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More than 900 people in Washtenaw County, Michigan, have been sickened with cyclosporiasis since mid-June. Linda Kim, a public health nurse, has called more than 100 of them. Almost everyone has said the same thing: It\u2019s excruciating, and one of the worst illnesses they\u2019ve experienced.<\/p>\n
This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free.<\/p>\n
But on a Wednesday in July, she called one man who said he wouldn\u2019t mind having it again, actually.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re enjoying the weight loss?\u201d Kim said, laughing as she took notes in a small conference room at the Washtenaw County Health Department building, just outside Ann Arbor. \u201cWell, I\u2019m glad to hear that. At least you got something good out of it!\u201d<\/p>\n
Normally, Kim\u2019s supposed to be working downstairs in the clinic, where families wait in gray plastic chairs in the lobby for free or low-cost immunizations. But she hasn\u2019t been there in months.<\/p>\n
In March, Kim was transferred to a different department to help deal with a 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 babies 6 months or older vaccinated ahead of schedule, if possible.<\/p>\n
The 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re just trying to restrict my life,\u2019 or \u2018You\u2019re just trying to get information out of me and get me in trouble,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, no, we\u2019re actually not doing that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she tried to explain to them, tracing the spread of the highly contagious virus and publicizing possible exposure sites was an effort to \u201ckeep it contained, so it doesn\u2019t become something huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The county\u2019s measles outbreak ended in late May. Then in June, reports of cyclosporiasis cases started pouring in \u2014 more than 11,000 so far in Michigan, including two deaths. Both people who died had \u201csignificant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration,\u201d the state health department said on its website Aug. 3. Health officials aren\u2019t providing more details, department spokesperson Lynn Sutfin said in an email, but are stressing that cyclosporiasis generally isn\u2019t life-threatening and that deaths from it are uncommon in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Kim said the cyclosporiasis surveillance has been very different from her experience with the measles outbreak. Now, people seem eager to divulge even the most graphic details, such as \u201cpooping their beds, and, like, putting down towels and it\u2019s not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since she\u2019s a nurse, such confessions don\u2019t faze her, she said. Still, staffers have hundreds of these calls to make, so they try to keep each conversation under an hour.<\/p>\n
But foodborne illness investigations are complex. Especially for this parasite, cyclospora. Symptoms can take as long as two weeks to appear after people have eaten contaminated food. And no one remembers what they ate two weeks ago, public health staffers said.<\/p>\n
The interview process can be extremely detailed. Kim and her colleagues ask people to pull up their restaurant receipts, scroll through purchases on their grocery store apps, even try to recall details such as the exact brand of bagged salad mix they bought, or the type of taco they got at Taco Bell.<\/p>\n