Doctors in India are reporting that they have their hands full with a long-feared TOTALLY DRUG RESISTANT form of tuberculosis. Cases have evidently cropped up in Iran and Iraq as well.

The authorities are of course downplaying the implications, stating that close contact with an infected person is necessary for transmission, but that doesn't really explain all those TB sanitoriums back in the 30s, now does it? TB spreads. Totally Drug Resistant TB spreads and stays until it kills you. And we have high volumes of air travel.

Up until now, the worst we've seen is Multi-Drug Resistant TB. This is something new and special.

Just in case you're unaware of how under reported public health news is in the mainstream media, here's an interesting link. Scroll down that page. Were you aware that there was an outbreak of Dengue in Key West, Florida not that long ago? Did you know that ticks are carrying Congo-Crimea Hemorrhagic Fever in Europe? Or how about that there's a version of H1N1 Influenza that's resistant to our frontline antiviral drugs?

That and more to worry about here:

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/

At the rate the microbes are going, you don't even need to worry about the economy!

Cheers!

Rick...

Glad to hear your feeling better Rick.

So...developed a slight cough again, Rick?

Did I mention that they have Multiple Drug Resistant Plague (The Black Death!) in Madagascar?

As someone, I believe it was Mark Aisthorpe, pointed out in another thread, we're getting up around seven billion people on the planet. Mother nature, if you look at how She operates, has a way of trimming herds when population densities get too high.

Everyone is talking about asteroid strikes, global warming, tsunamis and all that stuff. Well, I say the smart money is on microbes. Watch the emerging infectious diseases and the old germs with new vitality and drug resistance.

A major population trimming is coming. In fact it's overdue. Look for sixty to eighty percent of the human herd to fall prey to disease when it comes. You can disregard asteroids and all those other longshots. Disease will be the instrument of pruning, mark my words. Good old fashioned pestilence.

And there won't be much we can do to contain it because worldwide, the politicians have slashed and burned the global public health programs in virtually every country to save money. People don't worry about public health until there's a plague, so nobody complained.

We sold the rifle and there's a Grizzly in the kitchen eating the peanut butter! Guess what he's going to chow down on next?

Cheers!

Rick...

Sauron, has anyone ever called you an optimist?
On a related note, Madagascar has already shut down its port. Humanity is safe

ROFLMAO! Actually, in day-to-day life, I'm probably over-optimistic. But a cursory look at what happens to burgeoning herds says a lot. Most species would have been trimmed back long before this. Man has enough brains and capability to forestall things.

But not forever! We're overdue. And when it comes, we'll quickly learn that we're not quite as in control of things as we thought.

It's an interesting thing to monitor. I just hope it doesn't make it out here into the mountains. And I hope the pathogen responsible isn't some unstoppable nightmare like some of the emergent Filoviridae that pop up every time they build a modern highway into the bush in Africa.

Dropping dead while bleeding from the nipples and every other aperture in the body just doesn't appeal to me.

Cheers!

Rick...

Not seeing it reported here. I'll have to look a this more. I'll admit epidemiology has always interested me.

Guess I better stop eating indian food when the waiter is coughing up a lung over the buffet...

Sauron, whatever you do, don't watch the recent movie "Contagion" (2011, directed Steven Soderbergh, with many stars in it, Damon, Paltrow, Fishburne, Jude Law, , Kate Winslet (somehow I like her more and more in recent years).

It's like a cross between SARS and what you reported on, combined. In some moments it starts to resemble some of the zombie movies of recent years, but unlike zombie movies, this one stays in the real world the WHOLE time. The real CDC helped quite a bit with the subject matter for the writers, who aimed to make a real-world scary movie. I highly recommend it too.

Sounds like my kind of movie! Thanks for the tip, Rick, added it to my Netflix queue.

Cheers!

Rick...

Actually if you think about it, population is its own limiter. Higher population means higher and more vectors for bacterial infection, and also more people means that there are more bacteria-producing "factories", and a larger number of bacteria factories means that your absolute mutation level will increase, meaning more badness.

Either way, we're all going to die one day.


Have a nice day!

(And for afters, just wait until they prove that stupidity is contagious...)

Ever since you got the flu there Rick, I have had the unabridged version of 'The Stand' on my bedside table to ward off all the bugs and viruses, and I have sworn off all forms of public transportation. Seems to be working...

WC

Oh, and I stocked up on scotch.

Glad to see that there's another disease guru around! I have always loved the "OMG a primitive tribe predicted our doom this year from Asteroids/Comets/Black Holes/Zombies/the Sun is going to burn out!" crowd for their amusing hysteria. I don't tend toward sensationalism, and most of the recent "Flu Pandemic" scare stories are full of idiocy, but yes, something is coming down the pike.

About time we had a proper Malthusian Check.

Never hurt anyone.

Geez, just finished watching Contagion. We are doomed if this becomes a reality. Need to avoid all
human contact.