davesenesac
Trail Wise!
Our precious life is short within eternity, don't waste it!
Posts: 1,710
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Post by davesenesac on Apr 29, 2019 12:30:44 GMT -8
Last Sunday's 60 Minutes had an episode on the rise of superbug drug resistant bacteria, particularly candida auris. Going to hospitals is increasingly dangerous and the public is being kept in the dark. Thousands of people each year are dying from such infections. NYT had recently done a report:
www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html
Experts are now pointing fingers in several directions, especially at agribusinesses and their corporate pharmaceutical suppliers that push the use fungicides across the planet. Such fungicides are extensively used in meat production industries and also many crops. And a much longer known problem is outside the USA in many countries, antibiotics don't need a prescription so are often bought over the counter and then used in uncontrolled ways that tend to create drug resistant strains.
Beyond the superbug issue threatening human beings on the planet is the possibility of germ warfare strains being released, either purposely or accidentally. Of course there have been a few movies about bioterrorism and or such a panic and collapse of civilization in the past. And that has had this person wondering occasionally over the past decades what could one do to isolate oneself from our modern world if something truly deadly was ever released.
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gabby
Trail Wise!
Posts: 4,539
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Post by gabby on Apr 29, 2019 14:49:24 GMT -8
Our world is supported by so many unsustainable technologies that, should you ever waken enough to start thinking about it, it's horrifying. I remember only a couple of decades ago thinking that we could accomplish a lot by simply increasing fuel economy. I'm now officially over that naive feeling.
A trip down just about any aisle in the grocery store can become frightening. There's almost as much, if not more, plastic and cardboard on most grocery shelves than there is consumable food. Once upon a time, discardable containers of metal and then plastic, foil and cellophane seemed like a "miracle" of new technology. No longer.
The "miracle" of modern food production is just another empty promise of plenty for a population and a culture that's out of control.
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sarbar
Trail Wise!
After being here since 2001...I couldn't say goodbye yet!
Posts: 998
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Post by sarbar on Apr 29, 2019 19:48:12 GMT -8
Fungicides are one of the reasons food allergies have grown so quickly in the past few decades. It's not something most know about, but it should be a concern.
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swmtnbackpacker
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Back but probably posting soon under my real name ... Rico Sauve
Posts: 4,886
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Post by swmtnbackpacker on Apr 30, 2019 9:09:59 GMT -8
Plants are really suspectible to fungi pathogens, so that’s why they are applied. Probably too much obviously, but if it wasn’t this, it’d be something else. All these microbes are developing resistance. It’s basically evolution from the microbial perspective.
An elderly uncle caught MRSA from a hospital stay ... and my American grandfather passed from a hospital wide infection back in the late 1980s .. recovering completely from his original ailment just to catch a fatal systemic infection that went through his ward.
It’s been brewing everywhere ... the PCTA put out a “valley fever” warning for a microbe that thrives in desert dust ... so no one area is “immune”.
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Post by Lamebeaver on Apr 30, 2019 10:09:53 GMT -8
Our planet is incredibly resilient. Perhaps this is her way of controlling a parasitic infection (us) to counter global warming.
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gabby
Trail Wise!
Posts: 4,539
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Post by gabby on May 1, 2019 9:26:59 GMT -8
Our planet is incredibly resilient. Perhaps this is her way of controlling a parasitic infection (us) to counter global warming. My wife says this all the time about "humans" - but I think she's really talking about me (for some reason).
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BigLoad
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Pancakes!
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Post by BigLoad on May 1, 2019 19:21:22 GMT -8
A neighbor slightly younger than me and in otherwise good health recently went in for a knee replacement. Two weeks after surgery he was dead from a post-operative infection that didn't respond to treatment. I'm quite concerned about the future of infection control.
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davesenesac
Trail Wise!
Our precious life is short within eternity, don't waste it!
Posts: 1,710
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Post by davesenesac on May 23, 2019 20:42:26 GMT -8
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Post by High Sierra Fan on May 23, 2019 22:44:08 GMT -8
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Post by autumnmist on May 24, 2019 5:03:58 GMT -8
There's almost as much, if not more, plastic and cardboard on most grocery shelves than there is consumable food. I read an article in the last week or so that plastic was found at the base of the Mariana's trench. It's no secret that it's affected marine life. We need to find a safer way to package food. But more people need to be responsible about disposition and recycling of plastic. And more people need to start growing their own pesticide free food. And communities and governments need to understand that gardening is a better way of using land than planting grass, fertilizing it and wasting water on it. In my humble (sarcasm noted?) opinion, one of the factors contributing to hospital born infections is the shift from nonprofit to for profit medicine, especially when a hospital or hospital chain is purchased by an entity with a Wall Street approach. One of the top medical systems in my area has gradually and noticeably declined after being purchased by a profit oriented company headquartered out of state. Patients are segueing into becoming numbers, statistical representations of some peculiarly quantified measures, something a statistician, not a medical person, would create as an alleged indication of meeting goals. This has affected nursing staff, being mandated to input more data to produce dubiously relevant statistical measures as opposed to spending more time with patients. I'm quite concerned about the future of infection control. From what I've seen in the last year of my father's life, you have good reason to be concerned. We all do. But the question is, what can be done about it? Resistance to being prescribed unnecessary medicine might be the first step, but that requires patients and family to educate themselves as well as have an impartial source of how much and which medicines really are necessary. Mood stabilizers is one place to start, as is overmedication of seniors. And doctors need to address their resistance to natural remedies.
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