Linkspam Has a PSA: "Mask Up Now"
Feb. 9th, 2025 05:20 am![[personal profile]](/makepkg/implementing-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jjhuntersiderea (08Feb25): Mask Up Now [pestilence, Patreon]Geolocation note: my attention here is on the US, but this likely pertains to areas outside the US, [...] reports from China discussed below
If for some reason you stopped masking everywhere, now would be an excellent time to resume masking, and use a N95/KN95 or better.
I have a longer post in the works, but am getting overtaken by events. I've gotten multiple reports that there's waves of some serious unidentified flu like illness(s) hitting areas hard enough to shut down schools and fill hospitals.
This Week In Virology (07Feb25): TWiV 1190: Clinical update with Dr. Daniel Griffin (Also on YouTube)
In his weekly clinical update, Dr. Griffin and Vincent Racaniello discuss changes in access to public health information and aid mechanisms such as the return of MMWR, the largest tuberculosis outbreak in the US ever, lack of USAID in fighting Marburg and Ebola outbreaks in Africa, discussing if avian influenza virus is airborne, how eggs are effected and the emergence of second spillover into dairy cattle [...]
ETA: Dewi Rina Cahyani (06Feb25): Japan Faces Worst Flu Outbreak in 25 Years
The situation is further exacerbated by a shortage fo key antiviral medications, including Tamiflu, in healthcare facilities
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Date: 2025-02-09 11:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for the links! I'm going to have to catch up with This Week in Virology. I'm surprised that they would refer to that outbreak as the largest ever in the US; either they have access to numbers that aren't being officially reported, or it's an error, and I'd be curious to know which. As far as I'm aware, it's one of the larger ones since the CDC started counting, but a) those are not the largest ever in the US, they're just the largest that have been recorded by the CDC, and b) the official numbers simply don't add up. There was an outbreak in Georgia that spread largely in homeless shelters, with 170 active TB cases and 400+ "latent"
*cases; the one in Kansas isn't even near rivalling that... if the official numbers are to be believed. (Which they're probably not, to be fair.)Anyway, I really want to find more background on this outbreak, because TB isn't a quick worker and is typically a disease of overcrowding, but the news articles here make it sound like it's happening suddenly, and haven't mentioned any kind of locus of transmission (like a homeless shelter). I haven't really found anything much better from the US, but I assume it's just because I don't know where to look.
*I'm being a pedant; TB experts typically do not use that term anymore, but refer instead to "tuberculosis disease" (Mtb infection with clinical symptoms) and "tuberculosis infection" ("latent" TB/Mtb carriage without symptoms).no subject
Date: 2025-02-13 06:17 am (UTC)(I'm also a little more inclined to believe that it's not a novel pathogen, but instead people getting slammed by immune weaknesses and the after-effects of multiple infections from an immune-destroying disease, but it could be both. It could always be both.)