Three Die After Untreatable 'Superbug' Fungus Infections in Two Different Cities (go.com) 95
"U.S. health officials said Thursday they now have evidence of an untreatable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home," reports the Associated Press:
The "superbug" outbreaks were reported in a Washington, D.C, nursing home and at two Dallas-area hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. A handful of the patients had invasive fungal infections that were impervious to all three major classes of medications. "This is really the first time we've started seeing clustering of resistance" in which patients seemed to be getting the infections from each other, said the CDC's Dr. Meghan Lyman...
Health officials have sounded alarms for years about the superbug after seeing infections in which commonly used drugs had little effect. In 2019, doctors diagnosed three cases in New York that were also resistant to a class of drugs, called echinocandins, that were considered a last line of defense. In those cases, there was no evidence the infections had spread from patient to patient — scientists concluded the resistance to the drugs formed during treatment. The new cases did spread, the CDC concluded....
Those cases were seen from January to April. Of the five people who were fully resistant to treatment, three died — both Texas patients and one in Washington.
Lyman said both are ongoing outbreaks and that additional infections have been identified since April. But those added numbers were not reported.
The fungus, Candida auris, "is a harmful form of yeast that is considered dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems," they add — and it's spread through contaminated surfaces or contact with patients.
Newsweek points out that while it's only recently appeared in America, "infections have occurred in over 30 countries worldwide."
Health officials have sounded alarms for years about the superbug after seeing infections in which commonly used drugs had little effect. In 2019, doctors diagnosed three cases in New York that were also resistant to a class of drugs, called echinocandins, that were considered a last line of defense. In those cases, there was no evidence the infections had spread from patient to patient — scientists concluded the resistance to the drugs formed during treatment. The new cases did spread, the CDC concluded....
Those cases were seen from January to April. Of the five people who were fully resistant to treatment, three died — both Texas patients and one in Washington.
Lyman said both are ongoing outbreaks and that additional infections have been identified since April. But those added numbers were not reported.
The fungus, Candida auris, "is a harmful form of yeast that is considered dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems," they add — and it's spread through contaminated surfaces or contact with patients.
Newsweek points out that while it's only recently appeared in America, "infections have occurred in over 30 countries worldwide."
Reptilians: more plausible than some conspiracies (Score:5, Informative)
Some believe more people may be dying of the jabs than unvaccinated people are dying of the disease at this point.
Yes, and some believe that the British Royal family are lizards pretending to be human. The fact that "some believe" something is not any indication of anything.
Re:Shit a brick (Score:4, Informative)
To be clear, some absolute fucking morons "believe more people may be dying of the jabs than unvaccinated people are dying of the disease at this point". 487 deaths from COVID-19 in the US were reported on Friday, almost none of whom would have been vaccinated. So far, the total number of US deaths from any of the vaccines is three (all from the J&J shot).
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You realize that a very large majority of those deaths had nothing to do with either the vaccines or with Covid, right?
Or are you really that stupid, instead of just a lying troll?
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What are you suggesting? That 487 deaths from COVID-19 were actually auto accidents? Care to elaborate on that, using medical journal source data?
Re:Shit a brick (Score:5, Informative)
"More than 339 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through July 19, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 6,207 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine."
It is perfectly normal for 6,207 deaths to occur in any randomly selected population of 339 million. In fact, that's on the low side. It proves nothing whatever about vaccination causing death.
Re:Shit a brick (Score:5, Insightful)
People who formerly complained about statistics reporting "number of deaths with covid", rather than number of deaths where the disease was a contributing factor in the death, are now awfully quick to make the same error about "died after being vaccinated", conflating that with "died because of being vaccinated".
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You do realize that it goes both ways, right? I think we can all sensibly agree that it's unlikely thousands upon thousands of people are dying FROM the vaccine (some of them might be dying WITH the vaccine). But it would be nice if people would apply the same cautionary skepticism in the other direction, no?
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But it would be nice if people would apply the same cautionary skepticism in the other direction, no?
How do you know which direction to apply skepticism? If you choose one direction, it's called bias.
If you want to be scientific, you need to calculate the margin of error, and we have techniques for doing so.
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Exactly what cautionary skepticism do you think needs to be applied in the other direction?
If anything, there is an excess of precaution about side effects of the vaccines The CDC called me as part of post-vaccine surveillance to check whether am infected tick bite might have been related to getting the vaccine. Unless the vaccine somehow made me more attractive to the tick, I don't see how that is plausible.
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You don't give vaccines to terminal cancer patients...
We certainly do in the UK. As a group they were a priority for vaccinations.
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Some people believe they're having Bigfoot's baby.
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Roughly 175,000 Americans aged 85+ does of COVID-19, out of approximately 6.6 million Americans who are 85+. That's 2.5% of the total population in that age group, including those who were never infected. Your number is absolutely wrong.
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well a 1% mortality rate is not the same as a "99% survival rate". But setting your potentially innocent mistake aside, let's take some number of deaths. Say 1.8% and multiply it by a population, say 7.6 billion; that's 136.8 million dead. The time frame depends on basic reproduction number, might be as long as 3 years to get to that many people if left unchecked. Say an average of 45 million people each year. With a considerable geometric ramp up where the first year is not too bad, say 4.5 million deaths,
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"it's on par with what we lost during bad years with Influenza."
Quick, you should run out and find what you lost!
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Quick, you should run out and find what you lost!
Human life?
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Lockdowns from covid-19 variants are generally unnecessary today anyway. Even pretending that the vaccines don't work (spectacularly well), high social compliance with masking, better ventilation systems, and new medical treatment basically makes covid-19 manageable without a societal lockdown.
The only reason for lockdowns today is that the spread of covid-19 within a region has exceeded a hospital system's ability to treat all the patients. That's the fault of Darwin Award winners who can't wear a mask i
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Some people believe the earth is flat. That's what passes for evidence now apparently, some people believe. Some people believe in ghosts, some people believe in the tooth fairy, a whole shit load of people believe in a sky daddy.
And it's 98% not 99%. But sure those are pretty good odds, Obviously certainly worse than any other 'this could kill me' type situation you're likely to get into in the next 10 years from a statistical point of view but fuck it, let's roll some dice.
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I ain't no right wing nut job but, seriously now?
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It's not clear how helpful that would be. I mean, it *could* be helpful, but you'd need to structure the lockdown a lot differently, because the fungus is durable outside the bodies of infected people, unlike COVID, where if you avoided direct exposure, it was easy to sanitize the surfaces. Some hospitals have needed to tear out the paneling of the rooms in which infected people had been located to sanitize them.
OTOH, currently this isn't really a problem, because it's still adapting to people. Right now
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Unfortunately, I think that only way to stop this fungus and dozens of others like it (which we have yet to see) is to prevent global warming. Unfortunately, deadline for that has passed. So there is not much we can do at this point.
As temperatures increase fungus evolves to survive in higher temperatures, much like those inside human body. As fungus evolves to this state, the body temperature can no longer kill it, so it can grow inside humans.
The options at this point are:
- Abandon outside world and start
This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:2, Informative)
Before going in for a surgery, look at the hospital and see what the nosocomial rates are. Otherwise, the price you pay may be high. An ex-s
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Re:This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the headline? This is a fungus, so using all the antiseptic and antibiotics in the world will not do anything to it.
Antibiotics, definitely useless.
Antiseptics... depends on which one. Antiseptics are basically cleaning agents that kill cells. Whether they work against fungus will depend on which ones. Iodine, for example, is the classic old-fashioned antiseptic; it's effective against fungus.
https://www.reviewofophthalmol... [reviewofop...mology.com]
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What about bleach, or ultraviolet light? Or at least sunlight, which everyone will tell you is the best disinfectant? Maybe the doctors can figure out some way to apply those to treating an infection. Inject them at the site of the fungus, or whatever. This could be a bigly cure!
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It's not at all clear that iodine is effective against *this* fungus. When they start using "last resort medicines" you can probably be fairly sure they've already tried the more common ones. So I would guess that it wasn't effective. And there is a fungus, probably this one, where hospitals have needed to tear down the paneling of the rooms in which the patients with the fungus have been kept in order to disinfect them. I'd guess that if iodine, bleach, etc. would do the job, that they wouldn't have go
Topical antiseptics [Re:This shows how clean h...] (Score:2)
It's not at all clear that iodine is effective against *this* fungus. When they start using "last resort medicines" you can probably be fairly sure they've already tried the more common ones.
Since the article says "The fungus, Candida auris, is a harmful form of yeast that is considered dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. It is most deadly when it enters the bloodstream, heart or brain", by the time the patients are in the need of "last resort medicines", it's far too late to get any benefit from topical antiseptics.
I wasn't suggesting that antiseptics could have saved the patients who died. I was merely correcting the statement that antiseptics "don't
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That sucks. How about a different tack? Multiple layers of a sealant that the fungus can't eat through would entomb it pretty well - they you don't have to worry about it.
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Where are you guys getting this nonsense about antibiotics being useless against fungus? Many antibiotics are indeed used against certain fungal infections
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b... [nih.gov]
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Hydrogen Peroxide normally kills fungi.
Re: This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:2)
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You have misconception, some antibiotics do indeed work against certain fungal infections.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b... [nih.gov]
Re:This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:5, Insightful)
On a side note, the majority of today's superbugs, are coming from china, where they are created on the animal farms because they make heavy use of antibiotics at will on their food animals.
This is standard practice "in the west" too.
It's stupid, but we do it - in the name of short-term profitability.
Re:This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:5, Informative)
It's not so much short-term vs. long-term as it is what economists call externalization. It creates a benefit enjoyed by the feed lot operator at the expense of a cost that is borne *by society at large*.
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That's certainly a component, but I think it's probably also largely short term vs long term. People are know to sharply discount future rewards and penalties.
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It's not so much short-term vs. long-term as it is what economists call externalization. It creates a benefit enjoyed by the feed lot operator at the expense of a cost that is borne *by society at large*.
There seems to be a lot of people that missed that lecture in Econ 101. Those people are called "free-market capitalists".
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It has been illegal to use "medically important" (that is, important to human health) antibiotics for production purposes, rather than for specific animal health purposes, in the US since 2017: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresist... [cdc.gov] (look for the bit about GFI #213).
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Long ago, the west quit using it in LARGE quantities, though we have NEVER used it to the degree that China does. Why? Because of this very issue. That does not say that antibiotics are not being used, but they are not for steroidal or preventive. However, if an animal in a stockyard pen is sick with something, then all of the animals in that pen will have the antibiotics in their food to stop the spread. Far better would have been to split the animal off and treat it, but...
For the west, we now h
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This! We don't need to dope our cows, we do that to the people directly. Go to the doctor and say you have a runny nose, you'll come home with antibiotics. Hell I'm surprised they haven't promoted it as a COVID cure yet.
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On a side note, the majority of today's superbugs, are coming from china, where they are created on the animal farms because they make heavy use of antibiotics at will on their food animals.
This is standard practice "in the west" too.
It's stupid, but we do it - in the name of short-term profitability.
Indeed. Even is such short-term "cost savings" universally turn out to be very expensive overall. The tragedy of the commons, perpetuated by abject stupidity and unfettered greed. Always the same crappy story with humans.
Re: This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:4, Insightful)
They are not SUPER bugs, they are simply resistant to the various chemicals used to kill them. Catch with that they are fairly simple critters and simply lack the genetic scope to be resistant to all chemicals. So a combination will always work if calculated properly. As in what structures can be resistant to one molecule but the same structure makes it susceptible to another molecule.
The limiting factor for "chemical selection" is finding a treatment that will kill the invader without killing the hostâ¦
If you don't mind removing that tiny limitation, you can no doubt find something that worksâ¦
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Indeed. it wasn't wrong to say that bleach would kill covid. Hell pretty sure it would kill cancer.
Trump never said that. I think you know that by now, or should.
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Indeed. it wasn't wrong to say that bleach would kill covid. Hell pretty sure it would kill cancer.
Trump never said that. I think you know that by now, or should.
No, he just insinuated it. If you are willing to hang your hat on that distinction, go right ahead, Trumpeter!
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Indeed. it wasn't wrong to say that bleach would kill covid. Hell pretty sure it would kill cancer.
Trump never said that. I think you know that by now, or should.
No, he just insinuated it. If you are willing to hang your hat on that distinction, go right ahead, Trumpeter!
Why not? You realized what the truth really is and you're a leftist.
Imagine if they did to the stupid fool in the White House right now what they did to Trump. There's material daily. He's a gaffe machine. Did you know he was a truck driver? LOL. His latest lie. What an imbecile.
Did you get the vaccine? The "Trump Vaccine?" LOL. I bet that burned what's left of your soul. They actually made Biden read that recently.
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Indeed. it wasn't wrong to say that bleach would kill covid. Hell pretty sure it would kill cancer.
Trump never said that. I think you know that by now, or should.
No, he just insinuated it. If you are willing to hang your hat on that distinction, go right ahead, Trumpeter!
Why not? You realized what the truth really is and you're a leftist.
Imagine if they did to the stupid fool in the White House right now what they did to Trump. There's material daily. He's a gaffe machine. Did you know he was a truck driver? LOL. His latest lie. What an imbecile.
Did you get the vaccine? The "Trump Vaccine?" LOL. I bet that burned what's left of your soul. They actually made Biden read that recently.
You are an imbecile.
And if Biden was a truck driver, at least he has actually had a REAL job; unlike the former Trust Fundian In Chief.
Please DON'T get the Vaccine. The more of your kind that get sick and die, the better.
Seriously.
Re: This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:3)
Before going in for a surgery, look at the hospital and see what the nosocomial rates are. Otherwise, the price you pay may be high.
Truly words to the wise!
Re: This shows how clean hospitals are (Score:2)
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Before going in for a surgery, look at the hospital and see what the nosocomial rates are.
Wait what, you guys chose your hospitals?
Chinese invasion (Score:2, Funny)
2. ??? 3. Profit.
Plague number two (Score:1)
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What do the horsemen have to say?
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There never was "Trumpism". There was just abject stupidity that was looking for the right kind of crap to grow on. And Trump provided that.
Safe anti-fungals are hard to find. (Score:5, Informative)
Most people think of fungi like mushroom as plants, but in fact fungi are more closely related to animals [tolweb.org] than they are to plants. And of course plants, animals and fungi are more closely related to each other than they are to bacteria [tolweb.org].
The practical significance it's harder to find broad-spectrum antifungals that won't also harm us than it is to find broad spectrum antibiotics (i.e., anti-bacterial drugs). There's only three classes of systemic antifungal medications and there's dozen or more classes of antibiotics.
Re: Safe anti-fungals are hard to find. (Score:2)
How about (Score:1)
bleach? A business man once said it would work.
Re: How about (Score:2)
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He got fired.
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It turned out he was fake news.
Overuse of antibiotics (Score:2, Offtopic)
When antibiotics get overused and you wipe out the bacteria, something else will take their place...
That's why their use should be prohibited, like they've been doing in Norway for a a while now.
Re: Overuse of antibiotics (Score:2)
When antibiotics get overused and you wipe out the bacteria, something else will take their place...
That's why their use should be prohibited, like they've been doing in Norway for a a while now.
Let's say "Limited", rather than "Prohibited".
I personally would not like to live in a world where Antibiotics were actually Prohibited!
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It's prohibited, unless there is no other alternative, that goes further than just "limited".
Antibiotics are not going to help anyway, after overuse makes them ineffective.
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In the Netherlands you can buy only aspirine without a doctor's prescription in any apothecary. And those are the 100 milligram pills. Heavier apirine needs to be prescribed by a doctor, before any apothecary is even allowed to sell it to you.
And when you can walk into the doctor's waiting room on your own accord, it is highly likely that you get a prescription for heavier aspirine and nothing else. Usually you get a invitation to come back in 3 days or so to see if the complaint went away by itself.
Doctor'
Re: Overuse of antibiotics (Score:2)
In the Netherlands you can buy only aspirine without a doctor's prescription in any apothecary That seems a bit overly regulated. What about paracetamol and ibuprofen? Where i live, you can now buy CBD oil over the counter. It's very expensive but there for people who need it.
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Anyone can buy Aspirin 500mg at any pharmacy in the Netherlands. Brand name Bayer costs about 4.50 euro for 20 pills...
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Anyone can buy Aspirin 500mg at any pharmacy in the Netherlands. Brand name Bayer costs about 4.50 euro for 20 pills...
That sounds exorbitant; but more believable than "You can only buy 100mg Aspirine[sic]."
After all, Aspirin has nothing to do with Antibiotics. Maybe Aspirine does, however!
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Are you suggesting that lethal bacteria strains have been controlling yeast populations in hospitals?
Re: Overuse of antibiotics (Score:2)
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Wiping out Politicians has the same effect. Others (usually worse) just rise up to take their place.
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There's ... (Score:2)
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Black mold is sus
Antimycotics are lacking (Score:1)
There are very few classes of antimycotics to treat any yeast or fungal infections. C. auris is resistant to most of them because of the overuse of azole antifungals agriculture. Similar threats exist to antibiotics because of their overuse in meat agriculture.
C. auris is especially stubbornly-resistant to hospital industrial cleaners such that tiles have to be ripped-out and equipment thrown away as it's not autoclavable or cleanable.
What's worse is for-profit hospitals may try to keep it quiet which of th