*drumroll please*

Drug-Resistant Superbugs!

Run for your lives! (Unless SARS, Mad Cow, West Nile, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, etc, get you first)

Superbugs have been around for awhile. I can remeber Methyline resistant TB being a big problem in the 90's in NYC. This is no joke buddy.

Yeah, I know I was being a bit flippant in the post.

But, wow, you can just about set your watch by it every year: "[Insert acronym here] is spreading from [insert country here] and has a chance to quickly infect millions of people, say scientists..."

(09-13-2010 05:46 PM)Motown Bronco Wrote:  Yeah, I know I was being a bit flippant in the post.

But, wow, you can just about set your watch by it every year: "[Insert acronym here] is spreading from [insert country here] and has a chance to quickly infect millions of people, say scientists..."

In any moment Kathleen Sebelius will say that passing Obamacare will protect us from this threat.

This is the same political hack that trumped up the dangers of 2009 Swine Flu about 900%.

Yes, Swine Flu was nasty if you caught it, but it wasn't the sequel to the Lethal Pandemic of 1918 as advertised.

So, I call bull**** on this on the beginning. Note it blames "medical tourism". This smells like a world class marketing company pushing an agenda.

I know I am not technically in the US anymore, but we have been bit by the medical tourism bug twice in the last 4 months. One came back from a heart surgery in Thailand, and one from a back surgery in Manila. Both died, and we used the biggest gun drugs that we had.
The one from Manila died probably due to tainted blood during a transfusion. A lot of these types of hospitals give blood transfusions, not because they are needed, but because they can bill for them and the people will pay. The blood supply in most of these countries is not safe.
The one from Thailand died from an intra-abdominal infection obtained during the surgery.
Both bugs were multi-drug resistant. Both patients were quarantined in the hospital and were 1on1 with their nurses to decrease the chance of the infection spreading.
The island of Chuuk was almost quarantined last summer due to a highly resistant strain of TB. The usual TB patient stays in the hospital for a couple of weeks until they are no longer contagious. The ones from Chuuk were in our hospital for MONTHS, before they were cleared.

There is some definite nastiness out there. But yes, the Departments of Health and the UN/WHO will use this for more funding.

and anyone educated about multi resistant strains of monerans wouldn't take them lightly either....................

even the most benign non lethal bacteria develops a plasmid that is multi resistant. Shares this information through conjugation with a nasty one. You can have a pandemic on your hands.