Ongoing Mpox Happenings and other epidemic news

The chief scientist from the World Health Organization is warning that Earth’s rising temperature will make dengue fever a massive threat within this decade.

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Brownstein said that it’s likely a mix of both. When it comes to vaccine hesitancy, he said he believes the pandemic exacerbated misinformation, due to the politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine, which may have caused a decrease in confidence in vaccination overall.

Generally, that number would not be concerning if it was uniformly distributed. But vaccine avoiders tend to clump, with neighbors and mommy groups influencing each other. At least here, pro-vaccine parents tend to keep quiet, because anti-vaxxers are loud, threatening and generally make life unpleasant for those who disagree with them. If and when a vaccine preventable disease gets loose in one of these groups, see polio in NY, measles in OH, mumps here at JMU a few years back, it can rapidly expand to threaten the immunized (at a much lower rate, but not close to zero) as well as the unimmunized. It just needs sufficient dry fuel, which these asshats are determined to provide.

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Zoliflodacin, the first in a new class of antibacterial agents called the spiropyrimidinetriones, is being developed for the treatment of gonorrhea. It has a unique mode of inhibition against bacterial type II topoisomerases with binding sites in bacterial gyrase that are distinct from those of the fluoroquinolones

Not just a slight twist on an old drug, but a new class with a new mechanism of action. Very exciting! Of course, bacteria have been at this a long time, and will figure it out eventually, but for now, it is a very good thing.

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“ Commins, associate chief for allergy and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has made alpha-gal, a potentially fatal allergy, which, in the United States is tied to the bite of the Lone Star tick, his primary research focus.

Beyond red meat, “there are some people who are allergic to all things mammal,” he explained. Dairy products from mammals, medical devices made from mammalian products, vaccines and medicines that contain gelatin, and even commercial products such as perfumes and cosmetics may be behind an AGS reaction.”

Crap. Hopefully not things like heart valve replacements etc made from animals.

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It does apply to heart valves. But there was recently a genetically altered pig so it wouldn’t trigger the allergy:
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-its-kind-intentional-genomic-alteration-line-domestic-pigs-both-human-food

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There were an estimated 9 million cases of measles and 136,000 deaths globally, mostly among children, according to the report.
Deaths due to measles have also increased globally by 43% from 2021 to 2022, the new data shows.

For God’s Sake!!! This is a nearly 100% preventable illness claiming lives at a ridiculous rate! Vaccines work, they do not cause autism or autoimmune anything. They are necessary and needed. They keep kids alive.

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We keep just… giving up on shit…

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I think you’ve just solved the Fermi Paradox.

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The solution is just to give up?

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More the “answer”.

The Fermi Paradox being “if extraterrestrial species exist and can be detected by us, then where are they all?”, the solution to that paradox that FGD135 is suggesting you’ve found is “they all just gave up”.

That in no way suggests that we will, that we must, or even that we should. Just that the implication is that it’s a strong force to be overcome, and it’s worth the effort.

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They don’t call, they don’t write.

I’m done with them.

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I suspect Mindy knows what the Fermi Paradox is.

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I suspect she does too, but her answer didn’t make sense to me in that context.

I tend to provide too much information even when I don’t suspect there’s a miscommunication. That’s on me.

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Hmm, mycoplasma are weird, obligate intracellular parasites that (in some species) can cause human illness. This sounds like a different species, but given recent experience with zoonoses, probably worth keeping an eye on.

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Another preventable outbreak. I hate this timeline.

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OK, so I debated putting this here, but damn it, the mental health crisis is a fucking epidemic as well.

The suicide rate increased by 1% in 2022 to 14.3 deaths per 100,000 from 14.1 per 100,000 in 2021, marking this as the highest rate seen since 1941, according to the report.

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