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Tue, 16 Jul 2019
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Biohazard

'Urgent threat': Mysterious, deadly fungus Candida auris sweeps the globe


New Straits Times
Sun, 07 Apr 2019 11:01 UTC
Candida auris

Candida auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world's most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections.(stock image for illustration purposes)
In May, an elderly man was admitted to the Brooklyn, New York City branch of Mount Sinai Hospital for abdominal surgery. A blood test revealed that he was infected with a newly discovered germ as deadly as it was mysterious. Doctors swiftly isolated him in the intensive care unit.

The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe. Over the past five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical centre to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa.

Recently, C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois in the United States, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed "urgent threats."

Comment: It may be that there are other factors contributing to the rise and the virulence of these outbreaks: Other recent outbreaks of note:

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Microscope 2

Nearly 100 species of frogs, toads and salamanders wiped out by fungus

Adam Vaughan
New Scientist
Thu, 28 Mar 2019 12:00 UTC
chytridiomycosis
© Emanuele Biggi/naturepl.com
Andean frogs have been hit by a fungal disease called chytridiomycosis
The extinction of 90 species of amphibians can be pinned on a deadly fungal disease, according to the most comprehensive exercise yet to map its impact.

In total, chytridiomycosis contributed to the decline of more than 500 species of frogs, toads and salamanders, or nearly 7 per cent of all amphibian species, since the disease first emerged in the 1980s.

The toll means the disease has wrought the greatest loss of biodiversity by any pathogen, on an order of magnitude greater than other wildlife diseases, such as the bat-killing white-nose syndrome.

"It's crazy what this pathogen does," says Trenton Garner from the Zoological Society of London, one of the paper's authors.

Previous work has been undertaken on the spread of the disease, and regional efforts have been made to gauge its impact on frogs and other species. But the team behind the new study say it is the best effort yet to aggregate its effects globally. "It's a smoking gun that wasn't there before," says Garner.

Comment: Outbreaks of various kinds appear to be on the rise in both humans and the animal kingdom:

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Info

YDB team publishes evidence from Chile for global climate cataclysm


Cosmic Tusk
Thu, 14 Mar 2019 06:15 UTC
YDB World Map
© Cosmic Tusk
The main objective of this study was to test the YDB impact hypothesis by analyzing a wide range of data from the Pilauco site in southern Chile. The following conclusions show that our data and interpretations are consistent with the YDB impact hypothesis and we found no evidence that refutes the hypothesis.

(1) At Pilauco, ~12,800-year-old peaks in high-temperature Pt-rich and native-Fe spherules are comparable to similar impact-related evidence found at more than 50 YDB sites in North America, Europe, and western Asia. It appears that the YDB layer at Pilauco is coeval with similar layers found at these sites on several continents and is also possibly related to the proposed YDB impact event.

(2) Identification of the YDB layer at Pilauco greatly expands the proposed YDB proxy feld ~6,000 km farther south of the closest well-studied YDB site in Venezuela, and ~12,000 km south of the northernmost YDB site in Canada, a distance equaling ~30% of Earth's circumference.

(3) Cr-rich spherules are found in the YDB layer at Pilauco, but not found at the ~50 other sites on four continents, suggesting that one or more local impacts/airbursts occurred in the Cr-rich basaltic terrain
circa Pilauco.
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Arrow Down

#PropagandaWatch - Shoving 'climate grief' down our throats

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:20 UTC
Climate Grief
© HypnoArt/Pixabay
The propagandists are in overdrive shoving "climate grief" down our collective throats. And the next step in that indoctrination, the acceptance of climate eugenics to atone for our climate sins, is almost here. Join James for this week's important edition of #PropagandaWatch dissecting the dangerous lies that are being pushed in the name of the environment.

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Health

Measles outbreak rocks Madagascar

Jef Akst
New Scientist
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:18 UTC
Measles virus
© WIKIMEDIA, CDC/CYNTHIA S. GOLDSMITH; WILLIAM BELLINI
Transmission electron micrograph of a single measles virus particle.
While the US faces measles outbreaks from New York to Washington state, reigniting discussions about the risk of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, Madagascar has been fighting the worst eruption of the disease in decades. Since October, the African island nation has seen more than 50,000 cases of the highly contagious viral infection, which has so far taken the lives of more than 300 people, mostly kids, the country's secretary general of the ministry of health tells CNN. That's more than double the numbers reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in mid-January.

"We heard rumblings of a measles outbreak in the capital between December and January and I just knew we were going to get hit," Lon Kightlinger, a former South Dakota state epidemiologist and regular Peace Corp volunteer in Madagascar, tells CNN. "Our one doctor here, who has been [a] practicing physician for 12 years, had never seen a case of measles until a month ago. And then boom, boom, boom, they started walking through the door. And it hasn't stopped." Measles cases have now been reported in all major Madagascan towns and cities and throughout rural areas as well.
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Bizarro Earth

'Hundreds of thousands' of fish dead in Australia


Digital Journal
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 05:27 UTC
Darling River Mass Death
© ROBERT GREGORY, ROBERT GREGORY/AFP
Just weeks after up to a million fish were killed, another mass death occurred in the Murray-Darling river system.
"Hundreds of thousands" of fish have died in drought-stricken Australia in the last few days and more mass deaths are likely to occur, the authorities warned Tuesday.

Locals around the Darling River were confronted with a sea of white, as dead fish carpeted the waters near the southeastern Outback town of Menindee.

Just weeks after up to a million were killed -- with scientists pointing to low water and oxygen levels as well as possibly toxic algae -- another mass death occurred in the key agricultural region.

Inspectors from the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries have visited the site and said they found that "hundreds of thousands of fish have died".

"Further fish deaths in the Darling River are anticipated as a significant number of fish have been observed under stress," the department said in a statement.

Some 700 kilos (1,543 pounds) of dead fish were removed from the river Monday, with similar amounts expected to be collected Tuesday, it added.

The Darling River is part of the Murray-Darling River system that stretches thousands of kilometres across several states.
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Biohazard

Hantavirus outbreak kills 11 people in remote town in Argentina

Sam Blanchard
Daily Mail
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 16:06 UTC
hanta virus

A man in Epuyen wears a mask and waits for clients at his shop, with a sign that says in Spanish 'We are all family in Epuyén – be supportive, use a mask'
Nearly a dozen people have died in a rat-borne disease outbreak in Argentina.

Hantavirus has infected at least 29 people in the South American country, a majority of them female, and it has killed 11 of them so far, authorities say.

Earlier this month a judge ordered 85 people to stay in their homes to stop the virus, believed to have first broken out at a party, from spreading.

Although rare among people, hantavirus cannot be cured and kills up to 50 per cent of people who catch it.

'Potential human-to-human transmission is currently under investigation,' the World Health Organization said.

Comment: If it is true that the mode of transmission is changing, that could mean an even more devastating outbreak is possible:

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Biohazard

Ebola outbreak death toll surges in DR Congo


France 24
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 13:28 UTC
Ebola
© Médecins Sans Frontières (Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos)
A patient is trying to rehydrate himself in an Ebola Treatment Unit in Kailahun, Sierra Leone
Hospital beds at the Ebola transit centre in Beni were stored outside in December, after anti-government protestors ransacked the tents. Hospital beds at the Ebola transit centre in Beni were stored outside in December, after anti-government protestors ransacked the tents. AFP

The number of people killed in an Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo has risen to 443, health authorities have announced, as new President Felix Tshisekedi began his first full day in office on Friday.

The rising death toll -- up by more than 40 in the past ten days -- emphasises the challenge of controlling the epidemic in the strife-torn east and is just one of a host of complex issues facing Tshisekedi.

Comment: For more, check out: Ebola "popping up unexpectedly and proving impossible to control"

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Syringe

State of emergency declared in US because of measles 'outbreak'


Yahoo
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 12:00 UTC
measles-rubella (MR) vaccine

A medical worker holds a measles-rubella (MR) vaccine in Indonesia
A state of emergency was declared on Friday in the western US state of Washington following a measles outbreak that has affected more than two dozen people, the majority of them children.

The disease was declared eliminated in the US in 2000 but has since made a comeback that is tied to imported cases and the rise of the anti-vaccine movement.


Comment: This is very tenuous reasoning because unvaccinated people have lived in the US since before the truth about vaccines became more widely known and the US has never been short of visitors.


"Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease that can be fatal in small children," Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement. "The existence of more than 26 confirmed cases in the state of Washington creates an extreme public health risk that may quickly spread to other counties."

Comment: It's notable that contagions of all kinds seem to be increasing around the world, see: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Health & Wellness Show: Vaccines and Flu Shots

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Biohazard

Ebola "popping up unexpectedly and proving impossible to control"

Laurie Garrett
Foreign Policy
Tue, 15 Jan 2019 12:32 UTC
Ebola
© Isaac Kasmani/AFP/Getty Images
A member of the medical staff of the Ebola Treatment Unit at the Bwera General Hospital in western Uganda on Dec. 12, 2018.
Nearly 600 people have contracted Ebola since last August in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, making the ongoing outbreak the second largest in the 43-year history of humanity's battle with the deadly virus. And there is a genuine threat that this Congo health crisis-the 10th the African nation has faced-could become essentially permanent in the war-torn region bordering South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, making a terrible transition from being epidemic to endemic.

Despite having a tool kit at its disposal that is unrivaled-including a vaccine, new diagnostics, experimental treatments, and a strong body of knowledge regarding how to battle the hemorrhage-causing virus-the small army of international health responders and humanitarian workers in Congo is playing whack-a-mole against a microbe that keeps popping up unexpectedly and proving impossible to control. This is not because of any special attributes of the classic strain of Ebola-the same genetic strain that has been successfully tackled many times before-but because of humans and their behaviors in a quarter-century-old war zone.

Comment: Outbreaks of all kinds appear to be catching health professionals unawares, and that with Ebola it may partly due to the unique situation in the region, but there are also other factors to consider that could be effecting its virulency and transmission, see:

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