Why are we suddenly seeing so many cases of flesh-eating disease all along the east coast of the United States?  For years, flesh-eating bacterial infections were so rare in the U.S. that even a single case would make national headlines.  But here in 2019 the news is telling us that we are seeing flesh-eating infections "at a rate much higher than in previous years", and this outbreak really seems to have escalated dramatically over the last couple of months.  In fact, I found so many cases as I was doing research for this article that I had to simply stop reading at one point or I would have never gotten this article done in time.  So in this article I will be sharing quite a few examples with you, but it is far from an exhaustive list.

Let's start with a Tennessee man that was just killed by flesh-eating bacteria after a trip to the Florida panhandle.  This is what his daughter had to say about his death…

"About 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning, 12 hours after we were in the water, he woke up with a fever, chills and some cramping. … They got to the hospital in Memphis around 8 p.m.," Wiygul said in the post. "They took him back immediately. As they were helping him get changed into his hospital gown they saw this terribly swollen black spot on his back that was not there before."

The man's condition worsened over the next several hours. His immune system had been weakened by a bout with cancer, the daughter said, and he died Sunday afternoon.

That is how fast flesh-eating disease can kill you.  If it is not treated immediately, there is a good chance you will die.

And it doesn't take much.  One woman that had just moved to Florida recently died after getting a small cut on her leg "while walking along the coast on Anna Maria Island"…

A woman died two weeks after cutting her leg while walking along the coast on Anna Maria Island, Florida, according to her family. Her leg became infected with necrotizing fasciitis, commonly called flesh-eating bacteria.

A life in Florida had long been the dream of Carolyn "Lynn" Fleming, who was originally from Pittsburgh but was most recently a resident of Ellenton, Florida.

I apologize in advance if I am ruining your future Florida vacation plans, but the truth is that a lot of these cases are happening along the Florida coastline.