Tarenth

Seconded. Ewww.

Streptococcal A *points up at last post* is a sore throat. There is also a Streptococcal B which is related mostly to infant neonatal deaths and pregnant women. Neither of which I believe you were at the time. ^_^

Now I'm curious what kind of infection you had or if it was a sever allergic or toxic response. Your symptoms makes me think of Sepsis, but then again I'm a layperson with little medical experience beyond what I pick up from normal observation.


On a related note: I once had strep throat (associated bacteria mentioned above :> ) and since I was living alone and miles away from my doctor without a car I decided to ignore it. It'll get better...right? 4 weeks later I can barely talk when I see my doctor who tells me the infection was eating away the back of my throat and if I let it progess for much longer it would've entered my bloodstream and progressed to my heart which would've caused...complications. I'm given the option of enforced bed rest or admittance to the hospital and I decline an invitation to go to PCU for care to take home an arm full of meds with an order not to leave the house (better yet my bed) for 2-3 weeks.

Not as dramatic as the 'amputation and puss oozing open incision', but still a note that not all infections can be cleared up by your immune system alone. Then again it should probably be noted that while sick I still rode my bike to school up and down 3 hills for a mile in cold rain. Its true even if it does sound cliche a bit and 'might' be why I didn't get better on my own.

__________________
My sanity is not in question...
It was a confirmed casualty some time ago.

sc1ence

had to go look it up again.

Necrotizing_fasciitis

I think i'm pretty lucky to have my arm, and be alive.

Many types of bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis (eg. Group A streptococcus, Vibrio vulnificus, Clostridium perfringens, Bacteroides fragilis), of which Group A streptococcus (also known as Streptococcus pyogenes) is the most common cause.

__________________

El_Gringo_Grande

This is the stuff that scares me.

Terrorists? pffffft Chances of me being hurt by one of them? Almost zero. They just don't pose that big a threat.

But viri, bacteria, and all those other tiny things that have no thought could easily cut the human population in half in a matter of months. To me it is scary because there is no desire to kill humans. No. They do not eat our flesh because they hate us. They do it because that is simply their nature. That is what they do. It is what they must do to survive.

Like sc1ence and his Necrotizing fasciitis thing. He almost died because? Because a few itsy bitsy little "things" just did their thing. That is, to me, scary.

__________________
Sen. Barack Obama (IL) For President '08
---
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Daxx

That gave me a full-on case of the raisins. Heebejebus.

__________________
I am the one, I am the zero, I am your low resolution hero.

Ferris Bueller

Thats the best possible reason to be informed. I highly recommend that everyone pick up some basic medical knowledge. The one thing I can guarantee everyone is that you will be around people (that includes yourself) for your whole life. If something goes wrong with you or someone around you, being able to identify the problem will not only assist emergency or healthcare personnel in aiding you, but possibly offer some interim aid that you yourself can offer. Not all medical treatments are complex tasks, they teach you that much in Boy Scouts. Read up guys.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/strep.htm

__________________
|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

xanathemax

Well, for people that would deny natural selection, here's your real-life proof.

MagnaCentipede

Careful, you're trolling for the Faithful whether you realise it or not.

The solution isn't to stop using one cleaner or another, but to rotate them. If there were a solid policy for dealing with hospital cleanliness -- regular passes with heat cleaning, chlorine exposure, UV, and for anything expendable like fabrics, clean-it-with-fire -- this wouldn't be as much an issue. Instead we use Brand X until the Brand X-proof lifeform becomes dominant, and then we move to Y. That's not the right way... rotating your systems on a frequent basis means you get 99.99% of the 0.01% that survived the first pass.

__________________

Ferris Bueller

Well, the major problem with that Magna, is that no matter how you slice it, hospitals require money to run and clean. "Brand X cleaner" is usually FAR cheaper than lots of the stuff you point out as alternatives. A second problem is that there are patients in hospitals...always. You simply cant make a high-heat sterilization pass through a hospital without killing people, same goes for UV exposure, chlorine cleaning.

However, all of the little things in hospitals like bandages, surgical instruments, catheters and basically all other small tools of the trade are absolutely sterile prior to their use and are sterilized by manufacture or through many of the methods you describe above.

There are also companies working on specific cleaners that dont just kill 99.99% of germs and bacteria, but kill the full 100% through cellular emulsifiers, simply making it impossible for living cells to survive being hit by the cleaner. The big problem is making those cleaners safe for cleaning personnel to use.

__________________
|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

xTYBALTx

Super bugs? Space bugs?

Sounds like Starship Troopers to me.

__________________
Current good song: Justice - Stress

MagnaCentipede

You don't need to hit the whole place at once; people are coming and going all the time too, and they carry stuff. What we're aiming for is prevention of colonies of evolved critters. As for cost, don't bring it up until We Taxpayers quit paying for free ER care for federal criminals such as national trespassers (I invented a politically correct term for illegals who need to be deported to the southern boarder of Mexico) and meth heads who rotted their skulls out before being picked up and locked away. Why should I buy dentures for an idiot druggie when I could buy a palette of aqueous sodium hypochlorite and keep my booboos from being infected with death.

"all of the little things"
I'm talking about ceiling tiles, wallpaper, and air filters, too.

As for the Big Guns, I smell the scent of a new market for professional decontamination crews. Besides, we should hold a minimum educational standard that includes being able to read a label that says "CAUTION: DISSOLVES FLESH" and take it to heart.

__________________

Ferris Bueller

True, and I understand that, but you cant sterilize people who are coming in for treatment. Sure, maybe if the person doesnt have a severe ailment or injury then it would be possible. However, there simply isnt time to sterilize a person who is coming in with a life threatening condition.

Also, shutting down a hospital one area at a time for cleaning would be an absolute nightmare and extremely hazardous. The various areas of hospitals are not interchangeable and many are set up to handle specific kinds of equipment that simply cannot be moved or transplanted to another part of the hospital. Many of these things are used on a very very regular basis and shutting them down would endanger peoples lives far more than one of these superbugs would be (outbreaks of these things in hospitals are quickly caught and contained before they can spread). So I'll revise my original statement to say that the idea of sterilizing the hospital one section at a time is impossible.
Thats the point. If we were to put all the other options you mentioned into effect, the cost of health insurance as well as the taxes we pay that go to providing medical care to criminals, indigents and what have you would increase enormously.
Of course. Things like air filters and ceiling tiles are replaced at regular intervals in common areas, and in areas where patients with severe infectious conditions are quarantined they are replaced each time the room is sanitized. Things like wallpaper are changed out as needed, but it would be too expensive to change them out at short intervals. Same goes with paint, metal surfaces, large equipment, etc.
Well, there is a thought there, but the solution isnt to have professional crews just to handle one substance (big cost problem in having to have separate cleaning crews). Also, while the substance is theoretically ready for use now, the problem lies in making it safe not just for the workers, but also for the patients and people who come and go in the hospitals. How bad do you think it would be if they used the stuff raw and some unknowing soul accidentally touched a railing that had the stuff on it, or slipped on a wet floor (dont call it stupid, ask yourself how many times you have ignored a "wet floor" sign because you were absolutely confident you wouldnt slip and fall?). So the solution is to make it so that there is some kind of half-life on the substance so that it becomes safe to touch in a decent amount of time.

Also the notion that the people working on janitorial staffs and cleaning crews are not intelligent or otherwise too stupid to not read the labels is quite ignorant. I frequently chitchat with several of the cleaning crew at my hospital and they are all very intelligent people. There is an educational standard for these people.

__________________
|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

MagnaCentipede

I know you aren't going to adequitely sterilise incoming. That's why you wind up shutting down sections for chlorine and pyro. Interchangability isn't needed when redundancy will serve. Yes, that incurs a cost. Maybe Americans should keep some medical money in a Mason jar and then buy the hyper plasmatron TV so they can watch ads for HeadOn.

If they were all caught before they could spread, they wouldn't be camping trees waiting to pwn noobs with scratchable elbows.

Maybe you missed my comment, I didn't say anything about raising taxes. Or continuing to provide care to the self-destructive.

A professional crew would be trained in all aspects of sanatise-fu. That includes all chemicals and how to handle a dillution ratio.
I have never ignored a wet floor sign. That isn't to say I haven't enjoyed instances where the signs weren't placed appropriately. (or at all) Fortunately, my reaction time is much better than my balance, and since my legs are long, I never fall, in favor of splaying like a giraffe.

I've had conversations with dozens of janitorial staff members. Many I regard as perfectly average people. Of course, a few were dull knives. The point I attempted to make was that if the staff employed cannot safely use these chemicals, we need better cleaners (hence the professional decontamination crew concept), not to simply say "well, it'd be nice to clean it right, anyway, enjoy your strep rot;" and the phrasing was an insinuation that many cleaning personnel would not successfully read the label. I attempted to work into the text a CUIDADO reference and a mention of how "dissolve" may be a ten-dollar word to make that insinuation more opaque but it wouldn't fit without disrupting the flow of the paragraph.

So, in summary, I think if the US wanted to, we could prevent kids from dying from pac-man germs. You question the feasibility. Now, cupcakes for everyone.

__________________

Daxx

Their coming out of the walls! Game over man, game over!

__________________
I am the one, I am the zero, I am your low resolution hero.

Requital

I think we all might die!