America Reports Its First Cases of A Fungus Resistant To All Major Drugs (msn.com) 79
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
About 90 percent of C. auris strains are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more of the three major classes of antifungal drugs. However, on Tuesday, the C.D.C. confirmed that it has learned in the last month of the first known cases in the United States of so-called "pan-resistant" C. auris -- a strain resistant to all major antifungals, said Dr. Tom Chiller, head of the agency's fungal division, in an interview.
Such cases have been seen in several countries, including India and South Africa, but the two new cases, from New York State, have not been reported previously. Dr. Chiller said that it appeared that, in each case, the germ evolved during treatment and became pan-resistant, confirming a fear that the infection will continue to develop more effective defenses. "It's happening and it's going to happen," Dr. Chiller said. "That's why we need to remain vigilant and rapidly identify and control these infections."
It often has been hard to gather details about the path of C. auris because hospitals and nursing homes have been unwilling to publicly disclose outbreaks or discuss cases, creating a culture of secrecy around the infection. States have kept confidential the locations of hospitals where outbreaks have occurred, citing patient confidentiality and a risk of unnecessarily scaring the public.
In an interview with CBS News, the reporter stressed that while this was a serious issue, especially in hospitals, it's not yet a threat to the general public: "The people who are susceptible are people with weakened immune systems, the infirm, older folks in hospitals," Matt Richtel said. "So let me put the finest possible point on this: the general public walking down the street [is] not going to be felled by this. You're not gonna get it walking to Walmart. You're not going to get it in your house."
Such cases have been seen in several countries, including India and South Africa, but the two new cases, from New York State, have not been reported previously. Dr. Chiller said that it appeared that, in each case, the germ evolved during treatment and became pan-resistant, confirming a fear that the infection will continue to develop more effective defenses. "It's happening and it's going to happen," Dr. Chiller said. "That's why we need to remain vigilant and rapidly identify and control these infections."
It often has been hard to gather details about the path of C. auris because hospitals and nursing homes have been unwilling to publicly disclose outbreaks or discuss cases, creating a culture of secrecy around the infection. States have kept confidential the locations of hospitals where outbreaks have occurred, citing patient confidentiality and a risk of unnecessarily scaring the public.
In an interview with CBS News, the reporter stressed that while this was a serious issue, especially in hospitals, it's not yet a threat to the general public: "The people who are susceptible are people with weakened immune systems, the infirm, older folks in hospitals," Matt Richtel said. "So let me put the finest possible point on this: the general public walking down the street [is] not going to be felled by this. You're not gonna get it walking to Walmart. You're not going to get it in your house."
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I wonder if we could design a gene drive that ruins C. auris's ability to reproduce.
Unlikely. C. auris can reproduce both sexually and asexually by budding. Gene drives don't work on asexual species. Even when C. auris reproduces sexually, there are no genders, just a combination of spores. So there is no way for a gene drive to wipe out one gender while dominating the other.
Re: Socialism is a societal disease (Score:4, Informative)
Liberal studies is not education
Right, which is why businesses are looking [theatlantic.com] for people with liberal arts degree [forbes.com] over business degrees [bizjournals.com], including people in the tech industry [fastcompany.com].
Rewritten history is not history.
Correct. Claiming the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery is rewriting history, just like saying the "Christian" Europeans tried to "save" the indigenous people through religion rather than slaughtering them because they wouldn't convert, or that this country was founded on "Christian" principles when the very founding documents explicitly state otherwise.
All the money spent on you has been wasted, hence why we need better foreign workers to replace you.
Yes, all that taxpayer money has been wasted on you which is why we need those immigrants to do work you're incapable of doing since you've shown yourself too stupid and ignorant to exist in a normal society.
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Claiming the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery is rewriting history,
True enough, but it's often misrepresented as a war about "freeing the slaves", which it wasn't. Slavery had already become economically non-viable due to early agricultural automation, and the very wealthy slave owners suddenly found themselves with a burden instead of wealth. The North was happy to let that run its course. Well, the 1% of any era won't put up with losing their wealth, so there were going to be problems.
The issue central to the Civil War was the right of the South to export their slaves
The reporter is wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
"The people who are susceptible are people with weakened immune systems, the infirm, older folks in hospitals," Matt Richtel said. "So let me put the finest possible point on this: the general public walking down the street [is] not going to be felled by this. You're not gonna get it walking to Walmart. You're not going to get it in your house."
All the materials I've read on this point to only this bit being true: "the general public walking down the street [is] not going to be felled by this."
They can still "get" it, and carry it home to grandma.
This is nasty bad.
Re:The reporter is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
You're not gonna get it walking to Walmart. You're not going to get it in your house.
No, but you might get it visiting a hospital with infected patients...and we won't tell you which ones those are.
Funny, how the secrecy will kill us ass. (Score:1)
In movies, I always found this meme insanely out of touch with reality, of not telling the public, out of fear it "might cause a panic". .. If people could hold their attention span for that long, or care that much, we would have had civil war after the NSA leaks, after Trump's inauguration, hell, even after Obama's inauguration.
Yeah, right.
But what that kind of secrecy *will* do, is prevent anyone from employing the necessary reactions and precautions to prevent it from getting worse.
So it will get worse.
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If cures aren't kept secret, how would companies profit?
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If cures aren't kept secret, how would companies profit?
Exactly. Look at how much money companies have given up when they eradicated small pox. Think of the billions in lost profits they missed out on. Don't forget rinderpest which is also eradicated [avma.org] and kissing that revenue stream goodbye.
Likewise, measles was on the verge of being eradicated until some uneducateds decided to follow the con artist and ignore scientific evidence and facts and stop vaccinating their kids. Not to mention a group from our supp
Old news (Score:1)
Re: Just use bleach lol (Score:2)
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Time to panic! (Score:4, Insightful)
"So let me put the finest possible point on this: the general public walking down the street [is] not going to be felled by this. You're not gonna get it walking to Walmart. You're not going to get it in your house."
Now I'm going to wait and see how many people freak out over this. It often seems that the public does the exact opposite of what scientists/doctors recommend.
When they're told the situation is serious, people downplay or outright deny it. When they say it isn't serious, they freak out.
Anti-vax people are a fantastic demonstration of both sides simultaneously. They downplay how dangerous measles is, while freaking out over vaccines.
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Don't panic? If not now, when? I actually think it's probably already too late, so the panic can't hurt (or help).
My theory is that we human beings are currently in a race condition between exterminating ourselves and creating our electronic successors. More specifically, I think that bioweapons are the most likely path to human extinction, and I even think a fungal approach would be more effective than the alternatives.
The underlying threat is that genetic engineering used to be difficult. You had to be ac
Attack of the killer mushrooms? (Score:2)
Wrong subject on my previous comment. The epitaph of homo sapiens may well read "exterminated by a super-fungus", but the most famous fungus that affects humans may be athlete's foot.
In my original speculations, I thought a mushroom would be a more effective killer. How many spores would each victim release?
I'm trying to find a joke here... Would you believe "How many spores would a woodchuck count if a woodchuck could count spores?"
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In my original speculations, I thought a mushroom would be a more effective killer. How many spores would each victim release?
Quite a few actually. These severe fungal infections can require extreme cleaning methods and sometimes requiring removing parts of the ceiling/walls/flooring in patient rooms after treatment (or discharge to the funeral home). Fungal spores are get everywhere and are damn tough to kill.
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I'm not sure I should say more, but... The problem with technology is that it's morally neutral, and pretending the negative application does not exist will not make it go away. In particular...
I was imagining one victim who dies outside, presumably while irrationally and hopelessly fleeing for his life, and then the corpse starts sprouting the mushrooms and releasing the spores. If the spores are sufficiently potent, the survivors (if any) will spend the rest of their lives trying to evade the spores.
Compulsory Reporting (Score:3, Interesting)
Other Western countries deal with this BS by mandating that certain diseases have to be reported to a central authority.
So hard to believe that the US is still letting petty hospital-specific politics, or profits, jeopardize the health of the entire nature.
Not yet (Score:2, Insightful)
...
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He didn't say anything about not getting at Walmart. Just not on the way to there.
Let me guess (Score:4, Funny)
It's yellowish-orange and attaches itself to the scalp region?
This must be the second one (Score:2)
The first drug resistant fungus spread 2 weeks ago: https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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Slashdot stories are more like bacteria, they spread by binary fission.
Germ!?? (Score:2)
I've never heard of a fungus being called a germ... Thought that generic term was only applied to bacteria and virus's (viri?)
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