Biggest Story All Week -- August 25, 2022

I just happened to come across this story while looking for something else. This blows me away.

One has to read to the very end of the story to see the "real" reason why policy was changed.

I always said that when the "Red Cross" runs short of blood they will reverse the policy. 

US military personnel barred from blood donation by "mad cow disease" fears receive eligibility. 

I was caught up in this decades ago when assigned to USAF bases in Europe: Germany (multiple bases); England, and Turkey.

Link here.

Second to last paragraph of a very long article; should have been in the lede:

According to the FDA, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused “unprecedented challenges” to the U.S. blood supply because of social distancing requirements and the cancellation of blood drives.

Background from the article:

Mad cow disease, also known as variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, is attributed to human infection with the agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, likely from consumption of contaminated beef products, according to the FDA.

The rare but invariably fatal disease was first recognized in the U.K. in 1985 and subsequently spread worldwide. 

It also can be transmitted through blood transfusions from an infected donor, and there is no blood test for it. The FDA issued its first guidance restricting blood donors in 1999.

In 2020, the FDA lifted restrictions affecting people who had spent time or received a blood transfusion in European countries except the U.K., Ireland and France.

1985 to 1999: fourteen years.