The New Plague Kills In 24 Hours

Wow, just wow:

Cases have increased by 8% in just a week with nearly 2,000 people infected by the deadly airborne strain…

The airborne pneumonic plague can be spread by coughing, sneezing and spitting.

It can kill in just 24 hours and is very different from the bubonic plague – which triggered the medieval outbreak known as the “black death”.

Emergency disease outbreak expert Professor Paul Hunter revealed fears the plague could reach Africa… that might then be difficult to control…

There are already fears the outbreak could last for another five months as Madagascar enters the rainy season.

WHO experts revealed they “cannot rule out” the possibility of spikes in cases lasting until April 2018.

This is a bacterial pathogen that has been going six months, with a vaccine and antibiotics, and not only haven’t they been able to slow it down, it is still picking up and spreading faster every day. I wondered how that could be, given it is a bacterium, but if it is going from infected to dead in just 24 hours, that might have something to do with it.

Another specialist said some are afraid it may acquire antibiotic resistance, and another article said authorities have taken to seizing bodies by force, because families don’t trust them and don’t want to turn them over.

Part of the concern among specialists is that I read somewhere a ways back that Africa gets hand-me-down medicines, and on top of that the conditions are bad for maintaining efficacy of the medicines they do get. Our antibiotics are made here and shipped right to us. I assume African medicines are either half-assed at some bathtub factory in somebody’s basement down there, or they are made here, shipped to the Philippines, stored in a warehouse there until near the expiration date, at which point they clear their old stock by selling them to Africa at a cut rate. Once in Africa between the temperature and the conditions what efficacy is left is probably lost.

So if you get a continent-wide pandemic exposed to weakened antibiotics, I suspect you will have a giant factory churning out antibiotic resistant strains.

And if you are counting on a vaccine, that is no guarantee. The mumps is gradually evolving to not exhibit the antigens the Mumps vaccine exhibits:

If you think you’ve been seeing mumps in the news more often in the past couple of years, you’re absolutely right.

“Mumps outbreaks are on the rise,” said Dr. Janell Routh, a pediatrician who is a medical officer on the mumps team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 6,000 cases of mumps were reported in the United States last year, the highest number in 10 years. Around 2010, total annual cases were down in the hundreds.

Most of the recent cases occurred in outbreaks, including a large one in Arkansas, rather than as a sporadic here-a-case, there-a-case disease. And most of the outbreaks were among people 18 to 22 years old, most of whom had had the requisite two doses of mumps vaccine in childhood. “We are seeing it in a young and highly vaccinated population,” Dr. Routh said.

Even the NHL is figuring that out:

Five days ago, the Pittsburgh Penguins posted pictures on their website of several players in Santa Claus hats visiting patients at a local children’s hospital.

That heartwarming scene turned into a bad visual for the N.H.L. when one of those players, forward Beau Bennett, became the latest player believed to have mumps.

On Monday, a day after tests revealed that Penguins star Sidney Crosby had the virus, the team announced that Bennett was showing symptoms and had been placed under a five-day quarantine. Hospital officials said that they were testing patients and staff members who might have come into contact with him…

Crosby, Bennett and Brassard brought the number of N.H.L. players who had mumps or were suspected of having had the illness to about 20, despite widespread vaccinations in recent weeks. The Minnesota Wild, the Anaheim Ducks, the Devils and at least two on-ice officials have also had confirmed cases of mumps. Some St. Louis Blues players were sidelined with suspected cases.

If you don’t kill every single cell of what you are treating, those remaining cells will have survived because they were resistant to what you are using. Life is about survival, and even pathogens fight for their lives. Unfortunately their life means our death.

Tell others about r/K Theory, because what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger