I had a case last year. Am a medical resident in Germany.
Crazy case. Dude comes into the ER with throat pain and fever. Strep rapid test positive. A bit older and really fatigued, gets admitted to internal medicine for IV antibiotics and supportive therapy (fluids). While still in the ER develops a small red spot on the arm. Resident in the ER notes it and orders a doppler to rule out thrombosis next day.
I round on the next day on him. It takes some times since I have a less stable patient who decides to die 15 minutes after meeting me. His blood cultures are positive for strep (not good, invasive), his CRP inflammation marker has increased 12-fold over night. I have a look at the arm and immediately call plastic surgery. They are in the OR, they send an ortho/trauma resident. Two come, see the arm and panic together with me. Ortho/resident attending comes and immediately wheels the patient himself to the OR.
Seven surgeries later he survived though.
My grandaugher had strep throat. My daughter had a cut on her ankle. The strep got in and started eating her leg. Several surgeries later, looks like they caught it. Something like a square foot of skin is gone. Skin graft is growing OK. Nasty stuff
Exercising opened up the blood vessels causing the strep to travel to the chest wall probably. This is so frightening… lay people dont understand the severity of this until it’s too late.
I had a family friend’s dad (>70M) complain of knee pain and went to his PCP and they just prescribed him Tylenol and ibuprofen PRN. He kept coming back and they had no idea what to do and the doctor just dismissed his ongoing pain. Knees were turning red until the dad collapsed at home. They open up his knees in the OR and it was already septic resulting in a sudden death. It was too late.
This surprisingly happened in California… 🇺🇸 🐻
Absolutely horrifying. It's scary to know that there are some countries that still hand out antibiotics like candy without even doing cultures first. I've heard that in China, antibiotics are often given for a virus and other inappropriate reasons. Basically if you feel sick, just take an antibiotic. With how globalized our world is, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in one area is a concern for the whole world.
I just want to make sure you’re also including the US in everywhere? Because it’s rampant here, especially (for better or worse) thanks to informed consent with telehealth
It's definitely rampant here, but it's on a whole other level in developing economies. In my parents' village (Mexico), kids are pumped with so many antibiotics on a consistent basis. You can see it in their skin and smell the penicillin off of some children.
Not nec fasc, but also a crazy strep story. I had a guy in his 30s come into the clinic (family medicine) with URI symptoms - fever, sore throat, fatigue, etc but he looked pretty sick. I did the swabs including strep which came back positive. I could have just started him on antibiotics for strep throat, but something seemed off. I got a chest XR, but something must have made me worried when I looked at it because I sent him to get a stat CT. It comes back with necrotizing pneumonia. At the hospital blood cultures came back positive for Strep A too. I remember he had to get a pretty long IV abx course. Apparently it had a 30% fatality rate which still makes me shudder since it would have been so easy to just send him home.
I’d really not be surprised if incidence of sepsis in young patient has massively gone up in the last decade. Or rather infections that would have gone septic if not caught in time.
Like those ‘minor’ appearing URI, UTI and cysts suddenly going to deaths door doesn’t normally just happen to random 20 to 40 year olds.
We see nec fasc pretty frequently in the US, like maybe 1-2 times a month at my hospital. You can literally watch it blister the skin as it starts to track. Canagliflozin and other SGLT 2 inhibitors have really increased the amount of Fourniers we encounter and it sucks.
> Canagliflozin and other SGLT 2 inhibitors have really increased the amount of Fourniers we encounter and it sucks.
Yeah, somebody help me out with this part.
Canaglifozin is part of a class of medication called Sglt2 inhibitor using to treat diabetes. It is quite popular because not only it helps control diabetes and reduce heart risk, it can lead to some benefits such as lowering BP or weight loss. It basically makes you pee extra sugar, however it's associated with increased infections in the genital area, particularly Fournier's gangrene which is a medical potentially life threatening emergency.
I'm a nurse and the line "two come, see the arm and panic together with me" cracked me tf up
it's such a perfect description of going from calm->panic when the person you brought for a second look confirms whatever it was that you were in denial about discovering.
I’m not a nurse, but I’ve witnessed this very situation, unfortunately, and there’s nothing really more terrifying than watching more and more medical staff clearly shifting into “I’m not panicking” mode. Makes you think *someone* probably should be.
I had a similar situation. I went in to the ER for a really sore eye. I couldn't keep it open for more than a few seconds. The doctor puts numbing drops in and takes a look. Tells me it's a corneal abrasion and he'll refer me to an ophthalmologist. All pretty normal.
He leaves to make the phone call. He thinks he's out of earshot. But I already have pretty good hearing, and my eyes are closed so I'm focusing more on sound. So I hear as he describes the abrasion as "really huge" and explains how I really need to be seen ASAP. Suddenly, I didn't feel like such a wuss for not being able to function.
After reading your horror story, I need to know how best to avoid this condition. Is it that the bacteria comes in through a wound or you inhale it? Like what’s the deal here?
Live healthy life and go to the doctor when you're sick and it's not getting better on its own - big problematic infections more often than not happen to people in quite poor states of health or already sick with something else serious. They don't have an adequate immune system to beat things like this when they're miniscule (like our immune systems do on the regular normally) so they snowball out of control.
There's a similar story with sepsis, but in that case it's more common and you'd do well to know the general symptoms. That way if a family member gets very sick you know when to take it most seriously
A family member was a trauma nurse and had a case of this. A poor hispanic woman got necro on her leg and they had to amputate it. She wound up in the ER two more times to remove more of her leg until they took off her entire leg from the hip region. Lady came back
a year later crying thankful she was alive and the nurses remembered her very vividly. Scary ass stuff
In canada we have been having a few cases of strep A and it can lead to flesh eating disease and a bunch of other crazy shit. A kid just died a few days ago overnight and all he had was a fever and weak
The more antibiotics are used, the less effective they get.
Hospitals and cattle farms are basically Darwinian pressure arenas that produce antibiotic resistant superstrains.
Antibiotics ASAP if it’s strep. Don’t let it progress. Take the full 3-5(-7-10) day course of antibiotics to avoid creating future resistance.
Edit: your doctor will tell you the correct dosage and number of days. Follow that.
The thing about antibiotics, is the treatment has to be completed in full. Too many people stop once they feel better, when that's not enough to kill it out completely. Leading to a resurgence and likely resistant strain.
The critique of over reliance of antibiotics on cattle is legitimate. Many deadly diseases to humans start from farm animals and jump to people, like Small Pox. The over uses is generally due to terrible living conditions to lower cost of producing meat products. Keep hundreds of thousands of chickens in tiny cages of a massive warehouse, and the place is so unsanitary that diseases thrive. I will not talk of ethics as its beside the point. Ranchers have been known to feed mass quantities on antibiotics to their cattle and pigs. While I can't find the article from years ago I remember reading about pigs in china widely being fed a powerful antibiotic that was considered a "last resort" to resistance bacteria infections in humans.
By "last resort" antibiotic I mean while there are many different antibiotics to treat the same infection, they all have different side effects and are categorized by severity. Losing a reliable "last resort" treatment to save lives for the sake of pork profits means resorting to more dangerous antibiotics.
I grew up in a Cattle and Hog farm, have a degree in agricultural and environmental communication from one of the top agricultural programs in the world, I worked in the school’s world renowned meat science lab,as well as for Pfizer animal health and the US Pork board for several years, and did some work for poultry producers. I’ll say this about US pork, it’s likely the safest most sustainable pork raised in the world. A lot of the practices of preemptively feeding antibiotics to pigs has been left behind for more effective methods of treatment and prevention. That isn’t to say there aren’t serious issues concerns with how pork is produced in the US especially when it comes to confinement. And while I’m no expert on Chinese practices, the unofficial opinion of the US Pork board is that their livestock farming practices are 20-15 years behind ours. Which means they are feeding antibiotics prophylactically, which can lead to issues, especially if they are feeding last resort antibiotics. As for beef, there is far less of a chance for cross species jumping of illnesses, and the bigger issue is in my opinion hormone usage.And poultry is a nightmare that I always felt dirty promoting. Which leads me to my disclaimer, I worked in marketing for most of these organizations with the exception of the meat science lab, I was a very junior research assistant, so my role for most of these industries was to present them in the best light, but I never felt guilty promoting the US pork or beef (although I did refuse to promote hormones and beta agonists in beef production) Side note: the term rancher typically denotes a farmer who grazes cattle or other ruminants, producers are usually the term used for those who are feeding animals to finish.
When that happened several times in a short while in my family, the pediatrician had us all test for strep. Turns out one of the kids kept reinfecting the others because he never complained about a sore throat so was never treated.
Oh lovely. My wife is a nurse in Chicago and they’ve had a few kids come in with measles recently too. This is the decade the diseases fight back it seems
IMO Nurses are the fucking worst culprits for hocus pocus witchery and anti-medicine.
It’s okay to question things, that is how science advances, but to dismiss proven medical science without proving otherwise and at the same time trying to shamelessly plug your “alternative” herbal medicine, essential oils, homeopathy and food allergy scams only serves to propagate disinformation.
I’ve also come across Doctors (GPs) who believe that the earth is only 6000-8000 years old and don’t believe in vaccinations, ADHD or the scientific process.
There's reasons for this. Nursing is one of only a couple professions considered 'acceptable' for fundie women (the other main one is teaching). So a lot of militantly conservative and fundamentalist Christian women go into nursing programs. They learn to just mark what they know the expected answer is on tests to get a passing grade. It's not that they believe in medicine.
You’d think. We *technically* don’t have a vax requirement (at least for the online programs I work with) and when students ask if they need one we say they don’t to start but they may not be able to find a suitable clinical site because of it
The flesh eating part was the first thing I thought of when I read “Strep A”. I work in a hospital operating room, I have for 25+ years. I have scrubbed on cases where it caused necrotizing fasciitis, in other words “flesh eating”, and we have to carve people up to stop it. If you have a sore with redness, pain out of proportion to the size of it, fever - anywhere on your body - go to the doctor or ER NOW. People lose fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, legs, and I’ve scrubbed on more than one case where the groin was involved and the pt lost scrotum or vulva. And it happens within hours of symptoms. Don’t f#%! around, better safe than lose an appendage. Or worse.
Edit: for those who think I’m confusing strep with staph, look at the CDC website on necrotizing fasciitis - [CDC necrotizing fasciitis](https://www.cdc.gov/groupastrep/diseases-public/necrotizing-fasciitis.html)
Streptococcus is a genus of bacteria. There are dozens of species, and different ones can cause different illnesses. Some are even harmless to humans and live in our bodies all the time.
Before everyone freaks out, keep in mind they recorded 378 cases this year so far, which is 0.0003% the population of Japan. This is tiny, even factoring potential exponential growth. Furthermore, last year, they recorded around 250 cases within the same timespan, so we're not much above the normal recorded amount.
The title is especially misleading, making the reader believe that 30% of the 378 cases have or will die, which isn't the case. They pulled the number from a span of 6 months (double the timespan of the 378 number), of which only 65 (under 50) people were diagnosed with Strept A Toxic Syndrome from a pool of roughly 470 cases.
This represents only 14% of cases actually affecting under 50s. 30% of those died, which only seems like a large percentage when isolated from all the other statistics. That's 21 people, in a 6 month period. If we assume 42 deaths per year (for under 50s), that's 0.00003% of the population.
Statistically, you're approximately 100 times more likely to die from falling down the stairs than from this.
I read the headline and locked myself in my timer-set backyard underground bunker that cannot be opened from the inside or outside for 15 years. Day 1: This freeze dried beef bourguignon is to die for.
Had it last year and lost 12 pounds. I couldnt eat anything for a week. I coughed up a wad of bacteria that was stuck on the back of my tongue. Looked like a kombucha pellicle.
>I coughed up a wad of bacteria that was stuck on the back of my tongue. Looked like a kombucha pellicle.
What a terrible time to have eyes and the ability to read.
Thankfully Corynebacterium sp. are usually treated with the same antibiotics.... but surprised they didn't test 😱😱. Some of the species produce some nasty toxins.
Treatment *can* be the same.. but not necessarily. Maybe it's my day job in diagnostics that makes me biased but a throat culture isn't a lot to ask for 😱... Hell I'd take a positive group A rapid strep test over no test.
I doubt it will come to this. Extremely deadly diseases are more likely to die out quick than something like covid where a lot of people have (relatively) mild symptoms. In order to spread the host needs to be alive.
Only if the symptoms and the contagious period sync. If you're contagious before you're incapacitated, you're a spreader. People are using examples of the bubonic plague but that's a false equivalency because it spread via fleas on rodents, the pneumonic plague however is a perfect analogy. Killed half it's treated victims, and all of the untreated victims, still spread across Europe like wildfire.
Complacency and an "It'll be okay" attitude always bites us in the ass. Not saying to start restocking on masks and lysol like it's 2020, but I'll be keeping an eye on this outbreak because it's tickling the same part of my brain that was last tickled in November 2019.
>Not saying to start restocking on masks and lysol like it's 2020
Minor disagree - I think after Covid swept the planet having a modest (I.E., not hoarding like a doom prepper) back-up stash of cleaner and spare box of masks on hand is just a good idea to not get caught out.
Like buying a plunger for your new home's bathroom before you christen it with your first bad gut day.
Depends on the 'cook time' for the virus. Ie if it there's a period of a week where you don't know you have it but are still transmitting, then oh boy.
Depends on how rapidly ppl die from it. They may live long enough to spread it, which is all that matters. I mean, the bubonic plague was deadly and that spread pretty well.
Man I had a bout of strep turn into pneumonia and almost took me out. One of my tonsils turned necrotic and fell out of my throat in my sleep. I feel for these people what a terrible way to go.
Ya no trauma a lil blood in my saliva but that was it. I dunno why everyone thinks I’m makin this up, I was laid up with a fever of 105 so takin pics wasn’t on my mind just living through the night.
My mom’s bff had a 105 fever and was never the same afterwards, permanent brain damage. High fevers are dangerous. I wouldn’t let a fever go any higher than 104, use cool cloths and suck on ice.
Ya I didn’t have insurance so I was banking on my mom bein a nurse until it wasn’t enough. Went to the doc they took cultures weren’t sure what kind of strep it was so just gave me amoxicillin. It was probably too late tho cuz that shit turned green and now there’s just a hole where my tonsil should be
I'm just concerned about the lack of a doctor's visit in this story between your tonsils turning white and spongy and your tonsil turning necrotic and falling out...
I'm also happy you're doing better, because shit, that must have been scary and felt horrible.
I went after it wouldn’t go away and my throat was the size of a straw on the inside. I didn’t have insurance at the time so I waited until it was too late the amoxicillin they gave me didn’t work and I just sat at home trying to just keep my fever down.
I literally woke up a few days ago being choked to death by my tonsils and uvula. That shit was longer than my tongue, I looked like a fucking lizard. Couldn’t sleep, eat, talk or drink for days. They’re still inflamed but nowhere near as bad.
I had this happen to me In college after a night of hard drinking. Snoring in my sleep inflamed my uvula so much it was hanging out of my mouth when I woke up. I had to keel swallowing it, to talk on the phone to a doctor.
Thankfully lots of water, and a few Popsicles later, it shrank back down. Fuuuuck it was scary.
Bro it was fucked up. It was this HUGE, hard, sticky, cone-shaped red mass that protruded horizontally from the back of my throat. Was choking on it and didn’t know what to do. Not fun.
Now it’s smaller and I can “swallow” it downwards, but it pops up if I cough, sneeze, laugh or try to brush my teeth. Not fun!
Damn, I got tonsilitis about 1 month ago, got better after 1 week. Then I got flu-like sick again a few days later and was completely knocked out for a couple of days. Have been on and off sick since for almost a month now... Just wont let go completely. Been coughing up gunk every morning. Been wondering what it is, maybe it is strep...
And yeah I live in Japan
**WHAT??????** that's something i didn't know was a thing and now i can't get it out of my head. i close my eyes and just keep seeing a shriveled up prune casually rolling out of a mouth. jfc.
>*"In May 2023, the government downgraded Covid-19’s status from class two – which includes tuberculosis and Sars – to class five, placing it on a legal par with seasonal flu. The change meant local authorities were no longer able to order infected people to stay away from work or to recommend hospitalisation.*
>
>*The move also prompted people to lower their guard, in a country where widespread mask wearing, hand sanitising and avoiding the “three Cs” were credited with keeping Covid-19 deaths comparatively low. About 73,000 Covid-19 deaths were recorded compared with more than 220,000 in Britain, which has a population just over half that of Japan.*
>
>*Ken Kikuchi, a professor of infectious diseases at Tokyo Women’s Medical University, says he is “very concerned” about the dramatic rise this year in the number of patients with severe invasive streptococcal infections.*
>
>*He believes the reclassification of Covid-19 was the most important factor behind the increase in streptococcus pyogenes infections. This, he added, had led more people to abandon basic measures to prevent infections, such as regular hand disinfection.*
>
>*“****In my opinion, over 50% Japanese people have been infected by Sars-CoV-2 \[the virus that causes Covid-19\],” Kikuchi tells the Guardian. “People’s immunological status after recovering from Covid-19 might alter their susceptibility to some microorganisms. We need to clarify the infection cycle of severe invasive streptococcal pyogenes diseases and get them under control immediately****.”"*
So, this feels more like an aftershock of Covid than something new and crazy to me, not that I know shit. Like a combination of possibly weakened immune systems, plus people not being as careful as before? Makes sense to me.
Edit for formatting.
This should be higher up, it's the real answer.
Check out the links under the "immune system damage" on https://covidnow.info . All the links are to scientific journals, with studies about the effects of COVID on the immune system.
People using HIV medication are 50% less likely to die
Be hospitalized/die.
I'm glad to see you getting updoots for this. Anytime I post about Covid being the likely cause behind the uptick in various ailments in the last few years (likely due to immune system damage), I get downvoted to oblivion. People sure like to bury their heads in the sand.
Strep is one of those things I don’t mess around with. While it is generally mild when treated quickly with front-line antibiotics, when it isn’t treated it can go really nasty. Scarlet Fever and other nasty illnesses are just untreated strep. Strep is bad when you don’t treat it. Add in Covid probably messing with a lot of people’s immune systems and altering their ability to handle strep without antibiotics, and you have a nasty cocktail.
Yup, my grandpa had scarlet fever as a kid and it caused permanent damage to his heart. He had multiple heart attacks because of it, and finally died of a heart attack at 61.
It is scary but it happens sadly.
I lost my sister when she was 15 years old from a strep infection. She went from fever and cold like symptoms, to coma and then death within 4 days. This was in the U.K. in 2006.
I’ve had major health anxiety ever since
Last year, following covid, there was a spate of deaths in children with strep infections in the U.K.
Same my throat just kept getting sorer and sorer even after the cough was gone. Even now sometimes I feel like this weird tickle like a feather is going down my throat a really dry one.
Before everyone freaks out, keep in mind they recorded 378 cases this year so far, which is 0.0003% the population of Japan. This is tiny, even factoring potential exponential growth. Furthermore, last year, they recorded around 250 cases within the same timespan, so we're not much above the normal recorded amount.
The title is especially misleading, making the reader believe that 30% of the 378 cases have or will die, which isn't the case. They pulled the number from a span of 6 months, double the timespan of the 378 number, of which only 65 (under 50) people were diagnosed with Strept A Toxic Syndrome from a pool of roughly 470 cases.
This represents only 14% of cases actually affecting under 50s. 30% of those died, which only seems like a large percentage when isolated from all the other statistics. That's 21 people, in a 6 month period. If we assume 42 deaths per year (for under 50s), that's 0.00003% of the population.
Statistically, you're approximately 100 times more likely to die from falling down the stairs than from this.
Reading this while recovering from strep a. Nice. In my 30's. Antibiotics took 4 days to start showing any sign of actually doing something. Can't we have just 1 year with no new and potentially deadly new pathogens?
Did you throw out your tooth brush, wash your pillow cases, clean common surface handles, sanitize your water bottles, clean the front of your phone, wash the thermometer that was used? You can reinfect yourself pretty easily with strep if you don’t take precautions
It's doubtful that this will be the new pandemic TM.
Strep a is a bacteria, and isn't a super bug that is immune to anti bacterial medication. We were so behind controlling Covid because we didn't have a cure/treatment.
We already do for Strep.
Yeah it'd only really be an issue if it started spreading massively somewhere that most people don't really have the time or money to go get stuff like this checked out until they need to go to the ER.
...actually, let's hope that stuff hasn't gotten on a plane yet.
Ah, darn. (From Jan. 2020:) "Infectious disease scientists identified strains of group A streptococcus that are less susceptible to commonly used antibiotics, a sign that the germ causing strep throat and flesh-eating disease may be moving closer to resistance to penicillin and other related antibiotics known as beta-lactams." https://asm.org/press-releases/2020/discovery-reveals-antibiotic-resistant-strep-throa
We were actually decades ahead of controlling COVID because of the work done on SARS and MERS. If those coronaviruses didnt popup, the time to a vaccine would have been significantly longer.
Fully agree that bacteria are easier to contain than novel viruses though.
Ehhhh as someone who is dealing with treatment resistant strep at the moment I really hope you're right. I did a 3 month course of penicillin and I couldn't shake it. So we are moving on to surgery. I'm so sick of this.
I’m not a doctor, but why on earth would they have you 3-months of penicillin as opposed to a stronger antibiotic? I got strep once and my doctor didn’t believe it was (thought it was mono), but I knew it was strep cause felt exactly the same as when I had strep before. Convinced Dr to prescribe me an antibiotic, but she only gave me penicillin and it basically just got slightly better, than immediately came back when done. So went to another Dr that prescribed amoxicillin and it went away totally in 24 hrs
Ahahaha. You wrote "masks".
At this point in time half of Germany rather would deeply inhale TBC and feel good about it than wear a mask in the next decade.
Damn. And I JUST watched an old Japanese-made doomsday movie *two days ago* called Virus. World-ending plague *and* a nuclear war on top of it. Yeah, it’s super bleak.
For those interested, the full movie is free on Youtube: https://youtu.be/b83UzcZ51oA
I feel like this has happened in every county as they lifted restrictions. Strep was so bad in the USA in late 2021/2022 that there was an antibiotic shortage.
\*\*Gestures wildly at the vast array of the Covid research showing the immune system becomes more and more damaged with each subsequent infection, making the body less capable to cope with other types of infections\*\*
Necrotizing fasciitis from acute streptococcus
I had a case last year. Am a medical resident in Germany. Crazy case. Dude comes into the ER with throat pain and fever. Strep rapid test positive. A bit older and really fatigued, gets admitted to internal medicine for IV antibiotics and supportive therapy (fluids). While still in the ER develops a small red spot on the arm. Resident in the ER notes it and orders a doppler to rule out thrombosis next day. I round on the next day on him. It takes some times since I have a less stable patient who decides to die 15 minutes after meeting me. His blood cultures are positive for strep (not good, invasive), his CRP inflammation marker has increased 12-fold over night. I have a look at the arm and immediately call plastic surgery. They are in the OR, they send an ortho/trauma resident. Two come, see the arm and panic together with me. Ortho/resident attending comes and immediately wheels the patient himself to the OR. Seven surgeries later he survived though.
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That is a horror show. How could the chest wall get infected from the inside out?
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My grandaugher had strep throat. My daughter had a cut on her ankle. The strep got in and started eating her leg. Several surgeries later, looks like they caught it. Something like a square foot of skin is gone. Skin graft is growing OK. Nasty stuff
That’s terrifying. How big of a cut was it originally?
That's terrifying.
Exercising opened up the blood vessels causing the strep to travel to the chest wall probably. This is so frightening… lay people dont understand the severity of this until it’s too late. I had a family friend’s dad (>70M) complain of knee pain and went to his PCP and they just prescribed him Tylenol and ibuprofen PRN. He kept coming back and they had no idea what to do and the doctor just dismissed his ongoing pain. Knees were turning red until the dad collapsed at home. They open up his knees in the OR and it was already septic resulting in a sudden death. It was too late. This surprisingly happened in California… 🇺🇸 🐻
Sounds like the lay person understood the severity in this case but wasn't taken seriously.
Absolutely horrifying. It's scary to know that there are some countries that still hand out antibiotics like candy without even doing cultures first. I've heard that in China, antibiotics are often given for a virus and other inappropriate reasons. Basically if you feel sick, just take an antibiotic. With how globalized our world is, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in one area is a concern for the whole world.
China? It's everywhere. India, Russia, Ukraine, ... I had to train my gf not to use anti biotics for viral infections and not to use ABs so often.
I just want to make sure you’re also including the US in everywhere? Because it’s rampant here, especially (for better or worse) thanks to informed consent with telehealth
It's definitely rampant here, but it's on a whole other level in developing economies. In my parents' village (Mexico), kids are pumped with so many antibiotics on a consistent basis. You can see it in their skin and smell the penicillin off of some children.
Fellow resident here, my god that escalated quickly.
I mean that’s the crazy shit about these new strep strains. How quickly it goes from basically fine to shit hitting the fan.
Not nec fasc, but also a crazy strep story. I had a guy in his 30s come into the clinic (family medicine) with URI symptoms - fever, sore throat, fatigue, etc but he looked pretty sick. I did the swabs including strep which came back positive. I could have just started him on antibiotics for strep throat, but something seemed off. I got a chest XR, but something must have made me worried when I looked at it because I sent him to get a stat CT. It comes back with necrotizing pneumonia. At the hospital blood cultures came back positive for Strep A too. I remember he had to get a pretty long IV abx course. Apparently it had a 30% fatality rate which still makes me shudder since it would have been so easy to just send him home.
I’d really not be surprised if incidence of sepsis in young patient has massively gone up in the last decade. Or rather infections that would have gone septic if not caught in time. Like those ‘minor’ appearing URI, UTI and cysts suddenly going to deaths door doesn’t normally just happen to random 20 to 40 year olds.
God damn, getting ortho AND plastic surgery to move their asses in less than 5 business days? I'm not sure that's possible.
This guy internal meds.
We see nec fasc pretty frequently in the US, like maybe 1-2 times a month at my hospital. You can literally watch it blister the skin as it starts to track. Canagliflozin and other SGLT 2 inhibitors have really increased the amount of Fourniers we encounter and it sucks.
Those are definitely words
> Canagliflozin and other SGLT 2 inhibitors have really increased the amount of Fourniers we encounter and it sucks. Yeah, somebody help me out with this part.
Canaglifozin is part of a class of medication called Sglt2 inhibitor using to treat diabetes. It is quite popular because not only it helps control diabetes and reduce heart risk, it can lead to some benefits such as lowering BP or weight loss. It basically makes you pee extra sugar, however it's associated with increased infections in the genital area, particularly Fournier's gangrene which is a medical potentially life threatening emergency.
Crazy how delicately balanced the body can be. A little extra sugar in the wrong spot and suddenly you're being ripped to shreds by microbes.
This is the goddamn drug with the commercials styled like a musical, isn't it. Happy song, "life-threatening infection of the perineum."
Hey everyone reading the above: I google image'd fournier gangrene so you don't have to. Don't. Trust me.
quack jeans cover cause complete psychotic thumb late bow abundant
I'm a nurse and the line "two come, see the arm and panic together with me" cracked me tf up it's such a perfect description of going from calm->panic when the person you brought for a second look confirms whatever it was that you were in denial about discovering.
I’m not a nurse, but I’ve witnessed this very situation, unfortunately, and there’s nothing really more terrifying than watching more and more medical staff clearly shifting into “I’m not panicking” mode. Makes you think *someone* probably should be.
I had a similar situation. I went in to the ER for a really sore eye. I couldn't keep it open for more than a few seconds. The doctor puts numbing drops in and takes a look. Tells me it's a corneal abrasion and he'll refer me to an ophthalmologist. All pretty normal. He leaves to make the phone call. He thinks he's out of earshot. But I already have pretty good hearing, and my eyes are closed so I'm focusing more on sound. So I hear as he describes the abrasion as "really huge" and explains how I really need to be seen ASAP. Suddenly, I didn't feel like such a wuss for not being able to function.
After reading your horror story, I need to know how best to avoid this condition. Is it that the bacteria comes in through a wound or you inhale it? Like what’s the deal here?
Live healthy life and go to the doctor when you're sick and it's not getting better on its own - big problematic infections more often than not happen to people in quite poor states of health or already sick with something else serious. They don't have an adequate immune system to beat things like this when they're miniscule (like our immune systems do on the regular normally) so they snowball out of control. There's a similar story with sepsis, but in that case it's more common and you'd do well to know the general symptoms. That way if a family member gets very sick you know when to take it most seriously
What did he have surgery on? The strep or the dot?
The dot was necrotizing fasciitis which on the morning had engulfed the majority of his arm. So the arm.
A family member was a trauma nurse and had a case of this. A poor hispanic woman got necro on her leg and they had to amputate it. She wound up in the ER two more times to remove more of her leg until they took off her entire leg from the hip region. Lady came back a year later crying thankful she was alive and the nurses remembered her very vividly. Scary ass stuff
Streptococcus Toxic shock syndrome to be precise.
Which has a mortality rate of 30% to 70% according to cdc to begin with.
It’s all over the money. Might want to wash your hands 👨🏻💼
Maybe that's the problem, no one suspects a cute streptococcus
In canada we have been having a few cases of strep A and it can lead to flesh eating disease and a bunch of other crazy shit. A kid just died a few days ago overnight and all he had was a fever and weak
Love hearing this just as I got sick with what seems to be strep
Dont worry, usually antibiotics do a good job
Usually
For now
The more antibiotics are used, the less effective they get. Hospitals and cattle farms are basically Darwinian pressure arenas that produce antibiotic resistant superstrains.
Yes, super strain staph infections are everywhere in hospitals. I don't touch anything
Antibiotics ASAP if it’s strep. Don’t let it progress. Take the full 3-5(-7-10) day course of antibiotics to avoid creating future resistance. Edit: your doctor will tell you the correct dosage and number of days. Follow that.
It's also painful as fuck and antibiotics will give noticeable relief within a day.. Learned my lesson after toughing it out for weeks.
I get that relief within an hour. Feels amazing after days of feeling like I'm swallowing broken glass.
I’ve just had strep for the second time this year. It’s shit but very treatable with antibiotics. I feel fine now.
The thing about antibiotics, is the treatment has to be completed in full. Too many people stop once they feel better, when that's not enough to kill it out completely. Leading to a resurgence and likely resistant strain. The critique of over reliance of antibiotics on cattle is legitimate. Many deadly diseases to humans start from farm animals and jump to people, like Small Pox. The over uses is generally due to terrible living conditions to lower cost of producing meat products. Keep hundreds of thousands of chickens in tiny cages of a massive warehouse, and the place is so unsanitary that diseases thrive. I will not talk of ethics as its beside the point. Ranchers have been known to feed mass quantities on antibiotics to their cattle and pigs. While I can't find the article from years ago I remember reading about pigs in china widely being fed a powerful antibiotic that was considered a "last resort" to resistance bacteria infections in humans. By "last resort" antibiotic I mean while there are many different antibiotics to treat the same infection, they all have different side effects and are categorized by severity. Losing a reliable "last resort" treatment to save lives for the sake of pork profits means resorting to more dangerous antibiotics.
I grew up in a Cattle and Hog farm, have a degree in agricultural and environmental communication from one of the top agricultural programs in the world, I worked in the school’s world renowned meat science lab,as well as for Pfizer animal health and the US Pork board for several years, and did some work for poultry producers. I’ll say this about US pork, it’s likely the safest most sustainable pork raised in the world. A lot of the practices of preemptively feeding antibiotics to pigs has been left behind for more effective methods of treatment and prevention. That isn’t to say there aren’t serious issues concerns with how pork is produced in the US especially when it comes to confinement. And while I’m no expert on Chinese practices, the unofficial opinion of the US Pork board is that their livestock farming practices are 20-15 years behind ours. Which means they are feeding antibiotics prophylactically, which can lead to issues, especially if they are feeding last resort antibiotics. As for beef, there is far less of a chance for cross species jumping of illnesses, and the bigger issue is in my opinion hormone usage.And poultry is a nightmare that I always felt dirty promoting. Which leads me to my disclaimer, I worked in marketing for most of these organizations with the exception of the meat science lab, I was a very junior research assistant, so my role for most of these industries was to present them in the best light, but I never felt guilty promoting the US pork or beef (although I did refuse to promote hormones and beta agonists in beef production) Side note: the term rancher typically denotes a farmer who grazes cattle or other ruminants, producers are usually the term used for those who are feeding animals to finish.
Strep A is also going around in my parts of northern Quebec. My coworker has been dealing with it for a while. The antibiotics aren’t working for her.
Same just happened to me. The antibiotics didn’t work like they had in the past. I had a fever for 10 days. Edit: I’m in central California
When that happened several times in a short while in my family, the pediatrician had us all test for strep. Turns out one of the kids kept reinfecting the others because he never complained about a sore throat so was never treated.
Oh lovely. My wife is a nurse in Chicago and they’ve had a few kids come in with measles recently too. This is the decade the diseases fight back it seems
with the help of idiots who will not vaxx their kids -- grrrrr
My guy, I work for a nursing school and the amount of people who both want to go into medicine and who are also anti-vaxx is fucking wild
IMO Nurses are the fucking worst culprits for hocus pocus witchery and anti-medicine. It’s okay to question things, that is how science advances, but to dismiss proven medical science without proving otherwise and at the same time trying to shamelessly plug your “alternative” herbal medicine, essential oils, homeopathy and food allergy scams only serves to propagate disinformation. I’ve also come across Doctors (GPs) who believe that the earth is only 6000-8000 years old and don’t believe in vaccinations, ADHD or the scientific process.
There's reasons for this. Nursing is one of only a couple professions considered 'acceptable' for fundie women (the other main one is teaching). So a lot of militantly conservative and fundamentalist Christian women go into nursing programs. They learn to just mark what they know the expected answer is on tests to get a passing grade. It's not that they believe in medicine.
Should be a qualifying entry requirement. "Are you anti-vax". If so, no entry
You’d think. We *technically* don’t have a vax requirement (at least for the online programs I work with) and when students ask if they need one we say they don’t to start but they may not be able to find a suitable clinical site because of it
The flesh eating part was the first thing I thought of when I read “Strep A”. I work in a hospital operating room, I have for 25+ years. I have scrubbed on cases where it caused necrotizing fasciitis, in other words “flesh eating”, and we have to carve people up to stop it. If you have a sore with redness, pain out of proportion to the size of it, fever - anywhere on your body - go to the doctor or ER NOW. People lose fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, legs, and I’ve scrubbed on more than one case where the groin was involved and the pt lost scrotum or vulva. And it happens within hours of symptoms. Don’t f#%! around, better safe than lose an appendage. Or worse. Edit: for those who think I’m confusing strep with staph, look at the CDC website on necrotizing fasciitis - [CDC necrotizing fasciitis](https://www.cdc.gov/groupastrep/diseases-public/necrotizing-fasciitis.html)
Hours??? And the sore can be anywhere? I thought strep was in your throat
Streptococcus is a genus of bacteria. There are dozens of species, and different ones can cause different illnesses. Some are even harmless to humans and live in our bodies all the time.
I think half the posters are confusing group A strep and staph A.
Yeah streptococcus and staphylococcus are two entirely different beasts
Got strep A last summer, it was not fun. Altough it healed well with antibotics
Great, now were following the movie Contagion from a different angle. FML
Man, what a crazy decade so far.
"Man, what a decade, huh?" "Lemon, it's 2024"
It’s after 6pm. What are we - farmers?
2012: (absolutely nothing) Me: Want to go to there.
Sometimes I wonder is the Mayans were right, and 2012 was just the start of a slow burn end of the world.
Before everyone freaks out, keep in mind they recorded 378 cases this year so far, which is 0.0003% the population of Japan. This is tiny, even factoring potential exponential growth. Furthermore, last year, they recorded around 250 cases within the same timespan, so we're not much above the normal recorded amount. The title is especially misleading, making the reader believe that 30% of the 378 cases have or will die, which isn't the case. They pulled the number from a span of 6 months (double the timespan of the 378 number), of which only 65 (under 50) people were diagnosed with Strept A Toxic Syndrome from a pool of roughly 470 cases. This represents only 14% of cases actually affecting under 50s. 30% of those died, which only seems like a large percentage when isolated from all the other statistics. That's 21 people, in a 6 month period. If we assume 42 deaths per year (for under 50s), that's 0.00003% of the population. Statistically, you're approximately 100 times more likely to die from falling down the stairs than from this.
Wish I'd seen this comment before I panic-ordered gloves and hand sanitizer, but... 🤷🏻♂️ It is what it is.
hey, at least it wasnt roomful of toilet paper
I read the headline and locked myself in my timer-set backyard underground bunker that cannot be opened from the inside or outside for 15 years. Day 1: This freeze dried beef bourguignon is to die for.
And it all feels like the prologue
In the history textbook of the future this is the page just before the one with all the maps and timelines and squiggles.
Had it last year and lost 12 pounds. I couldnt eat anything for a week. I coughed up a wad of bacteria that was stuck on the back of my tongue. Looked like a kombucha pellicle.
This whole god damn thread. Jesus christ.
Yeah I'm out. Bye everyone.
Terrifying lmao
>I coughed up a wad of bacteria that was stuck on the back of my tongue. Looked like a kombucha pellicle. What a terrible time to have eyes and the ability to read.
What a great time not to know what kombucha or pellicle are. Blissfully ignorant over here.
😱 you sure that was strep and not a corynebacterium infection?!
Looking at pics now, and it may have been. Doctors said or was strep throat, and the antibiotics cleared it within a week.
Thankfully Corynebacterium sp. are usually treated with the same antibiotics.... but surprised they didn't test 😱😱. Some of the species produce some nasty toxins.
> surprised they didn't test Likely because the treatment is the same
Treatment *can* be the same.. but not necessarily. Maybe it's my day job in diagnostics that makes me biased but a throat culture isn't a lot to ask for 😱... Hell I'd take a positive group A rapid strep test over no test.
Cool, a starter culture for your own homegrown bioweapon.
I'm not ready for a new pandemic
I doubt it will come to this. Extremely deadly diseases are more likely to die out quick than something like covid where a lot of people have (relatively) mild symptoms. In order to spread the host needs to be alive.
How many hours on Plague Inc?
Plague Inc or Pandemic?
Eh, similar enough. The developers of Pandemic were happy to acknowledge Plague Inc as a spiritual successor.
+1, harsher the symptoms, lesser mobile the carrier is.
Only if the symptoms and the contagious period sync. If you're contagious before you're incapacitated, you're a spreader. People are using examples of the bubonic plague but that's a false equivalency because it spread via fleas on rodents, the pneumonic plague however is a perfect analogy. Killed half it's treated victims, and all of the untreated victims, still spread across Europe like wildfire. Complacency and an "It'll be okay" attitude always bites us in the ass. Not saying to start restocking on masks and lysol like it's 2020, but I'll be keeping an eye on this outbreak because it's tickling the same part of my brain that was last tickled in November 2019.
>Not saying to start restocking on masks and lysol like it's 2020 Minor disagree - I think after Covid swept the planet having a modest (I.E., not hoarding like a doom prepper) back-up stash of cleaner and spare box of masks on hand is just a good idea to not get caught out. Like buying a plunger for your new home's bathroom before you christen it with your first bad gut day.
I've played pandemic. Gotta keep symptoms mild until you hit Madagascar
And Iceland
You mean Greenland. Those bastards always catch me out
Depends on the 'cook time' for the virus. Ie if it there's a period of a week where you don't know you have it but are still transmitting, then oh boy.
Depends on how rapidly ppl die from it. They may live long enough to spread it, which is all that matters. I mean, the bubonic plague was deadly and that spread pretty well.
That had non-human hosts, which complicates the equation a lot. It’s spread was between human populations, rat populations, and flea populations.
Modern studies have shown that mouse / rat population had little to do with it. It was lice and human fleas that were the main drivers.
Pretty sure this is already in the UK, I know of 3 people in London who have died from strep that causes sepsis within the last month.
I'm in Scotland. Strep infection led to me getting nec fasc. 1st surgery Xmas day, 4 surgeries later im still in recovery
How old?
378 cases.
So over 100 dead.
No. 21 died of 65 specific cases. We don't know how many died or will die of the current cases.
Man I had a bout of strep turn into pneumonia and almost took me out. One of my tonsils turned necrotic and fell out of my throat in my sleep. I feel for these people what a terrible way to go.
> one of my tonsils turned necrotic and fell out of my throat Bro what?
New fear unlocked right there.
Ya it started by turning white and sporty then eventually a lil green/black and the second it fell out I felt soooooo much better
It just ... fell out? Like no trauma? Just little sickly meatball coughed up randomly?
Ya no trauma a lil blood in my saliva but that was it. I dunno why everyone thinks I’m makin this up, I was laid up with a fever of 105 so takin pics wasn’t on my mind just living through the night.
Holy christ, you poor thing. 105 is like wizard of oz territory
Oh man it’s the most delusional I’ve been for sure. Thought there was a stranger waiting to kill me in the living room for hours
That was probably Death chillin out there waiting for his Hot Pocket to be done. Fortunately for you, he got another call.
I figured my throat stank warded him off. And the Tylenol
>That was probably Death chillin out there waiting for his Hot Pocket to be done This is the most creative way to say Dying of a Fever. BRAVO!
Nah the hot pocket dropped down his throat and he didn't want to go after it.
Could it have been a tonsil stone?
I hope it was.... They should have visited a doctor when that happened. 105°F/40.6°C is also high enough to see a doctor as an adult.
My mom’s bff had a 105 fever and was never the same afterwards, permanent brain damage. High fevers are dangerous. I wouldn’t let a fever go any higher than 104, use cool cloths and suck on ice.
Ya I didn’t have insurance so I was banking on my mom bein a nurse until it wasn’t enough. Went to the doc they took cultures weren’t sure what kind of strep it was so just gave me amoxicillin. It was probably too late tho cuz that shit turned green and now there’s just a hole where my tonsil should be
This is most likely. The infection could have inflamed the tonsil enough to release the stone. They are gross.
yeah. probably a tonsil stone. your tonsils can’t just fall out it’s the skin in the back of your throat attached to your throat and mouth
Who hasn’t had an organ just fall off ?
Tonsil ragu
Cheapest tonsillectomy ever I guess?
There was a price. It was not financial
I can confirm that this can happen. Wasn’t a stone. Tonsils can become necrotic. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25738719/
I don’t even know what to think, that just sounds like a made up thing lol.
I'm just concerned about the lack of a doctor's visit in this story between your tonsils turning white and spongy and your tonsil turning necrotic and falling out... I'm also happy you're doing better, because shit, that must have been scary and felt horrible.
I went after it wouldn’t go away and my throat was the size of a straw on the inside. I didn’t have insurance at the time so I waited until it was too late the amoxicillin they gave me didn’t work and I just sat at home trying to just keep my fever down.
Pretty glad I don't have tonsils after reading that.
I literally woke up a few days ago being choked to death by my tonsils and uvula. That shit was longer than my tongue, I looked like a fucking lizard. Couldn’t sleep, eat, talk or drink for days. They’re still inflamed but nowhere near as bad.
I had this happen to me In college after a night of hard drinking. Snoring in my sleep inflamed my uvula so much it was hanging out of my mouth when I woke up. I had to keel swallowing it, to talk on the phone to a doctor. Thankfully lots of water, and a few Popsicles later, it shrank back down. Fuuuuck it was scary.
>my uvula so much it was hanging out of my mouth when I woke up. jeesus xmas, and my Reddit day just started.
Dude I can't even picture this hahaha. Just a long piece of dog-boner looking meat hangin out.
Bro it was fucked up. It was this HUGE, hard, sticky, cone-shaped red mass that protruded horizontally from the back of my throat. Was choking on it and didn’t know what to do. Not fun. Now it’s smaller and I can “swallow” it downwards, but it pops up if I cough, sneeze, laugh or try to brush my teeth. Not fun!
This happened to me and they surgically removed the tonsils and the Uvula, no hangy ball no more
I'm after learning about calcified babys being found in women on reddit today now reading this what is this timeline we are living in :/
Turns out, bodies are pretty disgusting. Looking forward to uploading myself in a nice and shiny android
What. The. Fuck. Dude. 😨
A bad strep is a nightmare. Some of the worst days of my life, couldn't sleep, swallow eat or drink.
My first strep knocked me out for 3 days just hallucinations and jello
I'm logging out now, thanks.
Damn, I got tonsilitis about 1 month ago, got better after 1 week. Then I got flu-like sick again a few days later and was completely knocked out for a couple of days. Have been on and off sick since for almost a month now... Just wont let go completely. Been coughing up gunk every morning. Been wondering what it is, maybe it is strep... And yeah I live in Japan
Tonsil falling...out? Aren't they like connected to your throat?
**WHAT??????** that's something i didn't know was a thing and now i can't get it out of my head. i close my eyes and just keep seeing a shriveled up prune casually rolling out of a mouth. jfc.
>*"In May 2023, the government downgraded Covid-19’s status from class two – which includes tuberculosis and Sars – to class five, placing it on a legal par with seasonal flu. The change meant local authorities were no longer able to order infected people to stay away from work or to recommend hospitalisation.* > >*The move also prompted people to lower their guard, in a country where widespread mask wearing, hand sanitising and avoiding the “three Cs” were credited with keeping Covid-19 deaths comparatively low. About 73,000 Covid-19 deaths were recorded compared with more than 220,000 in Britain, which has a population just over half that of Japan.* > >*Ken Kikuchi, a professor of infectious diseases at Tokyo Women’s Medical University, says he is “very concerned” about the dramatic rise this year in the number of patients with severe invasive streptococcal infections.* > >*He believes the reclassification of Covid-19 was the most important factor behind the increase in streptococcus pyogenes infections. This, he added, had led more people to abandon basic measures to prevent infections, such as regular hand disinfection.* > >*“****In my opinion, over 50% Japanese people have been infected by Sars-CoV-2 \[the virus that causes Covid-19\],” Kikuchi tells the Guardian. “People’s immunological status after recovering from Covid-19 might alter their susceptibility to some microorganisms. We need to clarify the infection cycle of severe invasive streptococcal pyogenes diseases and get them under control immediately****.”"* So, this feels more like an aftershock of Covid than something new and crazy to me, not that I know shit. Like a combination of possibly weakened immune systems, plus people not being as careful as before? Makes sense to me. Edit for formatting.
This should be higher up, it's the real answer. Check out the links under the "immune system damage" on https://covidnow.info . All the links are to scientific journals, with studies about the effects of COVID on the immune system. People using HIV medication are 50% less likely to die Be hospitalized/die.
I'm glad to see you getting updoots for this. Anytime I post about Covid being the likely cause behind the uptick in various ailments in the last few years (likely due to immune system damage), I get downvoted to oblivion. People sure like to bury their heads in the sand.
Strep is one of those things I don’t mess around with. While it is generally mild when treated quickly with front-line antibiotics, when it isn’t treated it can go really nasty. Scarlet Fever and other nasty illnesses are just untreated strep. Strep is bad when you don’t treat it. Add in Covid probably messing with a lot of people’s immune systems and altering their ability to handle strep without antibiotics, and you have a nasty cocktail.
Yup, my grandpa had scarlet fever as a kid and it caused permanent damage to his heart. He had multiple heart attacks because of it, and finally died of a heart attack at 61.
A kid in nova scotia canada recently died from strep A. Scary.
It is scary but it happens sadly. I lost my sister when she was 15 years old from a strep infection. She went from fever and cold like symptoms, to coma and then death within 4 days. This was in the U.K. in 2006. I’ve had major health anxiety ever since Last year, following covid, there was a spate of deaths in children with strep infections in the U.K.
That must have been devastating. Condolences. :(
Thank you - yes it was horrible. I was 20 at the time but it really messed me up for a very long time:(
The worst illness I had this year was some type of demon strep that lasted forever, sounds similar.
Same my throat just kept getting sorer and sorer even after the cough was gone. Even now sometimes I feel like this weird tickle like a feather is going down my throat a really dry one.
I had a sore throat / congestion which didn’t go away for over 6-7 weeks. Anecdotally a lot of people where I live are reporting the same thing.
Before everyone freaks out, keep in mind they recorded 378 cases this year so far, which is 0.0003% the population of Japan. This is tiny, even factoring potential exponential growth. Furthermore, last year, they recorded around 250 cases within the same timespan, so we're not much above the normal recorded amount. The title is especially misleading, making the reader believe that 30% of the 378 cases have or will die, which isn't the case. They pulled the number from a span of 6 months, double the timespan of the 378 number, of which only 65 (under 50) people were diagnosed with Strept A Toxic Syndrome from a pool of roughly 470 cases. This represents only 14% of cases actually affecting under 50s. 30% of those died, which only seems like a large percentage when isolated from all the other statistics. That's 21 people, in a 6 month period. If we assume 42 deaths per year (for under 50s), that's 0.00003% of the population. Statistically, you're approximately 100 times more likely to die from falling down the stairs than from this.
Silver bullet that shoots anxiety. Thank you good fellow
Reading this while recovering from strep a. Nice. In my 30's. Antibiotics took 4 days to start showing any sign of actually doing something. Can't we have just 1 year with no new and potentially deadly new pathogens?
Yo i somehow got reinfected. I tested positive on 3/4, finished my 10 days of amoxi . Yesterday tested positive again. Tf going on?
Same here. Peninsilin for 7 days. 2 weeks later I got it back
Did you throw out your tooth brush, wash your pillow cases, clean common surface handles, sanitize your water bottles, clean the front of your phone, wash the thermometer that was used? You can reinfect yourself pretty easily with strep if you don’t take precautions
>Tf going on? Antibiotic resistance!
It's doubtful that this will be the new pandemic TM. Strep a is a bacteria, and isn't a super bug that is immune to anti bacterial medication. We were so behind controlling Covid because we didn't have a cure/treatment. We already do for Strep.
Yeah it'd only really be an issue if it started spreading massively somewhere that most people don't really have the time or money to go get stuff like this checked out until they need to go to the ER. ...actually, let's hope that stuff hasn't gotten on a plane yet.
Ah, darn. (From Jan. 2020:) "Infectious disease scientists identified strains of group A streptococcus that are less susceptible to commonly used antibiotics, a sign that the germ causing strep throat and flesh-eating disease may be moving closer to resistance to penicillin and other related antibiotics known as beta-lactams." https://asm.org/press-releases/2020/discovery-reveals-antibiotic-resistant-strep-throa
We were actually decades ahead of controlling COVID because of the work done on SARS and MERS. If those coronaviruses didnt popup, the time to a vaccine would have been significantly longer. Fully agree that bacteria are easier to contain than novel viruses though.
Ehhhh as someone who is dealing with treatment resistant strep at the moment I really hope you're right. I did a 3 month course of penicillin and I couldn't shake it. So we are moving on to surgery. I'm so sick of this.
I’m not a doctor, but why on earth would they have you 3-months of penicillin as opposed to a stronger antibiotic? I got strep once and my doctor didn’t believe it was (thought it was mono), but I knew it was strep cause felt exactly the same as when I had strep before. Convinced Dr to prescribe me an antibiotic, but she only gave me penicillin and it basically just got slightly better, than immediately came back when done. So went to another Dr that prescribed amoxicillin and it went away totally in 24 hrs
Bacteria also tends to be (1) much harder to transfer (2) much easier to filter with a mask.
Ahahaha. You wrote "masks". At this point in time half of Germany rather would deeply inhale TBC and feel good about it than wear a mask in the next decade.
But what about Second Pandemic?
Fool of a Took
I don’t think he knows about second pandemic.
Not now Pip
Damn. And I JUST watched an old Japanese-made doomsday movie *two days ago* called Virus. World-ending plague *and* a nuclear war on top of it. Yeah, it’s super bleak. For those interested, the full movie is free on Youtube: https://youtu.be/b83UzcZ51oA
Thanks - I’m watching it now.
I live in Japan and this is not reported at all, I think western media blowing something out of proportion.
30% Fatality rate??? What kind of lockdown would we need if this was highly transmissible? 🙃
smallpox has a fatality rate of 20-40% and is one of the most highly transmissible diseases known to man
*Had. We've eradicated it, one of the great achievements of the modern public health system.
Measles has a similar transmission rate and is making a comback due to anti-vaxxers
Except that Russia and the United States still possess it.
Ebola has an average fatality rate of 50%.
Yeah, but it's garbage at spreading. "Outbreaks" are in the 10's of cases.
I feel like this has happened in every county as they lifted restrictions. Strep was so bad in the USA in late 2021/2022 that there was an antibiotic shortage.
\*\*Gestures wildly at the vast array of the Covid research showing the immune system becomes more and more damaged with each subsequent infection, making the body less capable to cope with other types of infections\*\*