Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Super Bugs

Perhaps I like to be frightened... I like to think that for the most part, I am a cautious person. I have an emergency fund just in case I get fired. I have life insurance on both myself and my wife in case one of us dies. I have my trusty .45 in case of a break in. I have a concealed carry permit to be able to defend myself in case my, or my loved one's, life is threatened. I try to keep fit so that I don't have a heart attack, and my immune system is as strong as possible. With the advent of antibiotics people of the last 80 years or so have enjoyed a means to fight off the sicknesses and plagues of the millenia before. This is all about to change.

Evolution is a process in which the strongest organisms survive while the weaker ones die out. There is more to it, but that is the basis. Bacteria live inside animals. Over the last 80 years, we have been wiping out Bacteria with our miracle drugs. The problem is that antibiotics can only kill a certain type of bacteria. The good news was that that certain type of bacteria was the majority of the bacteria in the wild. The tables are starting to turn. The majority of bacteria is still the kind we can kill, but a new form have started to show their ugly head.

Out if India comes a bacteria with a gene that makes it immune to our antibiotics. This particular gene is currently attached to relatively harmless bugs. One gives you a tummy ache and one makes it hurt when you pee. According to doctors, the gene is one that can "jump" to other forms of bacteria. This thing is growing in one of the cesspools of the world. It is only a matter of time before the gene hangs on to something serious... Like Bubonic Plague, or typhus, or *shudder* small pox.

Just think what a drug resistant form of plague would do in the U.S. Mass panic. Break down of law and order. Riots. Death on an unprecedented level in modern times. In the dark ages plague killed 1/3 of the population of Europe. That was an agrarian society. What would happen in our tightly packed urban society? More than a 1/3.

Zombies? Maybe not but drug resistant plague? Definitely.

How do I prepare for this? Buy a rifle. Have a backup plan to the the hell out of the city. Only problem is that my wife is a physician. She deals with people who are most likely at risk for these types of infections. By the time we know there is a plague, she will already be in the the thick of it. How do I protect her, while she is trying to heal those affected?

On a side note, how is a bacteria being spread to the west from India? Socialized medicine. Patients from UK, and Canada are traveling to India for medical procedures that they could not get, have to wait too long, or could not afford in their socialized medical systems. So they go to India for medical procedures, and get sick with the goofy bugs. Had they been able to get their procedures done in the their home countries, they would be going to India for treatment.

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