Goodpasture
Well-known member
There's a nice little paper that Effect Measure put me onto today that spells out, in plain scientific language, why epidemiologists are scared of this stuff.
The paper is peer-reviewed but it isn't behind the usual academic paywall, so here it is: Growth of H5N1 Influenza A Viruses in the Upper Respiratory Tracts of Mice (PDF, about 250K).
For those of you who find the scientific descriptions thick and intimidating, one of the authors boiled it down.
Given that Bushco has wrecked the CDC the same way it's wrecked just about every other branch of the Federal government within my field of vision, that "somebody finding a cure" is probably not going to be an American.
We don't do science in the government here. Anymore. We do creationism and abstinence-based AIDS control and "compassionate conservatism" and other forms of wish-fulfillment fantasy. Which means that MRSA is going to STAY out of control for decades and H5N1 is being ignored.
But if H5N1 goes H2H airborne, the probable results can be calculated by a sixth grader on the back of an envelope, unless the CFR drops by a factor of about 50 to 100. Multiply a CFR of 60% times a nominal attack rate of 25% times the population of the US and you get 45 million Americans suddenly becoming graveyard fertilizer.
Oh yeah, MRSA..................another focus of the Bushco head in the sand approach.........
Be worried about MRSA outbreaks.
I know of 2 people in Oklahoma with it. It's much worse than the kind of staph you get at the hospital. :shock:
OSU had an outbreak last month, esp. in athletic department.
The two people I know of who have it were just moms who must've touched something while shopping. Very scary. They have been quite ill for over a year with wounds..
Once confined to hospitals, drug-resistant and potentially deadly staph infections are rising among general population. You know, contact skin infections used to be stuff that was curable, like impetigo. This shirt is antibiotic resistant. And, even if you find an antibiotic that it responds to, it tends to mutate itself quickly, and becomes resistant to that, too.
Just so you can see how contagious it is...it's "community acquired", not just "the hospital kind" anymore:
MRSA CAN LIVE ON ENVIRONMENTAL SURFACES FOR MONTHS
MRSA LIVES ON CLOTHES
MRSA LIVES ON SHEETS and BLANKETS
MRSA LIVES IN YOUR WASHING MACHINE
MRSA LIVES ON EATING UTENSILS
MRSA LIVES ON YOUR SKIN
MRSA LOVES TO LIVE IN YOUR NOSE
MRSA LIVES ON INANIMATE OBJECTS IN THE HOME
and the worst is The MRSA person may NEVER be 'clear' from MRSA, especially if they have plastic or metal in their body because MRSA FORMS A BIOFILM IN THE BODY on any plastic or metal in the body, thereby setting up a permanent residency, unreachable by antibiotics which can't penetrate the slimy biofilm - once your obvious symptoms have cleared, you're still a incubator for MRSA, so the best defense against repeat attacks is to build up your immune system with good nutrition, plenty of rest and Howard-Hughes-like obsession with cleanliness.
Welcome to the century of disease in an atmosphere of cutting health care to kids..............
The paper is peer-reviewed but it isn't behind the usual academic paywall, so here it is: Growth of H5N1 Influenza A Viruses in the Upper Respiratory Tracts of Mice (PDF, about 250K).
For those of you who find the scientific descriptions thick and intimidating, one of the authors boiled it down.
That is why people like Michael Osterholm and David Nabarro have been acting like they have monkeys on their backs these last few years.
And that is why
- this thing isn't killing us off in big shitloads right now, and
- we cannot predict when, or if, it'll start doing so.
Given that Bushco has wrecked the CDC the same way it's wrecked just about every other branch of the Federal government within my field of vision, that "somebody finding a cure" is probably not going to be an American.
We don't do science in the government here. Anymore. We do creationism and abstinence-based AIDS control and "compassionate conservatism" and other forms of wish-fulfillment fantasy. Which means that MRSA is going to STAY out of control for decades and H5N1 is being ignored.
But if H5N1 goes H2H airborne, the probable results can be calculated by a sixth grader on the back of an envelope, unless the CFR drops by a factor of about 50 to 100. Multiply a CFR of 60% times a nominal attack rate of 25% times the population of the US and you get 45 million Americans suddenly becoming graveyard fertilizer.
Oh yeah, MRSA..................another focus of the Bushco head in the sand approach.........
Be worried about MRSA outbreaks.
I know of 2 people in Oklahoma with it. It's much worse than the kind of staph you get at the hospital. :shock:
OSU had an outbreak last month, esp. in athletic department.
The two people I know of who have it were just moms who must've touched something while shopping. Very scary. They have been quite ill for over a year with wounds..
Once confined to hospitals, drug-resistant and potentially deadly staph infections are rising among general population. You know, contact skin infections used to be stuff that was curable, like impetigo. This shirt is antibiotic resistant. And, even if you find an antibiotic that it responds to, it tends to mutate itself quickly, and becomes resistant to that, too.
Just so you can see how contagious it is...it's "community acquired", not just "the hospital kind" anymore:
MRSA CAN LIVE ON ENVIRONMENTAL SURFACES FOR MONTHS
MRSA LIVES ON CLOTHES
MRSA LIVES ON SHEETS and BLANKETS
MRSA LIVES IN YOUR WASHING MACHINE
MRSA LIVES ON EATING UTENSILS
MRSA LIVES ON YOUR SKIN
MRSA LOVES TO LIVE IN YOUR NOSE
MRSA LIVES ON INANIMATE OBJECTS IN THE HOME
and the worst is The MRSA person may NEVER be 'clear' from MRSA, especially if they have plastic or metal in their body because MRSA FORMS A BIOFILM IN THE BODY on any plastic or metal in the body, thereby setting up a permanent residency, unreachable by antibiotics which can't penetrate the slimy biofilm - once your obvious symptoms have cleared, you're still a incubator for MRSA, so the best defense against repeat attacks is to build up your immune system with good nutrition, plenty of rest and Howard-Hughes-like obsession with cleanliness.
Welcome to the century of disease in an atmosphere of cutting health care to kids..............
