Should anyone food service or restaurants with tattoos be required to pass Hepatitis tests?

Discussion in 'Opinion POLLS' started by Pollycy, Jul 8, 2018.

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Should those working food service or restaurants with tattoos be required to pass hepatitis tests?

Poll closed Jul 29, 2018.
  1. To keep Hep-C from spreading, these employees should all have to pass hepatitis tests first.

    11 vote(s)
    61.1%
  2. No, having a tattoo does not mean you should have to pass hepatitis tests.

    7 vote(s)
    38.9%
  1. Dispondent

    Dispondent Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Is the spread of Hep C really that much of a concern to justify the costs the testing would require?
     
  2. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    The relatively new wonder drug, Harvoni, can cure people of Hep C over 90% of the time. The cost is $80,000 - $100,000 if the infected person has no health insurance. With excellent health insurance, the cost will drop dramatically to probably to less than $5,000. How many 'tat-people' have "excellent health insurance"...?

    Remember that you must factor in all the doctor's office visits, the liver biopsy operation and test, and even after all the Harvoni prescriptions (usually three) are paid for and taken, there is the continuing requirement for ultra-sound examinations of the liver for a couple of years afterward.

    How much does a simple hepatitis test cost?
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2018
  3. Dispondent

    Dispondent Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think you might be missing my point. The food industry is huge, when you factor in large and small businesses and start looking at costs you'll see that unless the threat of a Hep C outbreak is rather high, the costs of testing over time would be higher than the insurance payout to administer the cure in the event that someone did spread the disease...
     
  4. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    You are absolutely correct about the vaccines for hepatitis A and B, Max. Unfortunately, there is, as yet, no vaccine for Hep-C. Everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY should be vaccinated against hepatitis A and B, and frankly, even though I hate the idea of most forms of 'socialized medicine', I'd be in favor of having the government pay for vaccinations for poor people. Anything is better than having many thousands of people, with and without tattoos, running amok in society spreading hepatitis, even though they don't even realize that they are doing this.
     
  5. Max Rockatansky

    Max Rockatansky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Agreed there's no vaccine for Hep C, but, as the link noted, there's a cure. Also agreed that everyone should be vaccinated for public health hazards and the cost subsidized with tax dollars since it is in keeping with the "promote the general Welfare". A clause, unfortunately, often abused by Democrats.
     
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  6. Day of the Candor

    Day of the Candor Well-Known Member

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    Hep A, B, and C can be spread in different ways and it is true that each kind of hepatitis will destroy your liver and kill you. Here is a link from the CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hbv/bfaq.htm . There are enough things in life that will kill you if given a chance, so why push your luck by having your food handled by people with tats? They should be tested and passed before they are allowed to work with food.
     
  7. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Sorry but do you know the definition of an STD(sexually transmitted disease)?

    It is a disease that is so hard to catch that it takes intimate contact involving mucous membranes and body fluids to transmit it person to person. Blood borne diseases are even harder to catch

    Unless you piss your wait staff off enough for them to gob in your food it is unlikely that you would catch anything
     
  8. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    I, for one, would not want to entrust the safety of my life to whether or not "wait staff" are pissed-off about something or not.... We have become an angry, somewhat deranged society during the 21st-century, and I trust fewer and fewer people all the time.

    Ya know, more and more often, I just eat at home, and I don't worry about getting diseases there.
     
  9. manchmal

    manchmal Well-Known Member

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    You say my comment reeks of ignorance but you never give any factual reason for why you say that. You tell us that "teachers, doctors, lawyers" and others get tattoos like that's some kind of assurance that tattoos can't transmit the hepatitis virus. You say that having a tattoo is no more dangerous than "simply being alive". But whether you like the numbers or not there is a measurable risk of getting hepatitis if you get a tattoo. I don't care if somebody wants to kill his own liver because of ignorance about how this disease is spread but I don't want any of them handling my food.
     
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  10. Liberty Monkey

    Liberty Monkey Well-Known Member

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    You should all fear this far far more



    Assume every meal you ever eat out is treated this way!
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2018
  11. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    The link says that the video is 'not available'.
     
  12. Liberty Monkey

    Liberty Monkey Well-Known Member

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    Must be US thing works fine in UK, try this link
     
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  13. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I would be fine with requiring all food handlers to pass a hep test... but just ppl with tats would be asinine. Theres plenty of other, more likely ways to get hep.
     
  14. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    This one worked fine. At least the waiter wasn't festooned with 'tats'.... Cheers!
     
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  15. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    Forcing employees to take tests would mean that businesses could discriminate against people with a disease and its not cool for careers to be ruined just for having a disease. Hep C can only be transmitted by sharing blood and the vast majority of the time is transmitted through sharing needles but also through being born to someone with Hep C and dirty tattoo needles. As long as the restaurant follows common sense clean sanitary practices there shouldn't be a problem. If they don't then they have a much bigger problem and we should get the health inspectors to come down on them.
     
  16. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    Lots of "woulda, coulda, shoulda" in your reply about what employers and tat-employees should do by following "common sense clean sanitary practices"... then, you say, "there shouldn't be a problem". How many people TODAY have any damned "common sense" regarding nearly anything? Fully half the people in this country are still sucking welfare of one kind or another from the government -- they can't even support themselves! How much "common sense" is there in a population like that?! (Oh, but they've got money to blow on getting tats... right?)

    Ever known anyone with Stage 3 or Stage 4 Hepatitis? The lucky ones can still be saved by very expensive wonder drugs, like Harvoni. The Stage 4 people will probably have to queue-up for liver transplants. Oh, and you're wrong in stating only a few of the ways hep is spread... I knew one guy who got hep from eating undercooked seafood in Mexico! So you bang some chick with a tat and she's got hep -- now you've got an excellent chance of getting it, too! How much "common sense" is used in those situations?

    Main point: life is full of risks. We all know that. But WHY risk contracting something as lethal as hepatitis for no good reason at all?! I mean, for a tattoo? For a f*cking TATTOO?! How much "common sense" is there in a decision like that? And I'm supposed to want people with so little "common sense" as that to come into direct contact with the food that I eat?! I'd rather spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on something else besides Harvoni....
     
  17. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    Mexico doesn't have the same cleanliness standard that we do and getting hepatitis is one of many things you can get from their food. I have heard about people getting parasitic worms in their eyeballs and brains. If you have sex with a random stranger than you are accepting the risk that you might get an STD and maybe you shouldn't go around banging random strangers. If people don't have common sense its their fault, people with hepatitis shouldn't have to pay for their stupidity. It is extremely unlikely for hetititis to spread through food service and basically impossible if you have proper cleanliness standards in your restaurant. Dirty restaurants can spread diseases much more likely than hepatitis. As a customer you should use common sense and look out of restaurants that aren't clean by looking at the condition of their tables, bathroom, and kitchen if possible.
     
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  18. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    I can't disagree with what you've posted here. Well said, and yes, we should always use 'common sense'... and for me that means avoiding in every possible way any situation that involves having people with tattoos and food that I eat coming into any kind of contact with each other -- and ME.

    Sex? Sure, that is also a 'no-brainer'....

    [​IMG]. Pass on this one... plenty of other 'fish in the sea'....
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2018
  19. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    Lets look at the data. People with hepatitis C are 34% likely to have a tattoo compared to 12% of people in their study. Other studies put the percent of people with tattoos at 20%. About 3 million or 1 percent of people have hepititis C. 72% of people with tattoos have them hidden. So what the data suggests is that only a tiny fraction of people with tattoos have the infection. And even if they did, as long as they don't transmit their blood into your body, you will be fine. Might be good to stop worrying.
     
  20. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    I don't worry. But if only one person in some 'sampling' of the population can be spared the horror and devastating expense involved in dealing with hepatitis, then the effort is worth it. And the consequence of detection that comes too late, or lack of the ability to pay for the very expensive treatment, is death.... :skull:

    Ya know, it would be one thing if you were forced to undergo getting a tattoo in order to function in society, but, on the contrary, it is completely unnecessary... so why would anyone with any sense do this? Unfortunately, I can answer this question myself -- "the COOLNESS factor"....

    [​IMG]. "Well, hell... some day somethin's gonna kill ya... right?" :roll:
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  21. Day of the Candor

    Day of the Candor Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, well with something as dangerous and deadly as hepatitis the term "unlikely" isn't good enough. Want to play russian roulette with your liver? Go right ahead. If its so hard to contract hep why do so many people have it now? And anyway, what is the use of having a tattoo in the first place?
     

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