The End To The Age Of Antibiotics

Submitted by David Trammel on Thu, 01/20/2022 - 06:58
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The First Circle: Your Physical Health and Your Mental Welfare

We all knew it was coming.

"Antimicrobial resistance now a leading cause of death worldwide, study finds"

"Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to humanity, health leaders have warned, as a study reveals it has become a leading cause of death worldwide and is killing about 3,500 people every day. More than 1.2 million – and potentially millions more – died in 2019 as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to the most comprehensive estimate to date of the global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The stark analysis covering more than 200 countries and territories was published in the Lancet. It says AMR is killing more people than HIV/Aids or malaria. Many hundreds of thousands of deaths are occurring due to common, previously treatable infections, the study says, because bacteria that cause them have become resistant to treatment. “These new data reveal the true scale of antimicrobial resistance worldwide, and are a clear signal that we must act now to combat the threat,” said the report’s co-author Prof Chris Murray, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington."

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We're going to have to relearn health habits that minimize the risk of getting an infection from a wound, as well as how to use some of the many herbal remedies from history. The time of being able to rely on the for profit pharmaceutical industry to pull another magic pill out of their butts is over. Or that most of us can even afford what they produce.

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lathechuck

Thu, 01/20/2022 - 09:01

It's hard to imagine how to run a safe controlled experiment on wound healing, as long as topical antibiotics are readily available, but if I couldn't get the usual "triple-antibiotic ointment", I'd try garlic under the bandage, as well as soap. Hydrogen peroxide is another antiseptic, though somewhat controversial. (The risk is that it can damage healthy tissue around the wound, and if there's a wrong way to do something, someone will find it.)

pygmycory

Mon, 01/24/2022 - 13:03

I know of two people who have been or are affected by antibiotic-resistance in my extended network. There's probably more people I know who've experienced this, but I don't know about it.

This is something that is going to dwarf covid in the number of dead eventually. The situation just keeps gradually getting worse, and very little gets done. Growth promotion and prophylactic antibiotic use in agriculture should really be banned, because it produces resistance that gets into human infections.

Bacteria like to recombine DNA in weird ways, and don't stick to their own species when they do it. (The entire species concept doesn't work very well when applied to bacteria.) This means that resistance in a cow gut bacteria can end up in a human skin infection bacteria.

pygmycory

Mon, 01/24/2022 - 13:04

I should specify I mean offline extended network, rather than people I only know online.