Isn't this a given? I mean, that all sorts of viruses and diseases will develop that we can't treat due to resistance and/or people being overexposed to antibiotics? Maybe the TB vaccine will come through.
Someone in my family has pretty much burned through all the antibiotics so infections are very difficult to treat in him. Meanwhile, none of the family can hear me tell them about the amount of antibiotics they're all getting via beef and milk...
TB is scary shit though. There is a vaccine, fortunately, but in developing countries or populations with low vaxx rates for other reasons...let me put it this way. The vaccine currently in use (the only one we have) dates from 1921. As late as 1918, nearly twenty percent of all the deaths in France were from TB or TB-related complications. Pre-war figures were the same, so we probably shouldn't blame that on war-stress compromising the immune system.
Imagine a cough that gets into your lungs and tears them apart.
...How many cases of 'consumption' and so on do you remember from books and films and TV shows set in the past?
You seem pretty on the history of TB, so please bear with me a sec. For some reason I picked up this idea in high school English class that a famous author or poet, in the vein of Poe and around his timeframe, had something like TB and was treated with hot irons that they shoved down his esophagus to cauterize the lesions, and that he was undergoing these treatments even as he was dying and trying to finish his last work. I tried to google for whoever this was before I posted the story, and came up blank. Does this ring any bells to you?
It's evolution, baby. I remember seeing a Richard Dawkins programme about two prostitutes in Kenya who had developed an immunity to HIV. Its what happens.
Some people are just naturally resistant to HIV; there's a mutation that makes the virus have extreme difficulty invading their cells. There's actually a case of an accidental AIDS "cure" -- somebody got a bone marrow transplant from a donor who was resistant, and the transplanted immune system was resistant to HIV.
As I posted above, I recall an article about health care in India which said many people go to the local "doctor" (they have shopfronts) and buy however much medication they can afford. With antibiotics, that's often not enough to kill the virus/infection but enough to strengthen the bug. So, yeah, my mind went to this being ANOTHER reason for universal health care.
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Someone in my family has pretty much burned through all the antibiotics so infections are very difficult to treat in him. Meanwhile, none of the family can hear me tell them about the amount of antibiotics they're all getting via beef and milk...
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Imagine a cough that gets into your lungs and tears them apart.
...How many cases of 'consumption' and so on do you remember from books and films and TV shows set in the past?
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I was just thinking of this, how horrible a thing it is when it's widespread and untreatable.
See: the many losses to TB in the Keats family, and finally poor John dying at 26.
Jesus.
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Fighting a very strong urge to run around screaming "Close all the borders! Quarantine all the goods!"
Also, an unregulated private healthcare sector sounds utterly terrifying.
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This is my gut reaction too lol. D:
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