Saw on the infamous internet today (Friday- 6:04 am; I was watching live coverage), Oklahoma had a 4.7 earthquake. They were said to have proved there a few years back that fracking was causing quakes. But we seem unable to understand that while we need the Oil/Gas, we do not yet understand enough on what we are doing to our substrata as we pump all those chemicals and waste water back into the ground. Like the coal industry that is being decimated here today; we do not put the R&D into it to make it safe enough.
It is one thing to have the controversy over what coal burning is doing to people, places and things, an earthquake is now and for real to those in it. 2 sites closed down, others put on alert and 23 said to be facing new rules on drilling due to earthquake(s). There will be after shocks of course.
And according to the World Health Organization, we ain't seen nothing yet:
Science Says Super Bacteria Coming to Kill Us Is Imminent, "People Will Die"
By Jon Levine 19 hours ago
Because you don't have enough to worry about.
According to a study published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, scientists in China have discovered significantly increased levels of bacteria resistant to the antibiotic colistin in pigs. The drug is a last line of defense against a host of bacterial infections, many of which are common in people. Researchers said they expect the resistant bacteria to spread outside of China, if it has not already done so.
"What is particularly worrying about this is the mechanism of this resistance means that it can spread very easily between species. So global spread is likely." Liz Tayler of the World Health Organization told BBC4 Radio. "This paper suggests that this has already spread out of China and into Malaysia."
According to the study, researchers stumbled upon the antibiotic-resistant bacteria during a "routine surveillance project," testing antimicrobial resistance to E. coli in China's food animals. In the E. coli-infected test subjects, 21% of animals contained the colistin-resistant bacteria, as well as 15% of raw meat samples and 1% human patients.
"Some people will have untreatable infections and will start to die," Tayler said. "We have to take action now."
Researchers linked the growing prevalence of super-germs to the overuse of antibiotics in food animals, a consequence food experts have long predicted. The drugs, used predominantly in the Chinese livestock industry, can keep animals healthy in an industrialized food process, but their use over time can embolden the very bacteria they were designed to fight against. In 2005, the European Union banned the use of antibiotics in livestock for non-medicinal purposes, but the drugs are still widely used across the continent, and are rampant in the agricultural industry in the United States.
Tayler cited a strain of untreatable, drug-resistant gonorrhea, which has been on the rise since at least 2012. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States saw more than 350,000 cases of the infection in 2014 and while most of those were treatable, the evidence continues to suggest that's changing.
The concern over untreatable infections garnered attention in the United States after reports that Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, related illnesses are on the rise. A variation on the common Staph infection, local news reports of seemingly healthy people coming down with the bug, and its life-threatening consequences, have proliferated. MRSA kills more than 11,000 people in the United States every year.
But with drug use still rampant among food animals, it's likely this won't be the last story you read about antibiotic-resistant super-germs.
Seems if I remember correctly, was it swine flu or bird flu that came out of Hong Kong and the adjacent areas to it in China? We cannot fathom how clean and well maintained most of our growing/ production areas are compared to those overseas. I truly do not doubt the above for a New York minute. In Thailand, there are as in some of the other Southern Asia countries incurable diseases developing because of the abuse of antibiotics in trying to treat them.
It was widely said that in the Vietnam days, troops would catch an STD that was incurable and they were sent to an island where they were isolated and never came home? I do not know this for a fact but some of those I served with were positive beyond a doubt that some of those in their respective units were part of that program?
We have been told for years that our abuse of antibiotics is causing the same issues here. Look at the MERSA cases in the U.S. and how devastating they are; usually it seems the only final cure is amputation as our drugs won't work anymore So guess the bottom line is be very observant and alert to what you do, where you go and most especially what you eat.
I was told that the reason I caught the flu last year was in how fast it mutated from when the vaccine was developed until we received it in our shots. I can believe that. The flu season starts in Asia in the late spring and comes East. You get shots there in May. 'nuff said.