people to have undetectable viral loads. In other words, people being treated are not likely to spread it through sex, much less be able spread it through making sandwiches.
There are much more easily caught diseases that I would be afraid of in public. Drug resistant TB, hepatitis, etc.
That's very true. People tend to be very bad at assessing risk. We worry about shark attacks and plane crashes when the more significant dangers of bee stings or texting while driving are the real threats.
What would you do?
Educate myself.
The elevator tv at work had a headline the other day that more people in the US have died this year taking selfies than from shark attacks...
Ultralight
9-30-15, 12:42pm
The elevator tv at work had a headline the other day that more people in the US have died this year taking selfies than from shark attacks...
Sad-LOL!
My little brother died of AIDS in 1991. I recall one time when he had a seizure and the emergency personnel showed up in what looked like spacesuits to avoid "contamination" or contact with him. At that time, there was still a lot of paranoia about the disease but I didn't think it was still prevalent.
The elevator tv at work had a headline the other day that more people in the US have died this year taking selfies than from shark attacks...
This summer, a lady was hiking on a very narrow steep unimproved trail on one of our scenic mountains here. She tripped over a log while taking a picture/video of herself with a selfie stick. Managed to badly break her ankle and leg, and missed going over the edge and dropping several hundred feet to her death by mere inches.
It took us a couple of hours to get her down, we put her in the basket, lashed her in, and took her down the cliff on a rope system, there was no way she was going to be able to be evac'd on the trail. Here's where we got her down to the first improved trail:
I found her broken selfie stick next to her while we were doing the initial assessment.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-FWrsbGZ0fvM/VaG-LZMH0ZI/AAAAAAAAQMI/EA_MP_ZLDPQ/s720-Ic42/turtlerescue.JPG
Ultralight
9-30-15, 1:05pm
My little brother died of AIDS in 1991. I recall one time when he had a seizure and the emergency personnel showed up in what looked like spacesuits to avoid "contamination" or contact with him. At that time, there was still a lot of paranoia about the disease but I didn't think it was still prevalent.
I wonder how much of the paranoia about AIDS in the 80s was wrapped up just plain old homophobia.
Ultralight
9-30-15, 1:06pm
This summer, a lady was hiking on a very narrow steep unimproved trail on one of our scenic mountains here. She tripped over a log while taking a picture/video of herself with a selfie stick. Managed to badly break her ankle and leg, and missed going over the edge and dropping several hundred feet to her death by mere inches.
It took us a couple of hours to get her down, we put her in the basket, lashed her in, and took her down the cliff on a rope system, there was no way she was going to be able to be evac'd on the trail. Here's where we got her down to the first improved trail:
I found her broken selfie stick next to her while we were doing the initial assessment.
Wow. Just wow.
My little brother died of AIDS in 1991. I recall one time when he had a seizure and the emergency personnel showed up in what looked like spacesuits to avoid "contamination" or contact with him.
I have a bag with one of those right next to my medical kit. We use it for Ebola patients and a handful of other interesting things.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-wLOKA0c1vs4/VQYG_QwFf1I/AAAAAAAAOlo/rc_-bNExbA4/s720-Ic42/Awesomized.jpg
For HIV, we just follow our normal protocols - gloves, eye protection, and so on. Same as we do for healthy-looking patients.
Ultralight
9-30-15, 1:11pm
For HIV, we just follow our normal protocols - gloves, eye protection, and so on. Same as we do for healthy-looking patients.
Makes total sense.
The elevator tv at work had a headline the other day that more people in the US have died this year taking selfies than from shark attacks...
Project yourself back to 1975 and imagine hearing the above statement.
Ultralight
9-30-15, 2:12pm
Project yourself back to 1975 and imagine hearing the above statement.
LOL
LOL
Exactly. I was expecting flying cars and robot butlers, but all I got were elevator TVs and selfie sticks.
I rarely go to a fast food place..... I would rather put my own food together. I'm about as conscientious about cleanliness around food as anyone.
As an R.N., I'm way too aware of what workers do in the course of their food prep.
The small town that this Subway is in, I'm sure is not very enlightened......so I fear this will do the Subway shop in.........If the person gets his job back.
When we first started hearing about AIDS in the early 1980s , I worked in an E.R. and an ICU.........had my hands in a lot of blood (with cuts on my hands too). :( I was one of the first to start wearing gloves most of the time. Some thought that was silly of me, but it seemed reasonable.....After all, there was lots of blood and other bodily fluids.
As far as eating out.........I don't care if it's HIV, Tuberculosis, influenza, Hepatitis, the common cold..........I don't like people I don't know preparing my food.
We'll see how this plays out.
Teacher Terry
9-30-15, 4:47pm
Here all the workers where gloves. I would be much more afraid of catching other things as others had mentioned. Dealing with blood of course is a whole different thing. I have never even taken a selfie. The obsession & now the sticks are ridiculous. Bae, that woman sure was lucky.
I once had occasion to spend several hours in an emergency room with a friend who had fallen off a ladder. We were waiting in a small room that was apparently adjacent to a break room. The staff were one-upping each other on the stupidest injuries they had ever seen. There's a reality TV show in there somewhere.
iris lilies
9-30-15, 7:06pm
Stop dissing Subway!!! I love it when fast food is required.
freshstart
9-30-15, 9:14pm
My dad worked in an STD clinic from roughly 1978 to 1984. I have very, very early memories of him talking about AIDS. As a nurse practitioner he explained in-depth the nature of any and all communicable diseases to both my sister and I.
I also had an uncle with HIV. He caught it early on in the plague (I think about 1982 or so, but others told me he caught it closer to 1988; because of the way he conducted his "social life" it would be hard to know). He managed to stay alive with each drug advance. After 1996, with all the anti-virals on the market, he was sitting pretty.
Eventually he passed on from a major heart attack, not AIDS. This was about a year ago. He was estranged from the family, I think because he was gay and had HIV back in the 80s. He never reconnected. I found him on Facebook.
Have all employees wear surgical gloves.
It is really hard to get the HIV from eating a sandwich someone made. At any given time many people who prepare food have the HIV. You have eaten it many times. Everyone has.
This. If he doesn't have a bleeding cut that sprays your food, I don't see how it could even happen. Our Subways, they all wear gloves. I became a nurse during early years of AIDS. There was a lot of hysteria. We were taught "Universal Precautions", hand washing, gloves, needle protection, we were told act like every patient has AIDS because you cannot tell by looking (Kaposi's sarcoma the exception, I suppose). But that was also best practice in terms of infection control. However, that didn't mean you went in in a Haz Mat suit, every patient treated the same, patients did not even have to disclose their status. You could shake hands with someone with AIDs, hug them, kiss them on the cheek and not die. But the country, the nurses were scared, misinformation all over the place.
The hysteria and discrimination really disturbed me, I applied to the AIDS unit and an oncology floor when I graduated. I chose oncology but they asked if anyone wanted to be assigned to the hemophiliacs, men who got AIDs from a blood product they required to live, the problem was Factor 8 is made up of many, many people's blood products so the odds of getting AIDs from blood products was a million times more likely for them than someone who got a single blood transfusion. So these were young men who had already suffered all their lives, and the product keeping them alive eventually kills them. I'm not looking up the numbers and the disgusting facts as to how long this product remained available when there was a not too expensive fix. Class action lawsuit, this article says 100k, but all the patients I took care of, it was more like 60k.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products
There is also a documentary on Netflix that will break your heart, I highly recommend it, but you'll have to search for it because the title is gone from my brain, but everyone should see it, it was such a unique situation and time. Ah, I remember, it's called Bad Blood, it sounds awful but it is well done and we should all be in the know when crap like this happens and is allowed to continue, so history doesn't repeat itself. There are other wonderful docs about gays forming groups, protesting, I try to get my kids to watch these. I have to think for a day or 10 before I can recommend the good ones, sorry. Dallas Buyers Club, not a doc, very good film. I don't want these stories lost just because HIV is considered chronic. Pivotal time in history that was mishandled out of the gate, it needs to be remembered.
So I became nurse for "the boys" who were often in the hospital for 6 months, only to return 2 weeks later for another 6 months. Being nearly the same age was good, after logging in hour after hour with them, we had age appropriate stuff to talk about, we were friends, how could you not be? So when they were begging for VCRs, as they were bored to tears (they were on isolation and could not leave their tiny rooms) and had nothing to distract them from their pain and dying, and our supervisor kept saying absolutely not. We all chipped in and got them, conned a guy to come in late and put them up. My supervisor said, "did you get these approved by the electricians?" WTH? "Yup." "Really, that takes days?" "umm, then, nope." She walked away and didn't fire me. It was non-stop Scarface and God Father from that day on. Right next door to the old woman supervisor who considered these guys a PITA. She would reach her breaking point, come out in the hall, "no more gun fire and swearing, this is a Catholic hospital, damn it! Arghh, DARN it, see what you've done to me?" It was funny. But not always, one single mom raised 3 hemophiliac sons, a rough life. All 3 got AIDS and one by one they died. She killed herself before the last one died Who was my favorite, because it turned out he worked with my dad, when the poor guy could work, and sat at his lunch table everyday. He asked me to write my dad a note when we knew work was not gonna ever happen again, he thanked my dad for helping on the days he threw up all over the lunch table, he said he was the only person to treat him normal once the word got around he had AIDS. I cried and cried, and he held my hand, for once. His death was in the top 3 of bad deaths ever. No one would relieve his pain, he howled, screamed and my old lady boss would come and shut his door so she could work in peace. I quit not soon after, no one should die like that ever.
Anyhoo, meant to just agree with UA, sorry. And to say I had an uncle who was diagnosed early, sick fast, got involved with the Hemlock Society, had obtained the meds needed to die, they were on his nightstand, he blew his head off instead. This guy was once in some crazy religion in the mid-west, he and his wife adopted a ton of kids from Korea during the war. There's a book about them. I could not stand her, I would've gone gay just to escape her. My grandmother, my dad and his sister were the only ones not to ostracize him.
And I had a cousin, ostracized like his uncle, by his own siblings even, his mother took him in but not happily and was not good at caring for him. Same three people supported him. And that side of my family is huge so 3 people is shameful. He said his mom would never physically touch him at all, even as he died and called out for her, she would come in, but wouldn't even hold his hand. Her own child.
I still do not totally trust that our blood supply and blood products are handled properly, I mean I know that there is no HIV. But after seeing that for all those years, the way critical information was kept from the CDC, the fear that companies would go out of business with thousands of lawsuits, what comes next? I refuse to get blood unless a doc I respect says if I don't I'm gonna die.
So I got to test that theory! I hemorrhaged after DD, my red blood cell count was so low I was scared, they brought the blood bag up, I wouldn't do it, I wanted all other measures tried first, like a drug called epogen, very expensive and slow working. My OB was in my face, yelling at me. I called the hematologist who took care of all of my boys, very eccentric, brilliant doc, Colombo-ish and I loved him but he believed in life at all costs and pain meds would kill the screaming, howling boy who was DYING. We fought over every death, and I told him, I respected him, learned so much from him but I was leaving and it was mostly because he refused to ease the suffering of the boys, and I would not be complicit with that. We hugged but I never knew where I stood with him at the end. Anyway, I call him, tell him my numbers, that I won't take blood unless HE says I have to, could you be my hematologist? He spoke to the OB over the phone and said he'd be there in 10 minutes. He was and I received no blood products.
ok, that's been my experience. Anyone else? Did any one see the AIDS quilt? It came here and my family were on it. It was sobering.
Exactly. I was expecting flying cars and robot butlers, but all I got were elevator TVs and selfie sticks.
That reminds me of the meme going around Facebook a couple of years ago. "Imagine talking to someone from 30 years ago and explaining that in 2013 people will carry a computer in their pocket that has instant access to much of the world's knowledge and can communicate with anyone anywhere and most people just use it to look at pictures of cats and argue politics with people they've never met."
freshstart
9-30-15, 9:17pm
The elevator tv at work had a headline the other day that more people in the US have died this year taking selfies than from shark attacks...
the Kardashians are skewing the real numbers, lol
freshstart
9-30-15, 9:19pm
This summer, a lady was hiking on a very narrow steep unimproved trail on one of our scenic mountains here. She tripped over a log while taking a picture/video of herself with a selfie stick. Managed to badly break her ankle and leg, and missed going over the edge and dropping several hundred feet to her death by mere inches.
It took us a couple of hours to get her down, we put her in the basket, lashed her in, and took her down the cliff on a rope system, there was no way she was going to be able to be evac'd on the trail. Here's where we got her down to the first improved trail:
I found her broken selfie stick next to her while we were doing the initial assessment.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-FWrsbGZ0fvM/VaG-LZMH0ZI/AAAAAAAAQMI/EA_MP_ZLDPQ/s720-Ic42/turtlerescue.JPG
I hope you took her selfie! People are so stupid
freshstart
9-30-15, 9:20pm
I wonder how much of the paranoia about AIDS in the 80s was wrapped up just plain old homophobia.
I don't wonder, I staunchly believe
freshstart
9-30-15, 9:21pm
I have a bag with one of those right next to my medical kit. We use it for Ebola patients and a handful of other interesting things.
have you actually had Ebola patients?
freshstart
9-30-15, 9:25pm
As far as eating out.........I don't care if it's HIV, Tuberculosis, influenza, Hepatitis, the common cold..........I don't like people I don't know preparing my food.
We'll see how this plays out.
I do not trust hand washing. I've seen nurses not do it enough to make me pause and think about the rest of the population
have you actually had Ebola patients?
None who have developed the disease. I'm on our region's team that deals with Ebola and a few other high-risk situations, and monitors/transports as necessary. We get a weekly watch list of folks who are in various quarantine/waiting situations, and go in if they have any issues, usually it turns out that they have the flu or an allergy or a cold. Still, you never know.
We should not be concerned about what we know nearly as much as we should be concerned about what we do NOT know.
I am amazed and impressed that this person gave up HIV status. It is protected health information. I think he is to be applauded. I fully believe that someone who freely shares this information is so respectful of others that he is also very protective of others.
And I would be impressed if someone can provide an example of a food service worker transmitting HIV to a customer. this is just paranoia at it's worst. I hope he wins his suit.
And I would be impressed if someone can provide an example of a food service worker transmitting HIV to a customer. this is just paranoia at it's worst. I hope he wins his suit.
The CDC says it basically doesn't happen. You're more likely to choke to death from swallowing.
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