Pandemic Apocalypse warming up the engine:
The deadly disease passed on by mosquitoes could herald a return to the deathtoll of yesteryear after a drug used to treat malaria failed in a number of alarming cases.
Scientists found artemether-lumefantrine (AL), the drug commonly used to treat the tropical disease, had failed to work on four patients.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) led a study into the alarming discovery, and found that the drug failed to work due to strains of the disease showing reduced susceptibility.
The findings showed a “potential first sign of drug resistance”, triggering alarm bells in the medical and scientific community…
“All the patients were identified by self-referral which suggests more cases of treatment failure in the UK may have occurred…
The fatal disease affects between 300-500 million people annually, with 438,000 people dying from the disease last year.
Malaria is found in more than 100 countries, in mainly tropical regions, including large parts of Africa, Asia, Central and southern American and parts of the Middle East.
This is a measure of piss poor manufactured and expired antibiotics used in Africa mixed with an inability to complete entire courses, both for lack of money and lack of intelligence. Malaria is not the only defeated disease we will see come back due to this recipe.
Note, these were cases in the UK. Obviously it came in on migrants, as well as African Brits traveling home, and then returning to the UK. Imagine what is cooking in Africa. There may be a whole cornucopia of drug resistant diseases there, just waiting for the right moment to spring forth.
Mosquito diseases seem to be picking up, too. This does make it look like moving north, to a rural area with few people, where you can cut enough firewood in the summer to get you through the harsh winter, may be a better bet for Apocalypse survival than heading south to a tropical environment.
I had assumed moving south to a warmer clime would be necessary. Heat will be the concern, and I would not count on a truck, loaded with $40,000 in diesel fuel, simply driving to where you are without an armed escort. Either you cut your own wood, or you have the money to buy fuel oil and supply the security necessary to get it to you. Given a collapsed economic system, you will likely end up out there cutting wood, and maybe without the benefit of gas tools.
Of course the northern hermit option will now also offer the advantage of limited disease exposure, and mosquito exposure, which is appearing to be important.
I suppose survival of an Apocalypse isn’t supposed to be easy – and that is why after the Apocalypse all the liberals and migrants are historically gone. It also points out how having six or seven kids, with three or four strong sons, would not be so much a burden as the r-strategists view it today. Rather, it would be a wise investment in survival for when times grow tough. Expect psychologies to remodel to reflect that reality.
[…] Malaria Now Antibiotic Resistant […]
AC, given that we are heading into a cooling period, would the mountains get enough sunlight to grow food?
I don’t know. There is a lot that will be difficult to predict. One good volcanic explosion could have ice two miles deep halfway down the country in some places. New York City is not part of Connecticut because of a three mile deep sheet of ice that literally pushed it 50 miles away, IIRC.
That might speak to being close enough to nuclear power and access to LED grow lights being important as well. And to adaptability. If Ice Age two hit, and you were too far north, a good plan B might be a serviceable sailboat, some fishing gear, and a beeline to the Caribbean.
Assuming climate was stable enough for our lifetimes, I would think you’d just have to hustle in the summer, and stockpile for the winter. The Unibomber lived on about $500 per year, growing beets and turnips, so it can be done. That might have even included his budget for bombings with airline tickets and hotels.
Having been born, raised and now living ,slightly below the 45th parallel, has its advantages. First – very little diversity. The few vibrants you see – who come through to commingle with the local sluts and sell drugs to the junkies – will go the way of the Dodo bird once the Apocalypse hits. Second – a much tighter sense of community. You cannot be alone up here and survive. You learn to overlook the eccentricities and annoying traits of your friends and neighbors. Most are very good people and you know that – despite insignificant differences – you have each others back. Lastly, only the tough survive. Tough weather and tough economic conditions lead to a very K- stratified culture. Little tolerance for demanding r-types. We are ahead of the curve up here – K hardened and the shit hasn’t even hit the fan yet. Many of my friends and neighbors could easily and with a joyful spirit put up 12 cords of wood for the winter – all by hand. In fact one of my closest friends has an octogenarian grandfather who recalls putting up wood for heat and for money ( pulp) – all via sweat equity. We also can grow our own food are proficient hunters and even know how to raise cows and chickens.
I’m sure that is all just norm to you, but I will guarantee you there will be readers here who see that and feel a magical sense of Shangri-La as they picture it in their head.
I’d imagine infiltrating surveillance would be difficult up there too, with the tight community.
I’ll roll the opposite – I grew up in Papua New Guinea where malaria was common and routinely dealt with. One of the aspects of the condition that may not be appreciated in the west is that the west deals with it poorly. It is quite common to come down with malaria even 12 months after you leave the tropics, and those who have had it can have the disease recur years later.
Our medical systems tend not to recognise it for what it is quickly, because it is not endemic. Anecdotally, most cases back home had to be self diagnosed before treatment would begin, which would be followed up by isolation in a ‘tropical diseases’ ward.
Up in the tropics, its just an illness that you deal with. A lot of the native folk have a certain resistance to it anyway.
The maleria pathogen isn’t a bacterium, by the way – it’s a protozoan. One good side of that, is that it’s much less likely to give away copies of it’s immunity genes to all sorts of other species, like bacteria do.
As we are discussing Malaria and latitude, I should perhaps mention that it is reckoned that some 800,000 died of the disease during the construction of St Petersburg and its canals; and I believe that Oliver Cromwell died of Malaria in central England, during a very cold winter.
Those bugs can get around.
AC there are enough real stories to do your analysis.
antibiotics kill bacteria. malaria is a parasite. therefore the entire premise of the story is false. don’t spread false news unless you plan to expose it as false. as it is you give credence to a false narrative.
Actually my line of thought was that tetracyclines work against Malaria, and I was assuming doxycycline was a first line drug due to lack of side effects and cost, after Larium anecdotally caused some guys, including Spec Ops operators coming back from the WOT to maybe go nuts, commit suicide, and kill their own spouses. I know years back I made a note to only take doxy if I ever got it, after a Special Forces guy left for Afghanistan totally normal, took Larium, and came back totally disconnected from reality, paranoid, angry, and ended up killing his wife for an imagined affair before killing himself.
I was assuming this strain was Doxy-resistant, and was now failing with other drugs, but I may have read too much into it, and they never tried Doxy. My bad.
interesting.
they do have cures for malaria now. not for all types and it doesn’t always work.
my company insists that the employees use Malarone when in malaria zones. it can be taken as a prophylactic or as a cure but not both. so if used a prophylactic (one pill daily) then a different medicine cure must be applied. But if it is not taken daily it can be used as a cure by taking larger doses for 3 days. It doesn’t cure all types of malaria. It works by blocking an enzyme in the parasite which prevents it from reproducing so if used a prophylactic you would not even know you contracted the disease. It is not something I like to take as it still has side effects but not generally as bad as previous medicines. The drug is licensed for 28 days continuous use but doctors tell me you can take it indefinitely.
Don’t know that much about the new drug, but as a general rule I would prefer something like Doxy for long term use, because we have seen what it does long enough to know if there is a problem. Some of those Larium stories are really scary, because it seemingly rewired the people without them even knowing. Just one day they were enraged about everything, and it all made sense to them. It made me wonder if maybe it changed everyone who took it without them knowing, but the strong controlled it and they spent the rest of their lives fighting to suppress the anger and irritation.