Office Pig posted:

quote:

Deadly fungal infection that doctors have been fearing now reported in U.S.

Nearly three dozen people in the United States have been diagnosed with a deadly and highly drug-resistant fungal infection since federal health officials first warned U.S. clinicians last June to be on the lookout for the emerging pathogen that has been spreading around the world.

The fungus, a strain of a kind of yeast known as Candida auris, has been reported in a dozen countries on five continents starting in 2009, when it was found in an ear infection in a patient in Japan. Since then, the fungus has been reported in Colombia, India, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, South Korea, Venezuela and the United Kingdom.

Unlike garden variety yeast infections, this one causes serious bloodstream infections, spreads easily from person to person in health-care settings, and survives for months on skin and for weeks on bed rails, chairs and other hospital equipment. Some strains are resistant to all three major classes of antifungal drugs. Based on information from a limited number of patients, up to 60 percent of people with these infection have died. Many of them also had other serious underlying illnesses.

Those at greatest risk are individuals who have been in intensive care for a long time or who are on ventilators or have central line catheters inserted into a large vein.

In the United States, the largest number of infections has been reported in New York, with at least 28 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infections have also been reported in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Last June, the CDC sent an urgent alert to clinicians to start looking for the infections, which are difficult to identify with standard laboratory methods.

“As soon as we put out that alert, we started to get information about cases and now we know more about how it spreads and how it’s acting,” Tom Chiller, the CDC’s top fungal expert, said in an interview Thursday. The CDC now tracks the number of infections, updating the case count every few weeks.

In addition to the 35 infected patients, an additional 18 were carrying the organism but weren't sickened by it.

The microbe is among a group of newly emerging drug-resistant threats, health officials said.

“These pathogens are increasing, they’re new, they’re scary and they’re very difficult to combat,” said Anne Schuchat, CDC’s acting director, during a briefing in Washington this week about the growing danger from antimicrobial resistance.

The World Health Organization published a list naming 12 superbugs that pose the greatest threat to human health on Feb. 27, in a push for more research and drug development to fight these pathogens. (WHO via AP)

The World Health Organization published a list naming 12 superbugs that pose the greatest threat to human health on Feb. 27, in a push for more research and drug development to fight these pathogens. The World Health Organization published a list naming 12 superbugs that pose the greatest threat to human health on Feb. 27. (WHO via AP)

Of the first seven cases that were reported to the CDC last fall, four patients had bloodstream infections and died during the weeks to months after the pathogen was identified. Officials said they couldn't be sure whether the deaths were caused by the infection because all the individuals had other serious medical conditions. Five patients had the fungus initially isolated from blood, one from urine, and one from the ear.

The infection is still relatively rare. “It's really hitting the sickest of the sick,” Chiller said.

So far, the fungus doesn't seem to be evolving into new strains within the United States. Because the country doesn't yet have any “homegrown” strains of the deadly fungus, “it gives us a better opportunity to contain it and stop it from spreading,” Chiller said.

In other countries, infections have been resistant to all three major types of antifungal drugs, but so far the U.S. cases have been treatable with existing drugs.

Because invasive bloodstream infections with Candida are common in hospitalized patients in the United States, health officials are concerned that this deadly strain could “get into that mix,” Chiller said. Unlike Candida infections in the mouth, throat or vagina (which are typically called yeast infections), invasive yeast infections can affect the blood, heart, brain, eyes, bones and other parts of the body and are more dangerous.

Among infectious disease clinicians and laboratory personnel, infections involving fungi don't typically ring the same kind of alarm bells as antibiotic-resistant bacteria — until now.

“This is a paradigm shift, because Candida is not generally thought of as highly resistant or passed person to person,” Chiller said.

Since the CDC issued its alert in June, the agency has provided funds and additional expertise to help regional laboratories and hospitals identify the organism.

facialimpediment posted:

Pre-Trump, Bannon was basically a ghost: https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...m=.1e9d13ae32ec

Consummate Professional posted:

Bannon killed someone in a hot tub. What a time to be alive

Blind Rasputin posted:

This invasive fungemia will not be an epidemic. It is already almost exclusively a pathogen that occurs in very sick ICU patients. This occurs because after a few weeks of high dose antibiotics and critical illness, a person's bone marrow and immune system are pretty much wrecked. They are also extremely nutritionally deficient by such a point and cannot keep even the most banal pathogens at bay. That's when fungemia sets in. Candida albicans is fairly common and easy to kill. This is terrifying that a candida species has become resistant to all of our antifungals, but high dose liposomal amphotericin B will usually still work. This often comes with renal failure, but most patients by this point are on CRRT or nearing it anyways. Sad.

LingcodKilla posted:

I for one welcome our new fungal overlords.

facialimpediment posted:

I should've read the article better.

https://twitter.com/NickKristof/status/840624870430035969

Seems like lying under oath is a real problem for anyone even close to Donnie.


Oh hey, Boris has a mugshot!

https://twitter.com/tsgnews/status/840268581925457920

Godholio posted:

It's been almost two months. Do they still count as new?

psydude posted:

Wouldn't that open him up to prosecution by the state of CA and the District of Columbia?

quote:

When President Trump welcomes Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to the Oval Office on Tuesday, their meeting will take on a symbolism unlike any he has held so far: The great disrupter confronts the last defender of the liberal world order.

Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel are poles apart on issues like immigration and trade; they have circled each other warily since the American presidential election. But both sides, officials said, are determined not to let this first meeting devolve into a clash of competing worldviews.

Ms. Merkel has been studying Mr. Trump’s speeches to get an insight into the new president’s thinking. American officials said Mr. Trump would ask the chancellor for advice on how to deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom, after dozens of meetings over her 11 years in power, she knows better than any other leader in the West.

The threat posed by Russia to Europe could give Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trump a sliver of common ground. The Trump administration is demanding that Germany and its other NATO allies increase their military budgets, a message the Germans appear to be taking to heart, even if their spending still falls well short of what the United States would like.

But if Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel find common cause on NATO, they risk new tensions over trade. Administration officials have railed against Germany’s huge trade surplus with the United States. One of Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers, Peter Navarro, recently accused Germany of exploiting its trading partners by depressing the euro to boost its exports.

facialimpediment posted:

Florida has subpoenaed Bannon's poo poo and the hot tub acid bath is just weird. I highly doubt he gets prosecuted because state residency laws are VERY loose, so there are tons of excuses he can make.

The jacuzzi thing is loving weird though. https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/840666076883083265

Buca di Bepis posted:

Using muriatic acid in a hot tub seems to be a pretty common, though unadvisable, thing

Gobbeldygook posted:

In a hot tub that you leave full and manage the pH and stuff in yes, but a "Jacuzzi bathtub", which I think means one of those bath tubs with jets in it that you fill up from the tap every time you want to use it, it's inexplicable.

KildarX posted:

Hey something I actually know something about. Muriatic Acid cleans tile and porcelin very well. Takes care of urine, poop, and *blood* stains like a charm. So maybe he needed some urine or poop cleaned out of the tub?

Source: The summer I spent as a janitor.

A Handed Missus posted:

These two will meet on Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/840640228297707522

quote:

Ms. Merkel has been studying Mr. Trump’s speeches to get an insight into the new president’s thinking.

orange juche posted:

I bet trump puts ketchup on hot dogs like a heathen.

Duzzy Funlop posted:

Welp.

Pesticide20 posted:

Do you not? I'm a firm believer of every topping offered goes on a hot dog.

Pesticide20 posted:

Do you not? I'm a firm believer of every topping offered goes on a hot dog.

TBeats posted:

I wonder what she conclusions she was able to draw.

A Handed Missus posted:

These two will meet on Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/840640228297707522

A Handed Missus posted:

These two will meet on Tuesday.

Hot Karl Marx posted:

Hotdogs are barely meat, who cares what goes with it

Office Pig posted:

Well hey, maybe Merkel can deluge his brain with something positive for once. Who knows, perhaps he'll lob even harsher sanctions on Russia!

Oh my god it's going to be something stupid, isn't it.

Duzzy Funlop posted:

Welp.

Duzzy Funlop posted:

Yeah, I can't imagine how a female in power would bug Trump in any way and prompt him to be a shithead and/or throw a hissyfit afterwards.

A Handed Missus posted:

I don't remember any of this happening when he met with Theresa May, but then she also really wanted to be his ~special friend~

quote:

The sheriff said Lloyd's mental health will be evaluated and the state attorney's office will decide if this was a hate crime.

quote:

Richard Lloyd told deputies he wanted to "run the Arabs out of our country" so he pushed a dumpster in front of the Port St. Lucie store and set the contents on fire, Mascara said in a news release posted on Facebook.