A Mysterious Infection Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy

Sorry, different link

I’m scared

This is spread by transsexual contact is what I’ve read.

C. auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world’s most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections

For decades, public health experts have warned that the overuse of antibiotics was reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have lengthened life spans by curing bacterial infections once commonly fatal. But lately, there has been an explosion of resistant fungi as well, adding a new and frightening dimension to a phenomenon that is undermining a pillar of modern medicine.

“It’s an enormous problem,” said Matthew Fisher, a professor of fungal epidemiology at Imperial College London, who was a co-author of a recent scientific review on the rise of resistant fungi. “We depend on being able to treat those patients with antifungals.”

Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines.

Yet even as world health leaders have pleaded for more restraint in prescribing antimicrobial drugs to combat bacteria and fungi — convening the United Nations General Assembly in 2016 to manage an emerging crisis — gluttonous overuse of them in hospitals, clinics and farming has continued.

Resistant germs are often called “superbugs,” but this is simplistic because they don’t typically kill everyone. Instead, they are most lethal to people with immature or compromised immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, smokers, diabetics and people with autoimmune disorders who take steroids that suppress the body’s defenses.

Scientists say that unless more effective new medicines are developed and unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs is sharply curbed, risk will spread to healthier populations. A study the British government funded projects that if policies are not put in place to slow the rise of drug resistance, 10 million people could die worldwide of all such infections in 2050, eclipsing the eight million expected to die that year from cancer.

In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official C.D.C. estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.

Antibiotics and antifungals are both essential to combat infections in people, but antibiotics are also used widely to prevent disease in farm animals, and antifungals are also applied to prevent agricultural plants from rotting. Some scientists cite evidence that rampant use of fungicides on crops is contributing to the surge in drug-resistant fungi infecting humans.

Yet as the problem grows, it is little understood by the public — in part because the very existence of resistant infections is often cloaked in secrecy.

With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs. Even the C.D.C., under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.

All the while, the germs are easily spread — carried on hands and equipment inside hospitals; ferried on meat and manure-fertilized vegetables from farms; transported across borders by travelers and on exports and imports; and transferred by patients from nursing home to hospital and back.

C. auris, which infected the man at Mount Sinai, is one of dozens of dangerous bacteria and fungi that have developed resistance.

Other prominent strains of the fungus Candida — one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections in hospitals — have not developed significant resistance to drugs, but more than 90 percent of C. auris infections are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more drugs, the C.D.C. said. Dr. Lynn Sosa, Connecticut’s deputy state epidemiologist, said she now saw C. auris as “the top” threat among resistant infections. “It’s pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identify,” she said.

Nearly half of patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days, according to the C.D.C. Yet the world’s experts have not nailed down where it came from in the first place.

“It is a creature from the black lagoon,” said Dr. Tom Chiller, who heads the fungal branch at the C.D.C., which is spearheading a global detective effort to find treatments and stop the spread. “It bubbled up and now it is everywhere

The NY Times is behind a paywall for some, so I posted the first part of the article.

Hold me, David: I'm scared!

If we had never created vaccinations we would never have this problem.

[quote]If we had never created vaccinations we would have a lot more kids who need leg braces to walk because of the Polio

Fixed.

Shit.

Did Goop recently travel to Asia?

Do you want be to copy and paste the rest of the article?

We would have built up our own immunities to things. Yes please put the rest of the article.

‘No need’ to tell the public

In late 2015, Dr. Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London, got a panicked call from the Royal Brompton Hospital, a British medical center in London. C. auris had taken root there months earlier, and the hospital couldn’t clear it.

“‘We have no idea where it’s coming from. We’ve never heard of it. It’s just spread like wildfire,’” Dr. Rhodes said she was told. She agreed to help the hospital identify the fungus’s genetic profile and clean it from rooms.

Under her direction, hospital workers used a special device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room used for a patient with C. auris, the theory being that the vapor would scour each nook and cranny. They left the device going for a week. Then they put a “settle plate” in the middle of the room with a gel at the bottom that would serve as a place for any surviving microbes to grow, Dr. Rhodes said. Only one organism grew back. C. auris.

It was spreading, but word of it was not. The hospital, a specialty lung and heart center that draws wealthy patients from the Middle East and around Europe, alerted the British government and told infected patients, but made no public announcement.

“There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak,” said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.

This hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones.

Dr. Silke Schelenz, Royal Brompton’s infectious disease specialist, found the lack of urgency from the government and hospital in the early stages of the outbreak “very, very frustrating.”

“They obviously didn’t want to lose reputation,” Dr. Schelenz said. “It hadn’t impacted our surgical outcomes.”

By the end of June 2016, a scientific paper reported “an ongoing outbreak of 50 C. auris cases” at Royal Brompton, and the hospital took an extraordinary step: It shut down its I.C.U. for 11 days, moving intensive care patients to another floor, again with no announcement. Days later the hospital finally acknowledged to a newspaper that it had a problem. A headline in The Daily Telegraph warned, “Intensive Care Unit Closed After Deadly New Superbug Emerges in the U.K.” (Later research said there were eventually 72 total cases, though some patients were only carriers and were not infected by the fungus.)

Yet the issue remained little known internationally, while an even bigger outbreak had begun in Valencia, Spain, at the 992-bed Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe. There, unbeknown to the public or unaffected patients, 372 people were colonized — meaning they had the germ on their body but were not sick with it — and 85 developed bloodstream infections. A paper in the journal Mycoses reported that 41 percent of the infected patients died within 30 days.

A statement from the hospital said it was not necessarily C. auris that killed them. “It is very difficult to discern whether patients die from the pathogen or with it, since they are patients with many underlying diseases and in very serious general condition,” the statement said.

As with Royal Brompton, the hospital in Spain did not make any public announcement. It still has not.

One author of the article in Mycoses, a doctor at the hospital, said in an email that the hospital did not want him to speak to journalists because it “is concerned about the public image of the hospital.”

The secrecy infuriates patient advocates, who say people have a right to know if there is an outbreak so they can decide whether to go to a hospital, particularly when dealing with a nonurgent matter, like elective surgery

“Why the heck are we reading about an outbreak almost a year and a half later — and not have it front-page news the day after it happens?” said Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, a physician in Kentucky and board chairman of Health Watch USA, a nonprofit patient advocacy group. “You wouldn’t tolerate this at a restaurant with a food poisoning outbreak.”

Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear.

“It’s hard enough with these organisms for health care providers to wrap their heads around it,” said Dr. Anna Yaffee, a former C.D.C. outbreak investigator who dealt with resistant infection outbreaks in Kentucky in which the hospitals were not publicly disclosed. “It’s really impossible to message to the public.”

Officials in London did alert the C.D.C. to the Royal Brompton outbreak while it was occurring. And the C.D.C. realized it needed to get the word to American hospitals. On June 24, 2016, the C.D.C. blasted a nationwide warning to hospitals and medical groups and set up an email address, candidaauris@cdc.gov, to field queries. Dr. Snigdha Vallabhaneni, a key member of the fungal team, expected to get a trickle — “maybe a message every month.”

Instead, within weeks, her inbox exploded.

Coming to America

In the United States, 587 cases of people having contracted C. auris have been reported, concentrated with 309 in New York, 104 in New Jersey and 144 in Illinois, according to the C.D.C.

The symptoms — fever, aches and fatigue — are seemingly ordinary, but when a person gets infected, particularly someone already unhealthy, such commonplace symptoms can be fatal.

Try to keep yourselves as healthy and thin as you can so you rarely have to go to hospitals.

Coming to America

In the United States, 587 cases of people having contracted C. auris have been reported, concentrated with 309 in New York, 104 in New Jersey and 144 in Illinois, according to the C.D.C.

The symptoms — fever, aches and fatigue — are seemingly ordinary, but when a person gets infected, particularly someone already unhealthy, such commonplace symptoms can be fatal.

The earliest known case in the United States involved a woman who arrived at a New York hospital on May 6, 2013, seeking care for respiratory failure. She was 61 and from the United Arab Emirates, and she died a week later, after testing positive for the fungus. At the time, the hospital hadn’t thought much of it, but three years later, it sent the case to the C.D.C. after reading the agency’s June 2016 advisory.

probably was not America’s first C. auris patient. She carried a strain different from the South Asian one most common here. It killed a 56-year-old American woman who had traveled to India in March 2017 for elective abdominal surgery, contracted C. auris and was airlifted back to a hospital in Connecticut that officials will not identify. She was later transferred to a Texas hospital, where she died.

The germ has spread into long-term care facilities. In Chicago, 50 percent of the residents at some nursing homes have tested positive for it, the C.D.C. has reported. The fungus can grow on intravenous lines and ventilators.

Workers who care for patients infected with C auris worry for their own safety. Dr. Matthew McCarthy, who has treated several C. auris patients at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, described experiencing an unusual fear when treating a 30-year-old man.

“I found myself not wanting to touch the guy,” he said. “I didn’t want to take it from the guy and bring it to someone else.” He did his job and thoroughly examined the patient, but said, “There was an overwhelming feeling of being terrified of accidentally picking it up on a sock or tie or gown.”

The role of pesticides?

As the C.D.C. works to limit the spread of drug-resistant C. auris, its investigators have been trying to answer the vexing question: Where in the world did it come from? The first time doctors encountered C. auris was in the ear of a woman in Japan in 2009 (auris is Latin for ear). It seemed innocuous at the time, a cousin of common, easily treated fungal infections.

Three years later, it appeared in an unusual test result in the lab of Dr. Jacques Meis, a microbiologist in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who was analyzing a bloodstream infection in 18 patients from four hospitals in India. Soon, new clusters of C. auris seemed to emerge with each passing month in different parts of the world.

The C.D.C. investigators theorized that C. auris started in Asia and spread across the globe. But when the agency compared the entire genome of auris samples from India and Pakistan, Venezuela, South Africa and Japan, it found that its origin was not a single place, and there was not a single auris strain.

R14 thank you!

“I found myself not wanting to touch the guy,”

Sounds like every gay guy just before the 1 year wedding anniversary.

The genome sequencing showed that there were four distinctive versions of the fungus, with differences so parofound that they suggested that these strains had diverged thousands of years ago and emerged as resistant pathogens from harmless environmental strains in four different places at the same time.

“Somehow, it made a jump almost seemingly simultaneously, and seemed to spread and it is drug resistant, which is really mind-boggling,” Dr. Vallabhaneni said.

There are different theories as to what happened with C. auris. Dr. Meis, the Dutch researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops. Dr. Meis became intrigued by resistant fungi when he heard about the case of a 63-year-old patient in the Netherlands who died in 2005 from a fungus called Aspergillus. It proved resistant to a front-line antifungal treatment called itraconazole. That drug is a virtual copy of the azole pesticides that are used to dust crops the world over and account for more than one-third of all fungicide sales.

The genome sequencing showed that there were four distinctive versions of the fungus, with differences so profound that they suggested that these strains had diverged thousands of years ago and emerged as resistant pathogens from harmless environmental strains in four different places at the same time.

“Somehow, it made a jump almost seemingly simultaneously, and seemed to spread and it is drug resistant, which is really mind-boggling,” Dr. Vallabhaneni said.

There are different theories as to what happened with C. auris. Dr. Meis, the Dutch researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops. Dr. Meis became intrigued by resistant fungi when he heard about the case of a 63-year-old patient in the Netherlands who died in 2005 from a fungus called Aspergillus. It proved resistant to a front-line antifungal treatment called itraconazole. That drug is a virtual copy of the azole pesticides that are used to dust crops the world over and account for more than one-third of all fungicide sales.

A 2013 paper in Plos Pathogens said that it appeared to be no coincidence that drug-resistant Aspergillus was showing up in the environment where the azole fungicides were used. The fungus appeared in 12 percent of Dutch soil samples, for example, but also in “flower beds, compost, leaves, plant seeds, soil samples of tea gardens, paddy fields, hospital surroundings, and aerial samples of hospitals.”

Dr. Meis visited the C.D.C. last summer to share research and theorize that the same thing is happening with C. auris, which is also found in the soil: Azoles have created an environment so hostile that the fungi are evolving, with resistant strains surviving.

This is similar to concerns that resistant bacteria are growing because of excessive use of antibiotics in livestock for health and growth promotion. As with antibiotics in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops.

“On everything — potatoes, beans, wheat, anything you can think of, tomatoes, onions,” said Dr. Rhodes, the infectious disease specialist who worked on the London outbreak. “We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops.”

Dr. Chiller theorizes that C. auris may have benefited from the heavy use of fungicides. His idea is that C. auris actually has existed for thousands of years, hidden in the world’s crevices, a not particularly aggressive bug. But as azoles began destroying more prevalent fungi, an opportunity arrived for C. auris to enter the breach, a germ that had the ability to readily resist fungicides now suitable for a world in which fungi less able to resist are under attack.

The mystery of C. auris’s emergence remains unsolved, and its origin seems, for the moment, to be less important than stopping its spread.

Resistance and denial

For now, the uncertainty around C. auris has led to a climate of fear, and sometimes denial.

Last spring, Jasmine Cutler, 29, went to visit her 72-year-old father at a hospital in New York City, where he had been admitted because of complications from a surgery the previous month.

When she arrived at his room, she discovered that he had been sitting for at least an hour in a recliner, in his own feces, because no one had come when he had called for help to use the bathroom. Ms. Cutler said it became clear to her that the staff was afraid to touch him because a test had shown that he was carrying C. auris.

“I saw doctors and nurses looking in the window of his room,” she said. “My father’s not a guinea pig. You’re not going to treat him like a freak at a show.”

He was eventually discharged and told he no longer carried the fungus. But he declined to be named, saying he feared being associated with the frightening infection.

After the influenza epidemic of the 19-tens, there was an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica , or Sleeping Sickness, 1915-1926. They don't quite know where it originated, or why it mostly stopped. There is a theory that it was a secondary effect of influenza, but no one knows.

My grandfather caught it, and was never the same again. They said he used to stare at the radio like one might watch TV. He lost his bus company and rental apartments, too, as a result.

I'm still hoping to croak from bird flu.

passe ^

This shit originated from Cheryl's stinking vadge.

Cheryl’s RACIST stinking vadge.

Wait til it takes hold in the thousands of rat infested tent cities spread across the country populated by the homeless.

It's either this C. Aurus fungus or the plague will make a comeback or maybe something even worse.

R35, this isn't spread by rats and isn't poverty driven.

Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1977. It is the only disease that man has been able to eradicate.

Guinea worm has been reduced by more than 99.99 percent, to 28 cases in 2018.

Polio had only 22 cases worldwide in 2017.

When I had pneumonia years ago, they first thought it might be TB, and they put me in a isolation unit for 5 days until the test came back negative.

I read about this last week. I'm scared!!!

Everything originates from Asia, have you noticed? The bird flu, sars, and all kinds of BS and now this!

The movie Contagion was pretty good.

The granddaddy was the Andromeda Strain movie.

There is no telling how many "new" infections are from bio warfare labs worldwide, but chances are high that most of them are.

That said, people's lives have been made more convenient by antibiotics, but the great advance in life expectancy in the twentieth century was due mainly to water treatment, sewers, food safety, and general hygiene steps. Only a little of it can be directly attributed to antibiotics.

R40, how do you come up with “chances are high that most of them are”?

Interesting global geographic spread. Appearing to originate in Pakistan, not China.

R10 the theory is that it’s resistant to anti-fungals due to anti-fungals used on crops that we eat. The fungus evolved to survive those pesticides and now it’s a super fungus.

Nature always brings overpopulation under control, one way or another.

Life finds a way...To Kill EVERYTHING!!!

R36

It's spread by humans, and you're in denial if you think people living in squalor aren't more likely to carry the disease, whether it's actually infected them or not.

Here’s the cdc page where you can track confirmed cases by state.

Does any of you suffer from candida auris?

The space station is also infected.

R42 Bin Laden was behind it.

If you don't die, are you slimmer?

THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!

This fungus seems to target the biggest shitholes on earth.

Then DJT in danger, gurl!

I'm guessing it's origin was in a fungicide used on wheat - because Pakistan grows a lot of wheat and wheat is prone to rust diseases (funguses), especially when grown in humid climates. And people eat......wait for it.......a lot of wheat, which is also an export product that travels around the world. It's not in my state yet though, so I'm going to be fine....

r55 - that's an interesting conjecture.

I don't know what to make of this situation.

This sounds like Lo-Fi version of HIV/AIDs, spreads differently but not as deadly. Sadly the response from health authorities is similar. It's not time to panic yet, but I am going to stay away from certain situations - like urgent care centers advertising for walk-in patients, public hospitals, doctors that accept Medicaid. In general now is not the time to stress the health care system, so hold off any elective procedures.

(Not b/c these places are more LIKELY to be infected, but b/c they are probably understaffed and cutting back on maintenance. )

You would probably be smarter to just avoid any place with recent Pakistani immigrants.

There's a book about this

I'm scared shitless.

The melting of glaciers due to climate change is also going to unleash bacteria/viruses that have been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.

"Dr. Meis, the Dutch researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops."

Here's a novel idea: Let's all stop pouring fungicides (and pesticides and herbicides) over everything.

Well, if it is wheat related, I'll finally have a reason to be glad I'm a coeliac sufferer.

Reading skills? There are 4 different kinds that could have come from different parts of the world and maybe it's ancient.

The CIA spooks who were sent to target Osama bin Ladin posed as Polio vaccinators. As a result, the already paranoid masses got mad at health-aid workers and in some remote places will murder them. Some places in Africa and Central Asia also think that the UN puts contraceptives in the Polio vaccines and won’t accept vaccinations as a result.

We could already have eradicated Polio worldwide except there are anti-vaxers everywhere, though they may have different reasons for their beliefs.

A girl I worked with could not get married because her older brother had to be married first. There was an “order”, as to who could get married. The brother had had Polio, and wasn’t a good catch, so he couldn’t find a bride. After a number of years, her family gave her permission to jump ahead in line.

[quote] Unlike most diseases, polio can be completely eradicated. There are 3 strains of wild poliovirus, none of which can survive for long periods outside of the human body. If the virus cannot find an unvaccinated person to infect, it will die out. Type 2 wild poliovirus was eradicated in 1999 and cases of type 3 wild poliovirus haven’t been found anywhere in the world since 2012.

Here is a cool site that explains the Polio eradication effort in brief bullet points. I think eradication of smallpox was one of the greatest human achievements of all time. It’s up there with the moon landing, in my estimation. The eradication of polio would be just as great.

Polio may seem distant today, but there was polio in the US when I was born. There was a teacher in my junior high school who had leg braces. You could hear him clunking in the hallway as he approached the classroom, so we all knew in advance when to behave. It was like he was wearing a cowbell.

R5, please tell us more about Candida auris targeting smokers!

We can’t eradicate the cold or flu like we can with polio, because these other diseases can exist in animals, even if there are no human hosts. The virus jumps around species, cow-pig-bat-chicken, and also mutates, so we have to coexist.

The movie [italic] Contagion [/italic] shows how that virus started in a bat, then picked-up some pig DNA, before infecting humans.

R61, It's a vicious circle. All these chemicals and drugs are needed to prop up the food supply, which in turn supports overpopulation. Without these chemicals there would be crop failures and famine.

[Italic] The Andromeda Strain [/italic] starts with a meteor coming from the general direction of the Andromeda Galaxy, IIRC. It contains an alien superbug, and everybody who contracted it died. I think it wasn’t a virus or bacteria, but some heretofore unknown life form, if it was ever, actually “alive”.

At first, our heroes can’t find a way to kill it. Nothing worked. Finally, they discover that it can only live within a certain pH range. The weather forecast predicted that the strain was going to be swept into the Pacific Ocean, which had a disagreeable pH, therefor killing the alien strain. That doesn’t sound like a realistic ending, but that was that.

These days, a movie remake would start with a permafrost melting due to climate change. The melt releases million-of-year-old trapped diseases, or even the 1917 influenza virus, whatever, which would then start killing people.

The risk of ancient viruses or bacteria living in the Martian soil is the reason that I believe that we shouldn’t ever return anything from the Martian surface, including humans, back to Earth. We know that Mars once had great oceans, so it’s possible for alien diseases to live there in dormancy. A human visit should be a oneway ticket.

They once ran an experiment on the space station. They brought up some bacteria, and then checked on it in a subsequent visit. They found that it had survived, despite the temperature swings, the cosmic radiation, and vacuum of space.

[quote] It's spread by humans, and you're in denial if you think people living in squalor aren't more likely to carry the disease, whether it's actually infected them or not.

And wouldn't it be good for governments to give a shit and stop squalor rather than spend trillions on weapons?

R68 you sound like a shill for a toxic agribusiness.

DON'T FUCK WITH PAKISTAN!

They once sent a probe to Mars which tested some soil samples. Then then compared the results against some meteors, and found the meteor chemistry to be identical to the Martian soil samples. This is how the experts determined that some meteors actually originated from Mars. These meteors are theorized to have been blasted off the Martian surface by a meteor strike there, or maybe from a huge volcanic eruption. The Martian meteors may have been traveling in space for up to millions of years, before crashing into Earth.

These asteroids or meteors could have carried microbes with them. It’s possible that the Earth and Mars have been trading life-containing meteors since the dawn of time, but no one really can say.

It’s a good drag name.

I once saw a test for meteors on TV. A scientist first hosed off his roof to clear it of any debris. Then he put a bucket under a rain gutter down spout. After a rainstorm, he dropped a magnet into the bucket, and found a lot of small specks clinging to the magnet. The scientist concluded that the tiny specks were actually tiny meteors that landed overnight on his roof, largely composed of iron, and that they are constantly raining down on us from above.

They say that the Sahara or Antarctica are great places for meteor-hunting, because most meteors are blackened in Earth entry, and they therefore standout against the Sahara sand, or Antarctic snow. Apparently, if you know what to look for, you could find them all around us, all the time.

R72, merely pointing out the circular firing squad we got ourselves into by allowing the population to get out of control. Think about famines that have occurred throughout history and now apply those populations in the tens and hundreds of millions.

[quote] It's not time to panic yet,

It’s never time to panic. Ever.

R76 King Tut's dagger, found on his mummy chest, was forged from meteorite iron.

There's a fungus among us.

Did they ever figure out wat “the sweating sickness” was? Showed up in the UK and France in the 15th & 16th centuries, had a very high mortality rate, then disappeared.

R79, interesting.

There is a theory that the Black Stone of Mecca is actually a meteorite, explaining the myth that it fell from the sky.

I would like to be an eyewitness to a reoccurrence of the “Dancing Disease”. 14th through 17th centuries.

I ink the sleeping sickness was brought on by rodents and the so-called "aerosolizing" of their excrement, which would dry and then blow around the interior of your house.

I suppose it's related to the hanta virus.

There's an outbreak of it in The Tudors (the series with Jonathan Rhys Meyers).

^^^I think, not I ink.

My second-cousin who was just discharged from weeks in hospital after an operation has asked me to stay with him and his pregnant gf for a couple months, to watch their cats or something inane. It's a generous offer - their house is a nice one in a well-connected area, they make a lot of money, aren't home much, have connections - but nonetheless I've felt weirdly hesitant about saying "yes" and didn't have a good enough justification or excuse...until reading this thread. Whether it's a real potential risk or not, I'm going to treat it as one. Who knows whether he picked up auris or MRSA in that room? And what about his gf when she goes into labour and gets carted back to the same hospital? I can't be in an environment like that knowing this now.

Kill yourself now R86.

Is it prudent to stop buying foreign produce?

The vegetables my supermarket stocks are largely S. African, plus import pears from The Netherlands and oranges & tomatoes from Spain.

for carbon footprint alone, can't you change to a locally or nationally sourced greengrocer?

R88 are you in the USA? We don't have pears from the netherlands on the east coast. we get oranges and tomatoes from FL and CA

British R90. A percentage of our produce comes from the EU (well, at the time of writing and probably not for much longer), and the rest from Africa and the Commonwealth countries. This news is quite worrying for the UK in that regard because so much of our food is brought in.

R89 I used to try and buy almost everything local from allotments when I lived in London and managed alright (though it was a very austere 'wartime' diet), but ironically when I moved out to the sticks locally-grown food became less affordable and available.

[quote]I would like to be an eyewitness to a reoccurrence of the “Dancing Disease”.

You're forty years too late for that recurrence, r83.

Ah. Well Europe has royally fucked up its cheap priced supermarket produce supply, I agree.

I've noticed the industrial faming has been divided up around Europe and its all shipped around.

It was really bad for about 10 years but recently the pendulum has swung and the supermarkets will make some effort again, to source locally grown produce when its in season from the fields. One has to read the labels and change markets if necessary.

I'm bad and have already been buying the Spanish industrial strawberries, which came into the market 2 weeks ago and they are DIRT cheap and taste has improved, though they are probably chemical nightmares.

Does England grow its own apples and pears, at least? Why not?

Humans push Nature... Nature pushes back.

I mean sure this is creepy and bad, but so was ebola and no one talks about that shit anymore.

r91, time for you to get your own damn allotment and get to work growing your fruits and vegetables.

Yeah, but we don’t have Ebola virus covering everything in our hospitals and nursing homes.

I guess you're not aware of what is being called the worst outbreak, r95. It's in a big city in the DRC and it's going on for a few weeks now.

I also read about Ebola a few weeks ago, it's spreading FAST!

Fungi are so easy to grow. All you need to do is start gardening and you’ll soon see how fast fungus can take over plants, walls, etc.

Remember these? Everyone grew these because they were pretty, easy to grow and could withstand shade and sun, so long as they were watered. I still see them for sale but I cannot grow them anymore because they all become infected and die within weeks.

Is it in Nambia?

Maybe you don't talk about it, but Ebola never went away,. R98, you are fast.

Fun fact this outbreak isn't transmitted in the usual way. If health care workers can't contain it, it could spread out.

Here's where the fungus originated:

R93 My Italian supermarket chain sells mostly fruit and vegetables grown in Italy. And there are plenty of farmers markets. We do get meat from around Europe, but not so much with fruit and vegetables.

It's not expected to be contained for at least a year, r99. And they found mutated strains from the 2017 outbreak.

Ebola is a virus. It doesn’t grow as easily as fungi and bacteria do.

Do fungi spread like bacteria? I'm wondering about touchscreen phones & tablets/computers re. contagion.

yes r107. your phone and keyboards are filthy.

And constant use of sanitizer will just cause the bad stuff to eventually mutate to something resistant, r107.

I wasn't so worried until I saw Stephen King tweet this story. Now I'm starting to freak out.

Then what does England produce?

Hooligans.

Impatiens do fine for me but fungi eventually kill my zinnias by September.

The human race has had a good run! Make way for the revenge of the Fungi!

I can’t grow vinca anymore. It gets a wilt.

ELE time? We need to thin the herd anyway.

R116 Guess it's better than a nuclear war.

I, for one, welcome our new mushroom overlords.

WHET Bird Flu?

SARS?

I wonder if any of you remember that guy who had a TB infected lung? It was one of the worst strains. This guy was getting married in Europe so he fled voluntarily isolation in the US, and that led to a worldwide manhunt. He surrendered to Canadian authorities while on his return trip to the US. they then put him in involuntary isolation. As a last course, they eventually removed one of his lungs surgically, because they couldn’t treat it with meds. I think he was in isolation for a few months, at least.

This guy potentially infected two planeloads of passengers, plus his wedding guests, plus his wife. I wonder what happened to him? I thought he was a real jackass.

[quote] R109: And constant use of sanitizer will just cause the bad stuff to eventually mutate to something resistant, [R107].

My local deli has a touch screen to place an order. They never clean it and it is disgusting. I have asked them to clean it once or twice.

The other disgusting thing is the hand-carry shopping baskets which are also never cleaned. I’ve suggested to my CVS that they clean or replace them.

Also, escalator handrails; and the worst is the Ketchup bottle and salt & pepper shakers at restaurants.

My mother discouraged us from using any but our own bathroom, but sometimes one had to use whatever facilities were available. My mother used to put toilet paper all over the toilet bowl, then she’d pick me up and place me atop said tissues so my bottom did not touch the seat. When I went to school it was a Catholic school and we were only allowed to go to the bathroom at 11 am. So we’d line up to use the bathroom and when I finally got a stall, I would start draping the toilet with tissue, as my mother had taught me & demanded that I do in public bathrooms. And the bell would ring and I’d have to run out of the bathroom without using it because I hadn’t finished building an ass castle on the toilet seat.

Use troll-dar on R121 et al, and you will see all of his wacky posts.

He's the DL version of Debbie Downer:

"Feline AIDS is the Number One Killer of domestic cats."

Germophobia is a disease of the poorly educated.

Just read that they are handing-out cheap, generic Chinese antibiotics like candy over in Africa, causing drug-resistant strains of everything.

Scientists at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid gathered 90 samples of cannabis from street dealers in and around Madrid, then tested the products to determine if they were “suitable for human consumption.”

The results, published in the latest issue of Forensic Science International, found that 83 percent of the tested samples were not suitable. Because they had too much shit in them.

Specifically, the samples had traces of Aspergillus fungus and E.coli bacteria. The researchers deemed the shit-weed “a public health issue.”

After buying the weed, the research team split it all into two groups based on the shape of the package the drugs were sold in—packages in an acorn shape and packages shaped like a block. The study showed that 29.4 percent of the block-shaped samples had traces of feces, while 93 percent of the acorn-shaped samples had traces of feces.

Speaking to Spanish newspaper El País, one of the researchers on the study, pharmacologist José Manuel Moreno Pérez, explained the reason he believes the acorns are far more likely to have shit in them: Smugglers often swallow the acorn-shaped bags, which they call “bellotas,” then travel from Morocco to Spain. “When they get to Spain, they take a laxative and expel the bellotas,” Pérez told El País. “And then they’re put on sale.”

The study mentions that cancer patients are increasingly medicating with cannabis and that these patients may have weakened immune systems that can make them more vulnerable to contaminated drugs.

The paper warns smokers who may think burning weed sterilizes the bacteria. “There are no filters on joints,” Pérez told El País. “You are not just breathing in smoke, but also particles.”

And when users handle the shit-weed, they could get bacteria on their hands.

Even though the researchers only tested marijuana in Spain, the swallowing method is also used by smugglers who bring drugs into the United States.

Smoking creates a poor miasma that causes a humour imbalance.

If you want to commit suicide, go into hospital.

It's 1981 all over again!

If it takes out old people maybe it will take out the entire GOP.

Easy international travel will kill us all.

I am reading that people with a strong immune system survive it and may never even know they were infected.

Newborns are especially susceptible and babies/very young children as well. The elderly and people with compromised immune systems as well as diabetics, cancer patients, and anyone recovering from surgery are also at risk. But, other than that, people with a healthy immune system who don't catch colds/sore throats easily or have serious medical issues with weakened immune systems are at low risk. So, at least there's that.

I also read that it is possible to infect someone through sex. They may not succumb to the infection but it can be spread through sex with an infected person.

I wondered about this other mysterious illness too.

I love the concern over what R133 is talking about - Literally dozens of people get nauseous and vomit from smoking pot. Oh no! MJ edibles are a new source of (undefined) concern! Yikes!

Yet more than 64,000 people died in the US due to drug overdoses in 2016. None from marijuana.

With so many people now and with all the damage humans have done something like this was bound to happen.

^ I agree.

R133 Interesting you posted that article. I just read yesterday that some mj smokers in some states are getting sick from smoking the mj because they found it has fungus growing it (although not the specific fungus in this article) aside from from also having found traces of feces/e. coli.

Article with some additional info...

This fungus may be new, but I recall many years ago, maybe a couple decades, there were articles about hospitals being breeding grounds for all sorts of bad critters, and that hospitals simply could not eradicate the problem. The ones that experimented with completely gutting certain wards or buildings still could not sterilize the buildings.

I wonder why we don’t also hear about this with office buildings?

Many years ago I worked in a building for the first 2 weeks of my new job. I had a constant flu that started on my third day of my new job. Low-grade fever, diarrhea, mild headache, fatigue, etc., I could barely function and had to keep running to the restroom. I was in my 40s then and it was the only time in my life I ever had a flu. I had thought it was due to the stress of a new job. But then others starting getting sick too, including our manager.

They found out the building had "sick building syndrome", something I had never heard of or thought could happen. The following week we were all moved out to a brand new building on the other side of the campus. My symptoms completely disappeared the first day in my new office in the new building. Same for my boss and coworkers. None of us had any flu symptoms for the following years in the new building.

No matter what they did, including bringing in professional cleaning teams to disinfect the old building, nothing worked. So, the building was finally torn down and made into a large parking lot. I wondered where they disposed of the old building materials but didn't dare ask. I had never heard of it before that awful experience but apparently Sick Building Syndrome is a real thing.

I'd think twice about Natural News, r138. It's run by a guy named Mike Adams and if you don't know the name then I suggest you Google it, especially if you're going to take any of their "health" advice.

People nearly always discuss the problem of resistant bugs as if human agency created them. But the natural life cycle of pathogens includes them being spread around the world by wind, animals, and various human-assisted methods. Of course eventually some will end up in hospitals where they will be more lethal.

Also, germs of all kinds spontaneously mutate, sometimes into types that then infect and kill humans. Although we love to blame people getting illegitimate antibiotics for their colds as the cause of antibiotic resistance, the use of antibiotics is far more widespread in farming and agriculture, which is another large source of drug resistance.

It looks like I caught measles right at the demarcation point when the vaccine was introduced.

[quote] This fungus may be new, but I recall many years ago, maybe a couple decades, there were articles about hospitals being breeding grounds for all sorts of bad critters, and that hospitals simply could not eradicate the problem. The ones that experimented with completely gutting certain wards or buildings still could not sterilize the buildings

True.

About 30 years ago I remember we’d get the ICU patients in our recovery room twice a year so that the ICU could be completely disinfected. But it didn’t matter. Bugs grow everywhere. I was there when MRSA first reared it’s head and everyone thought it was the end of the world. And C Diff. In fact, they checked the DNA of the MRSA in our hospital back in the 90s and traced it to Soweto, ZA. We had tons of South African doctors trying g to get into our hospitals to do residencies so they could eventually emigrate to the US. (It was difficult for people from ZA to emigrate for a lot of reasons, including ZA not allowing them to take cash outside the county). So we probably got that strain from one of the doctors who’d done charity work in Soweto.

In the early 2000s the CDC would make secret visits to the hospital because our ICU was brewing up a new bug. Years later I saw a Frontline about it, but they didn’t name the hospital. CDC tried to contain it but it got out, as all superbugs will

It’s just the natural world reacting in a natural way. When diseases strike people, people try to find cures or prevention. When bugs are under threat, they find ways, too, by mutating. There will always be something to kill us. Industrial accidents/occupational hazards used to be a big cause of death in the early 1900s. When we implemented more & more worker safety, the number of deaths dwindled , but more people started dying of cancer. Why? Because the people who died young of accidents now lived into old age and as the body ages, it is more amenable to cell mutations.

In 1882, Dr. Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB). During this time, TB killed one out of every seven people living in the United States and Europe.

TB is one of those diseases that is developing drug resistance today. That guy discussed in R120 had a strain of TB that was drug resistant, and the removal of a lung was required to cure him. TB can take many forms. It was once referred to as Consumption, as those afflicted with it would be consumed by coughing fits and weight loss.

TB usually affects the lungs, causing the condition called pulmonary tuberculosis; however, TB can also infects other parts of the body including the skin, brain, lymph nodes, kidneys, bones and joints.

I remember reading that Henry VIII son Edward had icongenital syphilis and that’s why he was weak, ill and died young.

Then I read that he had tuberculosis, and that’s why he was chronically ill.

Then I read that he had malaria, and that’s why he had chronic fevers.

I’ve read that maybe he had relapsing fever due to a tick or flea bite.

Why not just dig him up and see? Check his DNA.

Same thing with Prince Albert. “He had typhoid fever....ulcers...crohns disease...incarcerated hernia...intestinal blockage...diverticulitis.....stomach cancer ......colorectal cancer” just open his damn tomb and take some DNA.

Im surprised Trump hasnt gotten around to shuttering the cdc yet?

[quote]Im surprised Trump hasnt gotten around to shuttering the cdc yet?

Or in keeping with his style, announce that the new head of the CDC is Dr. Mengele.

Well he went to Mt Sinai. Of he went to Saint Mark's or Allah General, he'd be alive

R83, They had Boogie Fever.

Industrial farming is poison and an attack on nature.

The chemicals are poison. Probably even stronger where there are weaker or no regulations

“For decades, public health experts have warned that the overuse of antibiotics was reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have lengthened life spans by curing bacterial infections once commonly fatal.“

I had Lyme disease, and I learned that the CDC recommends against treating anyone with antibiotics for longer than 30 days because of the above concern and because they say longer-term use can hurt people’s health. (The counter argument is that a lot of people only recover with extended use, and because of how severe Lyme can be—like MS or even ALS—patients and doctors consider the risk:benefit ratio to be in favor of the health risk, as with chemotherapy.) Because I know that many dermatologists prescribe doxycycline (which is the go-to for Lyme treatment) for years to treat acne, and this use is not discouraged by the CDC, I looked into the seeming contradictions.

One thing I found out alarmed me, and no one ever talks about it—ever. You do not hear it in the news.

I interviewed the person in charge of antibiotic husbandry at the CDC. She told me overprescription of antibiotics is a major public health concern and that the CDC is worried about it. Eventually, I asked about the practice of feeding livestock antibiotics to accelerate their growth. She said that that is a far more worrisome concern and more dangerous practice than overprescribing antibiotics to treat human illness because the scale is exponentially greater.

Many livestock are fed a mix of antibiotics of all different types EVERY SINGLE DAY for their entire lives because doing this speeds their muscle development and time to market.

The antibiotics in animal feed are not regulated—not dosage and not what medications are used.

The CDC person told me that they are seeing more zoonotic bacteria, viruses and fungi than ever before. Zoonotic refers to pathogens that are gestated in one species and “jump” into another. She told me most major potential public health threats come from animals raised for food.

I asked her why the CDC doesn’t warn about that since they warn a lot about overprescribing medications to human beings. Is it not as much of a risk? She told me that it’s a far greater risk, but that the CDC has no juris diction over agriculture; that’s not their department. Another governmental agency handles it—one responsible primarily for commerce and food safety, not for human public health in the sense of incubating deadly infections.

So, I asked her, what if beginning today no human being were ever prescribed another antibiotic again? Would that stop the development of antimicrobial-resistant infectious agents?

She sighed and said, in reality, it would make ZERO DIFFERENCE at all as long as agricultural practices remain the same. As long as livestock are fed antibiotics as a matter of course to make the animals meatier faster, we are incubating drug-resistant bacteria, viruses and fungi, and we will see plagues as a result, no question about it.

Why, then, doesn’t the CDC talk about this? I asked her again. Because, she said, it’s not our territory. But, I asked, are you not charged with protecting public health and preventing and controlling disease? Yes, she said, that is the CDC’s charge—but only within its own juris diction, which is human health. Until the diseases hop from farms to human beings, it’s just not their concern.

^ R153 W&W

About R153...

I work for a non-profit that advocates for a completely different policy problem (consumer financial laws).

You cannot depend on ANY government agency alone to pass/support the laws that keep people safe--in any way. You can't depend on the environmental protection department, the CDC, the SEC, Finra, the FDIC, the Fed--none of them on the federal level. None of them on the state level as well.

If you want to see any kind of change, you need a coalition between the appropriate government agency, advocacy groups, and citizen volunteers. So if something is bothering you--the food safety thing--please, please, please get involved with an advocacy group. Or start a little facebook page about it and get the word out to five of your closest friends (ie new volunteers).

Coalitions and teamwork are how laws are changed. Please get involved.

I have heard that the disease pictured at the link was indeed smallpox; however, another theory is that these drawings were created before Columbus’ voyage, and therefore, depict some other epidemic that originated in the Americas.

We often hear about the havoc brought to the New World from the Old by the transfer of certain plants, animals, and diseases. Such as: feral pigs, anaconda snakes in the Everglades; some kind of pesky fish in the Mississippi, spreading into the Great Lakes; certain Asian barnacles in ships holds; that invasive vine in the South East; Starlings (including Grackles); wild horses, mules, and camels; and of course, smallpox.

There was far less transferred back to the old world, but those include the potato, tomato, corn, tobacco, and marijuana. The European diet before 1492 must have been really bland.

Anyway, it is widely believed that syphilis was brought back from the New World to the Old. Historically, it was called different things depending where you lived. Outside France, it was the French Disease. In France, it was the Spanish Disease, and so forth. This is disputed by some, but I think that’s just because they don’t want the stigma attached to it having originated in the New World.

All of the cases you cite may be true and should be considered, but they don’t diminish the reality that current practices, including indiscriminately feeding livestock antibiotics to accelerate muscle growth and using antibacterial hand gels and surface wipes (especially in hospitals) are contributing to pathogens’ speedy development of antimicrobial-resistant evolution.

Watch this extraordinary video of bacteria out-evoloving antibiotics in real time in a culture. Since these creatures’ life cycles are mere weeks to months, they can evolve in response to their environments within weeks in what would take human beings centuries or even millennia.

Wow, R158, that is really cool!

r158 the hospital personnel have a lot to answer for re: nosocomial infections. Doctors particularly. This has been an issue in hospitals for decades, but no one will enforce hygiene rules on unionized RNs and MDs. Plus, the doctors are the alphas in the system and don't like being told what to do.

I worry about that more than anti-bacterial soaps for the general public.

!!!!!!!!!!!

😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

[quote] [R158] the hospital personnel have a lot to answer for re: nosocomial infections. Doctors particularly

You’re an idiot.

Nosocomial infections are picked up BY STAFF FROM PATIENTS. The bacteria then colonize the staff, where it lives in their noses, mucus membranes, etc. The only way to stamp out nosocomial infection is to stamp out patients first, then stamp out staff. Then you’ll be happy, won’t you?

You cannot find staff on the planet who will not catch the bacteria from the patients and then become carriers after being colonized. You’d have to swab every staff member once a month then fire every single hospital staff member when they test positive as carriers.

Then you have to hire all new staff. Then start the whole process all over again. Every single staff member will eventually be colonized by the bacteria from the patients. Every single staff member will have to be fired. The cost would be in the trillions of dollars and you’d still never solve the problem of staff being colonized by their patients’ bacteria.

Well, that sounds like a plan.

gross! Bring back the Leper colonies!

Any way to vaccinate for it?

Then all the anti-vaxxers will die and everybody else will live. Win-win.

A few years back they were saying infrared light could kill bacteria in hospitals like staff and MRSA but I haven't heard that they are using it.

Can someone with it go and cough on the entire GOP?

Saltwater/reef aquariums have used ultraviolet sterilizers in filters for all of my 40 years of life. Water flows over the bulb, gets irradiated, and pathogens are killed. I have a HEPA air filter with a UV bulb, as well. Provided the technology works or at least helps somewhat as a supplemental air filtration method, I can’t imagine that hospitals don’t use UV.

What about those UV wands sold at places like Bed Bath and Beyond for home use? Are those worth getting? I'm thinking it would be good to use on sofas and the interior of my car, places that normally aren't getting fully cleaned. Maybe the inside of my refrigerator which probably has a lot of food germs.

In some patients, this yeast can enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body, causing serious invasive infections. This yeast often does not respond to commonly used antifungal drugs, making infections difficult to treat. Patients who have been hospitalized in a healthcare facility a long time, have a central venous catheter, or other lines or tubes entering their body, or have previously received antibiotics or antifungal medications, appear to be at highest risk of infection with this yeast.

Not going to get too worried .