A rare blood infection is claiming lives, and the CDC can’t pinpoint the source.
The infection, caused by the Elizabethkingia anophelis bacteria, has killed 17 people in Wisconsin since November and just claimed a life in Michigan, the Detroit News reports.
Elizabethkingia is often found in water and soil, but – until now – has seldom caused infections. So far, 54 Wisconsin residents have contracted the infection, CNN reports.
Could have picked up a gene somewhere. Soil bacteria are always finding themselves in the guts of animals, where they are exposed to the indigenous biota, itself filled with genes designed to manipulate nerves, affect cell surface receptors, and massage immune function. Usually the newbie will enter and leave without notice, but nothing says a harmless E coli can’t pick up a gene for a Shigella toxin along the way somewhere, and come out a lethal machine capable of dehydrating healthy humans to death.
These things are not a big deal right now. As we speak a multibillion dollar machine is moving to contain this, and it will easily.
But in the future, that machine may go away quickly, as may the antibiotics which make things like this much less scary.
If the economic collapse is as bad as some think it could be, watch out. Pandemics seem to accompany Apocalypses for a reason.
[…] New Infection Rising […]
I wonder if there could be a relation between r/K, the chapter about K-selected people surviving the Black Plague, and soil bacteria. There is a type of soil bacteria called M. Vaccae which supposedly boosts mood and immune function. I’m not sure, but apparently you inhale it just by standing in a garden or outside? Anyway, maybe working outside or something is related to being K and getting the beneficial bacteria. I wonder how lethal bacteria like this fit into the mix.
Interesting… While most of the labor in the Middle ages and during the Plague years was farm labor, there was some city populations who would have been more separated from the land. And the cities were hardest hit initially.
Have to find data on plague spread to confirm.
City people would have gotten plague more, simply because there would be more infected people around that they could get it from.
When a super-death-epidemic came to town, the man who lived out on his farm and only came into town to buy supplies or sell produce once every 6 months or so could easily miss the whole thing.
That is a huge advantage. It is striking how all of these problems seem designed to wipe out the city-dwellers.