Topic: Super Bug Panic

[trapeze]

LINK

From what I heard about this stuff yesterday there is no treatment for it. You get it, you die.

BERLIN/LONDON (Reuters) – Racing to curb the spread of a killer food bug, Germany set up a national task force on Friday to hunt down the source of a highly toxic strain of E.coli that killed 17 people and sounded alarms around the world.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, engaged in a trade row with the European Union after Moscow banned imports of raw fruit and vegetables from the bloc, heightened the drama, saying he would not "poison" Russians by lifting the embargo.

Repeating warnings to Germans not eat salad vegetables -- rattling farmers and stores just as they hit high season -- health officials said they recorded 199 new cases of the rare, highly toxic strain of the infection in the past two days.

That took the total of those infected since it was detected in early May to 1,733 -- making it possibly the deadliest ever outbreak -- and suggesting it was spreading as fast as ever.

And it's stuff like this (another prominent example would be DDT) that really makes me hate the left and their irrational fear of certain areas of technology. Most, if not all, forms of bacteriological food contamination would be eliminated with irradiation. But the left won't have it. No. They would rather see countless people die of a preventable disease.

[trapeze]

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's disease control center reported on Friday 199 new cases in the last two days of a rare, deadly strain of E. coli that has so far caused up to 17 deaths.

The Robert Koch Institute said in a statement there had been 149 cases of E.coli infection and 50 of the hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) caused by E.coli. The latest numbers bring the total number of cases since May 1 to 1,733, it said.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey)

LINK

[Damn_Lucky]

 ::evilbat::WMD?
 

[Libertas]

Islamists?!

If so, take out Medina!



They don't knock it the hell off, Mecca is next!

[BigAlSouth]

And it's stuff like this (another prominent example would be DDT) that really makes me hate the left and their irrational fear of certain areas of technology. Most, if not all, forms of bacteriological food contamination would be eliminated with irradiation. But the left won't have it. No. They would rather see countless people die of a preventable disease.

So true. So sad, but true.

[rickl]

Comment by Kinuachdrach at Belmont Club:

Back of the envelope — Europe has roughly 500 Million people and an annual death rate of about 10 per 1,000 population. Very approximately, that means 14,000 Euros check out each & every day. And this super bug managed to add a mere 17 (as in, seventeen) to that over a period of weeks.

Come on, Gaia! You are going to have to try much harder than that! Remember the days when you could throw the Black Death at Europe and kill off 1/3 of the population, Gaia? Al Gore will be very very disappointed in you!

[Glock32]

I'd be willing to bet the ultimate source of the contamination is migratory "guest workers" sh*tting in the fields where the crops are harvested, apparently in Spain. Another reason I'm glad I don't eat salad, that's for rabbits!

[trapeze]

I'd be willing to bet the ultimate source of the contamination is migratory "guest workers" sh*tting in the fields where the crops are harvested, apparently in Spain. Another reason I'm glad I don't eat salad, that's for rabbits!

That would explain ordinary (treatable) e.coli

I am not implying terrorism nor a conspiracy with this post. I am noting that yet another untreatable variant of an otherwise common infection (staph would be another example) has popped into existence.

There are two factors at work here. One is nature. Infectious diseases continue to mutate into new forms that we do not have treatments for. The other is the artificially slow rate at which new antibiotics* are developed and released. The government bureaucracy and its over regulation of everything is like a large weight around the legs of the biotech industry, preventing them from keeping up with nature.

Fortunately neither staph nor e.coli are a threat to become a pandemic as both of them (currently) are not airborne infections like, say, the flu. But it is only a matter of time before we encounter another pandemic situation. History is full of them and we exist in the modern world with a false sense of security as to medical technology's ability to deal with just about anything.


*Antibiotics, of course, have no effect on viruses. Viral infections on a pandemic scale are the ultimate nightmare. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide, over a half million in the US. No treatment can kill a virus. If your body's defense system can't handle the infection, you die. We have learned a lot about how diseases are transmitted since then so we are able to prevent a lot of these big outbreaks from occurring. However, we also have much denser population centers now which can hinder some of these preventive measures. Being stuck on an airliner, for example, with an infectious person could be potentially disastrous because each person could unknowingly get on a connecting flight and spread the disease further than anything imaginable at the turn of the last century. There are various factors involved such as the incubation period of the particular strain and whether or not someone is contagious during that time. We haven't had a really big pandemic in a long time and as they say, nature abhors a vacuum.

[Glock32]

The intestinal flora varies somewhat around the world, and even from individual to individual. It would not surprise me if African migrants had a novel strain of E. coli, or if the affected people all had some common denominator to their own microflora that allowed the foreign E. coli to overwhelm it. Considering the number exposed vs. the number who become severely ill it fortunately does not seem to have a generalized virulence.

[charlesoakwood]

It would be interesting to know what the 17 plus 3 in the US have in common.

[trapeze]

The intestinal flora varies somewhat around the world, and even from individual to individual. It would not surprise me if African migrants had a novel strain of E. coli, or if the affected people all had some common denominator to their own microflora that allowed the foreign E. coli to overwhelm it. Considering the number exposed vs. the number who become severely ill it fortunately does not seem to have a generalized virulence.

So, bottom line: It's multiculturalism's fault. Ship a few dozen boatloads of the third world's unwashed into modern developed countries and this is an inevitable result.

But, yes, you are correct. So far there is a relatively small number of the population affected in this case. But a real bitch for those who are.

[charlesoakwood]

Isn't this the same way AIDS was introduced to the world?

[trapeze]

Isn't this the same way AIDS was introduced to the world?

From wikipedia:

The earliest known positive identification of the HIV-1 virus comes from the Congo in 1959 and 1960 though genetic studies indicate that it passed into the human population from chimpanzees around fifty years earlier.[11] A recent study states that a strain of HIV-1 probably moved from Africa to Haiti and then entered the United States around 1969.[22]

The HIV virus descends from the related simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which infects apes and monkeys in Africa. There is evidence that humans who participate in bushmeat activities, either as hunters or as bushmeat vendors, commonly acquire SIV. However, only a few of these infections were able to cause epidemics in humans, and all did so in the late 19th—early 20th century. To explain why HIV became epidemic only by that time, there are several theories, each invoking specific driving factors that may have promoted SIV adaptation to humans, or initial spread: social changes following colonialism,[24] rapid transmission of SIV through unsafe or unsterile injections (that is, injections in which the needle is reused without being sterilised),[25] colonial abuses and unsafe smallpox vaccinations or injections,[26] or prostitution and the concomitant high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (such as syphilis) in nascent colonial cities.

So, yes, third world immigrants brought it here.

Alternative PC theory: It was introduced to America by way of a group of gay American heroin users who were on vacation in Africa and accidentally used some hypodermic needles from a rogue veterinary clinic operated by American corporate greedheads. Poor African and Haitian immigrants have been unfairly smeared by vicious right wing haters.

[Glock32]

Introduced to America around 1969, right after Ted Kennedy the Drunk saw to the enactment of his "landmark" immigration act that threw open the doors to inundation from the Third World.

Notice also how they still try to blame it on the West? "colonial abuses and unsafe smallpox vaccinations or injections"...yeah sorry for those nefarious smallpox vaccinations that we inflicted on you.

[trapeze]

Okay, well, this article claims that the drug resistant strain came about due to misuse of antibiotics.

And, not being a medical person, I did not know of this little factoid:

...the safest way to treat infections caused by an E coli strain that also produces toxins, as this one does, is to refrain from using antibiotics – since when the drugs kill the bacteria, they cause the toxins to be released and bring on the illness's worst symptoms.

I did know some of this:

That excessive exposure happens any time anyone takes antibiotics for a health problem for which they are inappropriate, such as colds or ear infections. It happens even more when low-dose antibiotics are deployed by the tonne in large-scale agriculture, without any surveillance to report back what bugs are emerging. Researchers in Spain and the US say there are links between large-scale agriculture and the emergence of ESBL: they have found bacteria harbouring that resistance in the meat of supermarket chickens.

The part I was unaware of was the use of low-dose antibiotics in agriculture and the cumulative effect that it would have on the consumers when they are infected with a superbug which is now resistant to a whole range of antibiotics.

Definitely bears watching.

[Libertas]

I thought I heard this morning that is was beans or something out of northern Germany, sounds like somebody owes Spain an apology maybe?

[charlesoakwood]

Dr. Marc Siegel from FNC remarked that feeding cattle grain instead of grass, which is their natural food, causes stuff to happen then mixed with antibiotics creates a gastric atmosphere for common microbes to mutate.

I'm inclined to agree with the immigrant third worlders fertilizing crops theory.

[Libertas]

Could be right CO, I heard on the radio the German veggies have been cleared.  There is something going on, and if it immigrant-based, the multi-culti/diversity/pc cultists will not even offer such as a reason for fear of inflaming immigrant ire!

 

[LadyVirginia]

Dr. Marc Siegel from FNC remarked that feeding cattle grain instead of grass, which is their natural food, causes stuff to happen then mixed with antibiotics creates a gastric atmosphere for common microbes to mutate.

I saw something from a vet a while ago who treated cattle.  He said the e.coli comes from feeding corn to cows and when they are switched back to grass they shed most of the e.coli from their gut within a few weeks. Sorry I don't remember the source.

[Glock32]

That wouldn't surprise me. Ruminates like cows have the multi-chambered stomachs designed to digest fiber and cellulose, i.e. grasses. That's their niche in the food web, they can extract nutrients and energy from this sort of plant matter which is indigestible to animals with simpler stomachs. They depend on symbiotic bacteria to help them digest it. Switching their food around probably does, in turn, have a big effect on the type and quantity of symbiotic bacteria living in their gut.

It's funny how nature always has a way of showing why we're stupid to second guess it.