It's back,  more resistant than ever,  the NDM-1 antibiotic resistant bacteria.

They have found cases in MA,  IL, and CA.  

Brought to you from......India!   Population 1 billion and growing strong!

So maybe it's not a  pandemic flu virus that sweeps across the world,
maybe it's a simple bacterial infection,  that can't be beaten back with the usual antibiotics?
If it ends up in the hospitals, like staph and all the others,   there will be no getting rid of it.

This shouldn't come as a surprise,  as they have been talking about "resistant" bacteria for the past 10 years or so,
its just looking like this one has the markings of the one that could possibly become the big worry.

NDM-1 from India

How would you prep for something like this if it becomes widespread?

Just like any other infection- Wash your hands!!!
Patients and physicians are both to blame for this problem and our misuse/abuse of antibiotics is not without consequence. Our practices have ultimately selected for resistant microbes.

If it becomes prevalent in hospitals then washing your hands is an overly simplistic answer.
From hospitals it spreads to medical buildings and doctor's and dentist's offices.

Many people go to hospitals for treatment, surgery, to have babies, etc.

Not saying this may hit the streets and into homes,
but it could get to the point where people are wary of even visiting doctor's offices,  which bings up a whole new set of problems.

Something to watch.

Just out of curiosity, and for the sake of discussion:



First - I believe that those little bites of genetic 'fuck-you' are capable of wholesale depopulation and mayhem.



Second - We're reasonably clean and healthy compared to overpopulated India and Pakistan.  We eat better, we're generally not living nose-to-asshole like some overpopulated places.  



Question - Why wouldn't a superbug run through one of those 3rd world cesspits faster than the news could keep up with the reports instead of several cases getting loose in Detroit and ravaging the whole country here first?



Am I missing something?  Sure, we have airline travel, and widespread people shipping, but they have a stressed population and people breathing on each other, no sanitation to speak of, and little to no toilet paper that doesn't look like your left hand.





 

stand by a airport bathroom for 2 minutes and see who actually washed their hands vs just look into the mirror,

Most Americans  are dirty people. The physical fitness of most is appalling.

I'm also of the belief you get accustomed to your surroundings, i.e. you're surrounded by bad bugs, you build a tolerance, just as you build tolerance to certain bugs growing up.

I think that the impact of a superbug would be followed quickly by an explosion of opportunistic diseases like cholera, so it wouldn't be all the superbug.  I expect that to be the case if we ever get a smallpox breakout –– the smallpox will kill about 15% of the population, but the 40% that survives in a weakened state will be dealing with an explosion of smaller things with far higher death rates.

People are dirty, plain and simple. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to, as I said earlier, wash your hands. Simple hygiene goes a long way for the prevention of most infectious diseases.
There are currently many nasty bugs in the hospitals- C. diff., MRSA, VRE, Psuedomonas Aeruginosa, ESBL+ bacteria. Hell, almost a quarter of the population is colonized with MRSA. Our body is very adept at dealing with most bacteria.
Influenzas (Spanish flu, Avian flu, etc.) kill previously healthy adults due to cytokine storm and the ensuing secondary complications. I am more worried about a nasty virus, due to the ease of airborne spread, than a bacteria. Just my $0.02

Bacterial Meningitis is also making a comeback and it is something that a vaccine is available to prevent.

That "stress" that those other populations go through isn't always a bad thing(not that they choose to go through it). One thing being exposed to many germs and a lot of dirt does for a population is to make their immune systems tougher. Just like exercising makes your body more fit and able to resist diseases, avoiding germs completely seems to have the opposite effect on immune systems. I saw an article somewhere the other day that suggested that we Americans may be living "too clean" and making our immune systems weaker in the bargain. The article suggested that many of the allergy problems and other immune system diseases we see might be avoided if we didn't try to kill all the germs with chemicals.

Yep. My mother in law was in John's Hopkins cancer ward, you know, a place where they are supposed to be the best, and guess what? They gave her VRE due to piss poor hygiene. Of course that wasn't surprising considering the quality of the help in that ward - they left her to lie in her own feces, naked, for 4 hours - we found her like that. Her "24-7 aide" was sitting there watching TV.

She would not have been able to hold her newborn grandson even if she had survived, which she did not.

"How would you prep for something like this if it becomes widespread? "
........1) Stay away from Hospitals
........2) Stay away from restaurants.
........3) When out in public, amongst crowds, doorknobs, money, etc... Dont touch your face or food.

India could have 3/4 of their population die and still have more people than the US.  Whats 20 million deaths to them?

this isn't anything new. At work my employer has been telling us about drug resistant bacteria becoming more and more common for years. it's just the new thing for the media to sensationalize to make people panic.