[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Blackhawk »

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:23 pm Might be time to figure out what comes after purple.
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[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Zarathud »

Citizen, Friend Computer has decreed you will take remedial threat level determination orientation. After Indigo, there is Violet. After Violet, there is Ultraviolet. Future failure to understand fear levels for foreign furry ffff—//— is Treason.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

We can only hope something kills off those who refuse to help protect themselves and others while it leaves those with immune troubles and others alone.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Zarathud »

Went to a partners dinner in Cincinnati where the head partner messaged the importance of everyone coming into the office more (for the mentoring, not the profits). Flew in and out wearing my construction N95 mask with long flight delays. Turns out the Chicago colleague who I had lunch with both days and talked to a lot at the 12 hour event had a runny nose and congestion but tested negative all last week. Until an hour after getting home.

Clear test for now, just tired from jet lag. But damn. I tested clean after my wife tested positive in October, so maybe I get lucky again. Probably not. We’ll see in the next few days, but this is going to screw up a week of meetings.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein
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“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
“It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Ohio measles outbreak continues to get get worse:
Since the start of the outbreak in November, at least 59 measles cases have been identified in Columbus and Franklin, Ross and Richland counties, and there have been 23 hospitalizations, according to Columbus Public Health.

Of those cases, 56 were in unvaccinated children. The other three were only partially vaccinated, meaning they received one dose of their MMR or measles, mumps and rubella vaccine when two are needed for a person to be considered fully vaccinated.
I have it on good authority that as of today it's actually up to 63 cases and 25 hospitalizations. That is...not great.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by ImLawBoy »

Is there any way to prevent getting measles? I guess we'll never know.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Seriously. I think 70% of the cases are kids under the age of 5 - all suffering because of their parents. It's so frustrating.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Max Peck »

Another classic Beth Mole headline.

Twirling parasitic worms throw dance party in man’s scrotum
When parasitic worms make it into a scrotum, they have a ball—and dance like nobody's watching.

But in a hospital in New Delhi, India, doctors were watching. And they caught the dangling disco on film, down to their lymphatic limbo line, according to a short report appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine this week.

The parasitic worms in this case were Wuchereria bancrofti, which are spread by mosquitoes in some tropic and subtropical areas of Asia, Africa, the Western Pacific, the Caribbean, and South America. The wriggling ravers stream through the human lymphatic system. Adult worms can live for five to seven years and, when they mate, can produce millions of boogying babies, called microfilariae. Together, they cause a disease called lymphatic filariasis that can lead to tissue swelling (lymphedema), elephantiasis, and, in men, swelling of the scrotum.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

:D She really is awesome. Good news about COVID-19 here in the United States:
More people are falling seriously ill with the flu in the United States than with COVID-19, a demonstration of this year’s severe influenza season – but also of the waning seriousness of a pandemic that once brought the world to its knees.

Figures collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the weekly rate of hospitalizations for the flu has reached 5.9 per 100,000 people, a level not seen at this time of year in more than a decade.
Saw an article a few days ago saying that never before have we seen so many positive influenza tests in a single week. Not in 5 years, not in 10 years - it's the most positive tests in a single week ever. So...yay for testing capacity? I think...
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Kraken »

Covid science is slipping because we no longer have any unvaccinated and never-infected controls.
Hybrid immunity—the combination of vaccination and a prior infection—seems to offer the strongest, most durable protection. But the incremental benefit of repeated boosters or treatment on top of this is less certain. Public-health agencies and professional groups aren’t giving much direction. Right now, the CDC recommends that everyone age 5 or older get the bivalent booster, regardless of prior infection status. (The agency does say that patients “may consider” delaying the latest shot until three months after they last got sick with COVID.) Treatment guidelines from the National Institutes of Health and the Infectious Diseases Society of America are no help, either. NIH merely notes that “the efficacy of these treatments in patients who have been vaccinated is unclear,” while IDSA describes the value of treatment for immune populations as a “critical unanswered question.” Yet this unanswered question now applies to nearly everyone on Earth.

Pharmaceutical companies don’t have much incentive to sort this out, given that their treatments are widely available and reaping record profits. “I don’t think they want more data because more data might show the drugs don’t work,” David Boulware, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Minnesota, told me. I asked Pfizer and Moderna whether the companies had plans to run new, large-scale clinical studies of their COVID shots and drugs in vaccinated and previously infected individuals, but neither responded to my inquiry.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by stessier »

Is there any discussion out there that current strains are hiding from PCR tests? I have a relative who hasn't been able to taste for a week but is negative on two at home tests and a PCR test from a doctor's office.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Haven't seen anything to suggest PCR testing is problematic, no. The at-home rapid tests? Absolutely.

I have been hearing stories about people that have been symptomatic for 3+ weeks and keep testing negative for everything (COVID-19, Flu, RSV) a doctor tries testing them for. Not as "sexy" but it could be parainfluenza. There are quite a few other illnesses but the above three are getting the most headlines right now.

Losing taste is...certainly not a good sign regardless.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Texas, always awesome:
After the discovery of the aromatherapy spray as the outbreak source, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) learned that a previously healthy pet raccoon, owned by the family of the Texas patient, had broken a bottle of the implicated aromatherapy spray and walked through the liquid. On April 3, 2021, approximately 2 weeks after this exposure, the raccoon displayed acute neurologic symptoms consistent with neurologic melioidosis† and died from an undetermined cause 3 days later. The carcass was wrapped in a cloth robe and buried on the family’s property.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

We didn't do it!
In October 2021, the source of a multistate outbreak of melioidosis that involved four human cases in Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas was identified as an aromatherapy room spray imported from India
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

No, no. Not the cause. The family pet! :lol:
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

Environmental suitability modeling studies for B. pseudomallei suggest that the soil and climate in parts of Texas are suitable for B. pseudomallei (1). Because of concerns about establishment of B. pseudomallei in soil within a setting where the pathogen is not known to be endemic, and out of an abundance of caution, staff members from Texas DSHS Region 2/3, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 6, and CDC traveled to the Texas property on April 19, 2022, to determine whether there was evidence of B. pseudomallei contamination and to decontaminate the burial site. Thirty-two environmental samples§ were collected from the burial site and surrounding area, including soil, tree root fragments, and water from a stream downhill from the site. Soil samples were collected directly above, below, and adjacent to the carcass; 10 radial soil samples were collected at 2-, 4-, and 6-ft (0.6-, 1.2-, and 1.8-m) intervals around the carcass, oriented toward the natural drainage path, down to the stream (Figure). The raccoon carcass was found at a depth of approximately 1 ft (30 cm), and 12 tissue samples were collected during field necropsy.¶ After sampling, EPA staff members immediately decontaminated the carcass and excavated soil within a 2-ft (0.6-m) circumference of the carcass in germicidal bleach (8.25% sodium hypochlorite, diluted 1:3 with water) overnight for approximately 15 hours (4).
Burying the pet only a foot deep is just asking for the local wildlife to leave poor Bandit's body on top of your car after a late night snack.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

It's only 9:30 am and I already need to take a walk:
The milk and dairy products Wisconsin is known for have long been pasteurized products. Sales and distribution of raw milk have remained forbidden. That does not mean there haven’t been some knockdown battles in the past decades over raw milk. In 2010, the Wisconsin Legislature went so far as to make raw milk legal.

But then-Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed the bill and kept pasteurization regulations in place. And a coalition grew up to make sure the Legislature would never hurt “America’s Dairyland” again by loosening food safety with raw milk. Wisconsin’s major agricultural and medical organizations worked hand-in-hand on the issue.

Now one of those groups, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau has flipped. At its policy conference in December 2022, a southwestern dairy farmer persuaded fellow delegates that a post-pandemic market exists where more consumers are demanding raw milk.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Blackhawk »

My new philosophy is slowly becoming: Educate people. If they know better and still want to be stupid, let them kill themselves off.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Broadly, I get it. But the overwhelming majority of these raw-milk loving morons want it for their kids. Then again, when I look at the numbers, the relatively few people it's impacting, I guess it really doesn't matter. All we know is that greater access to raw milk increases risk of outbreaks and illnesses and I guess if that doesn't cross into the Top 10 each year, freedom.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Blackhawk »

It occurs to me that we're running on reverse psychology at this point. If you want them to avoid it, have a scientist recommend it. If you want people to do it, have a public health official tell them that they can't. I actually live in fear of what common-sense societal defense people are going to decide to turn on next.

The problem is that we keep trying to fight that kind of thinking with rationality, data, and facts. Not only does that not work, it's detrimental to the cause, as it is fighting anti-science with "Science says..."
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by gilraen »

Maybe it's time for stupid people to start dying off and killing off their offspring in the process. Yeah, I went there.

Unfortunately, their decisions also have public health implications, affecting others who did not choose to participate in the idiocy.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:28 pm It occurs to me that we're running on reverse psychology at this point. If you want them to avoid it, have a scientist recommend it. If you want people to do it, have a public health official tell them that they can't. I actually live in fear of what common-sense societal defense people are going to decide to turn on next.
Pretty sure childhood vaccines are next. Possibly seat-belt and helmet laws. Possibly smoking indoors. Bigger picture I'm concerned about workplace protections as it's in the financial interests of corporations to pressure for rollbacks, eliminations and exceptions. There's been a push over the last 20 years to get governmental agencies (municipalities) out of the business of providing drinking water to communities. The idea here would be to push for the privatization of domestic water supplies, which I'm sure will work out great.
The problem is that we keep trying to fight that kind of thinking with rationality, data, and facts. Not only does that not work, it's detrimental to the cause, as it is fighting anti-science with "Science says..."
To steal from Neil deGrasse Tyson (who was also stealing from others):
You can’t use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn’t use reason to get into
Until we collectively accept and value public and environmental health as a core element of our society, I fear we're in a downward spiral.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by MHS »

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:01 pm Haven't seen anything to suggest PCR testing is problematic, no. The at-home rapid tests? Absolutely.

I have been hearing stories about people that have been symptomatic for 3+ weeks and keep testing negative for everything (COVID-19, Flu, RSV) a doctor tries testing them for. Not as "sexy" but it could be parainfluenza. There are quite a few other illnesses but the above three are getting the most headlines right now.

Losing taste is...certainly not a good sign regardless.
Sucks because CO has made the decision to close down all their PCR testing sites: https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/news/colora ... ing-sites/ As one of the few Covid virgins left in the world, I really did hope that if I ever needed it, I could get rapid confirmed testing to be able to get on Paxlovid right away.

I've had a cough/congestion since the weekend after Thanksgiving but have tested negative multiple times for everything. I was *very ill* for the first couple weeks but then got mostly better in mid-December, and it finally seems to be clearing up, although I'm still having to clear my throat multiple times when talking, and woke up this morning with one eye crusted shut, so maybe not. My boss is frustrated with me. People never seem to understand that immune compromised not only means getting ill easier but also staying ill for longer.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

:|

Can you find out if something like this would be acceptable to a local pharmacist to get you Paxlovid?

Sorry to hear about all that illness. There's definitely so much going around and it seems like (anecdotally) anyone that did any type of gathering for Thanksgiving or Xmas (and adjacent holidays) caught something.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:58 pmThere's definitely so much going around and it seems like (anecdotally) anyone that did any type of gathering for Thanksgiving or Xmas (and adjacent holidays) caught something.
Not us! We only had one over for Thanksgiving (MIL), but we had 9 over for Christmas Eve. FWIW, in both cases all were vaxxed and boosted and tested negative the morning of. Take that, anecdotal evidence!
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

That's good to hear! Certainly in my immediate family and extended family circle, lots of (not COVID-19) minor illness following holiday gatherings. Thankfully no flu or norovirus so far either, which is nice.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by ImLawBoy »

Twins actually had something of a stomach bug in the week leading up to Christmas, but were over it by the holiday. I assume it was something from school - they missed a couple of days in the last week because of it. (And yes, we did inform everyone coming over so that they could opt out if they wanted to.)
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:48 pm
Blackhawk wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:28 pm
The problem is that we keep trying to fight that kind of thinking with rationality, data, and facts. Not only does that not work, it's detrimental to the cause, as it is fighting anti-science with "Science says..."
To steal from Neil deGrasse Tyson (who was also stealing from others):
You can’t use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn’t use reason to get into
Oh, I like that. I think it shall be my new sig.
Pretty sure childhood vaccines are next. Possibly seat-belt and helmet laws. Possibly smoking indoors. Bigger picture I'm concerned about workplace protections as it's in the financial interests of corporations to pressure for rollbacks, eliminations and exceptions. There's been a push over the last 20 years to get governmental agencies (municipalities) out of the business of providing drinking water to communities. The idea here would be to push for the privatization of domestic water supplies, which I'm sure will work out great.
There are times that I am glad that I live on the outside of society, and am generally only 'in the world' during my weekly grocery shopping trip. If only disabled people weren't in the GOP crosshairs.

There are also times when I'm glad I'm 50, and will likely be dead before the worst of it (this, government breakdown, global warming) hits. I may be outside of society, but I don't like watching people suffer. And then I remember that my kids and grandkids will be the ones stuck right in the middle of it. At that point, I usually make my brain change the channel before I fall into despair.
Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:48 pm
Until we collectively accept and value public and environmental health as a core element of our society, I fear we're in a downward spiral.
For it to happen in the short term, it'll take either a revolutionary collapse followed by rebuilding with lessons learned and that kind of speech publicly shunned, or it will take a dictatorship/fascist government, benevolent or otherwise, to force it on people. Long term, assuming that nothing else collapses society in the meantime? It'll take decades. For evolutionary change, this mindset is going to have to die off with the generations that spawned it. Sadly, that includes ours. We're not going to do that within our lifetimes.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

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Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:58 pm :|

Can you find out if something like this would be acceptable to a local pharmacist to get you Paxlovid?

Sorry to hear about all that illness. There's definitely so much going around and it seems like (anecdotally) anyone that did any type of gathering for Thanksgiving or Xmas (and adjacent holidays) caught something.
I'm pretty sure my nephrology team would step up quickly if I really needed it, but I am just super bummed that the CDPH went this route.

Yeah, I had strong reservations about going to the SILs for Thanksgiving. We didn't last year and it caused a bunch of hard feelings so I sucked it up. Won't be making that mistake again no matter how much fallout there is over it
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

MHS wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 3:25 pm We didn't last year and it caused a bunch of hard feelings so I sucked it up. Won't be making that mistake again no matter how much fallout there is over it
Good. Egos don't trump your health.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Max Peck »

Once again, Beth Mole brings us something fun and horrifying, that isn't COVID:

Man’s eyes turn bloody, yellow after plunge into pee-filled canal
It was his yellow, bloody eyes that gave his illness away. The previously healthy 18-year-old showed up at an emergency department in the Netherlands after two days of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. His heart was beating rapidly and his abdomen was a bit tender.

The whites of his eyes were splotched with blood, a sign that blood vessels on the surface of his eyes had burst. Areas that weren't bloodied were a jaundice yellow. Lab tests would later indicate he had acute kidney injury as well as liver dysfunction. But an equally important clue as to what was causing his acute illness was the mention that three weeks prior he had fallen into a canal.

In all, it was a textbook case, according to a report published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The man had a rare but severe bout of leptospirosis, which is a bacterial infection marked by fever, jaundice, kidney failure, and hemorrhage. The source: a fall into a canal that was likely tainted with the urine of infected rodents.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Leptospirosis outbreaks are usually associated with disaster/emergency events - flooding and earthquakes in particular. Interesting story, regardless - thanks. I've added it to my library!
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

Welp time to evict most hastily that little feller that was chewing on something in here last night. Ewww
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Jeff V »

Smoove_B wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:18 pm Leptospirosis outbreaks are usually associated with disaster/emergency events - flooding and earthquakes in particular. Interesting story, regardless - thanks. I've added it to my library!
Can we put a spin on this to make it an attractive thing for Trump to do? "There's a whole canal filed with whorepee and the girls of Amsterdam will shower you with torrents of liquid gold."
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Kindergarten vaccination rates drop again:
Usually, 94% to 95% of kindergarteners are vaccinated against measles, tetanus and certain other diseases. The vaccination rates dropped below 94% in the 2020-2021 school year, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released Thursday found rates dropped again in the 2021-2022 school year, to about 93%.

The pandemic disrupted vaccinations and other routine health care for children, and also taxed the ability of school administrators and nurses to track which children weren’t up-to-date on shots. CDC officials said decreased confidence in vaccines is another likely contributor.

“I think it’s a combination of all those things,” said Dr. Georgina Peacock, director of CDC’s immunization division.
I know it doesn't sound like a big deal but for so many of the vaccine-preventable childhood illnesses, there's a "magic number" where community protection is provided (aka "herd immunity"). When you look at two of the biggest concerns - measles (which is highly problematic in terms of chronic health complications) you historically want 95%+ of the community vaccinated to control outbreaks and Pertussis (whooping cough) is somewhere around 94%.

We're going backwards.
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Been following this for years, I guess it's becoming a problem again:
A so-called “super strain” of gonorrhea—against which many types of antibiotics are less effective or not effective at all—has been identified in the U.S. for the first time, health officials said Thursday, raising further concern that a post-antibiotic era is approaching.

The case, identified in Massachusetts, was successfully treated with ceftriaxone, an antibiotic recommended to treat the disease, state health officials said in a news release. A higher-than-recommended dose wasn’t required to clear the infection, a state public health spokesperson tells Fortune, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently doubled the recommended dose.

The newly identified strain showed reduced susceptibility to three types of antibiotics and resistance to an additional three, including penicillin. It marks the first U.S. case in which all recommended drugs were less effective or completely ineffective, the state health department said in a Thursday bulletin to clinicians.

The case serves as “an important reminder that strains of gonorrhea in the U.S. are becoming less responsive to a limited arsenal of antibiotics,” health officials said in a statement.
Be careful out there folks.
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Daehawk
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Daehawk »

My red state has cut funding to AIDS programs because they say they are linked to Planned Parenthood. Save the babies but let everyone with AIDS lose their jobs and die. They will no longer accept Federal funds for grants. Seems illegal.

Tennessee Department of Health cuts funding for HIV program, organizations wondering why
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

I posted this on the other side of the fence because as you can imagine, it's political.
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Max Peck
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Max Peck »

Freedumb!

US woman has walked around with untreated TB for over a year, now faces jail
A woman in Washington state is facing electronic home monitoring and possible jail time after spending the past year willfully violating multiple court orders to have her active, contagious case of tuberculosis treated and to stay in isolation while doing so.

Last week, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department announced that it was "monitoring" a case of active tuberculosis in a county woman who had refused treatment.

"Most people we contact are happy to get the treatment they need," Nigel Turner, division director of Communicable Disease Control, said in a press announcement last week. "Occasionally people refuse treatment and isolation. When that happens, we take steps to help keep the community safe."

But reporting by The News Tribune discovered that the woman's refusal to heed public health guidance is a long-standing challenge for local officials. Documents filed in the Pierce County Superior Court and reviewed by the Tribune found that the woman's first court order for involuntary isolation dates back more than a year ago, to January 19, 2022.
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Smoove_B
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Re: [Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Many, many moons ago it was part of my job to drive people that were otherwise unable to obtain transportation to a local hospital for directly observed therapy. We do not mess around with TB. Well, we didn't. Not sure how this will legally go, but it sounds like it's already been an issue.
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