Red Mosquito

I don't understand that. Are they even looking at Lombardy / Madrid? That's 2 incredibly civilised regions. I really don't understand this "nothing can touch us" feeling anymore.
But with my wife being a doctor, even though we're doing not all that bad in Belgium, I've probably never been this scared in my life.

Take care guys!

Falwell is a moron just like his dad was. I can't believe they are reopening. And apparently threatening to cut pay for people that don't show up.

Angus wrote:I don't understand that. Are they even looking at Lombardy / Madrid? That's 2 incredibly civilised regions. I really don't understand this "nothing can touch us" feeling anymore.

While Fox News was pushing the idea that the virus is an overblown hoax, telling viewers that quarantine and self-protection were a Democrat ploy, the company’s ruling family was taking active steps to isolate Rupert Murdoch from any risk of exposure. Donald Trump started to shit his pants over the economic costs of containment just as those costs began to impact his businesses. Republicans shut Democrats out of the initial attempt to draft a response bill and instead worked with lobbyists, whose draft involved shipping billions of dollars to companies without any requirements that they take care of their workers.

Basically, there’s been a sense that the American economic model was reaching a tipping point of change for some time. But instead of being gradual, as expected, it now looks like it could all happen at once. Powerful industries are contracting, and entire service models are antiquating or becoming unviable. I think most people would have told you, if you asked them, that the economy of 2040 was going to be immensely different from the economy of 2019. But nobody was prepared for it to happen overnight. Many of the richest people in our country are desperate to ensure their wealth survives beyond the mechanisms that created it, and they need a plan of action literally right now. Tomorrow will be too late. But they never actually considered their position frail enough to need such a plan. It hurts the ego to think that, at your most powerful, you are still mostly a collection of needs. So they haven’t done any pre-work on how to mitigate such a moment, and now they’re throwing everything at the wall, screaming into their pillows, and trying to convince the world that their livelihoods are worth more than your life.

Thanks for that. Crazy world.

Read that Italy and Spain uses a lot more antibiotics in regular medical treatment than Norway, which has led to bacteria there being resistant. Many that have died, have done so from secondary infections. Only 12 dead in Norway so far from thousands of infected. Time will tell.

Anders wrote:Read that Italy and Spain uses a lot more antibiotics in regular medical treatment than Norway, which has led to bacteria there being resistant. Many that have died, have done so from secondary infections. Only 12 dead in Norway so far from thousands of infected. Time will tell.

Haven’t read anything about that, but South Korea and the US are pretty equivalent to Italy in antibiotics usage. SK hasn’t had the same trajectory with the virus, so even if true it still just cycles back to mitigation strategies.

McParadigm wrote:

Anders wrote:Read that Italy and Spain uses a lot more antibiotics in regular medical treatment than Norway, which has led to bacteria there being resistant. Many that have died, have done so from secondary infections. Only 12 dead in Norway so far from thousands of infected. Time will tell.

Haven’t read anything about that, but South Korea and the US are pretty equivalent to Italy in antibiotics usage. SK hasn’t had the same trajectory with the virus, so even if true it still just cycles back to mitigation strategies.

I’m pretty far from an expert on this, but the article I read said that Italy was especially bad in resistant bacteria.

https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kro ... rtiniussen

Antibiotics don't work on viruses.

McParadigm wrote:

Anders wrote:Read that Italy and Spain uses a lot more antibiotics in regular medical treatment than Norway, which has led to bacteria there being resistant. Many that have died, have done so from secondary infections. Only 12 dead in Norway so far from thousands of infected. Time will tell.

Haven’t read anything about that, but South Korea and the US are pretty equivalent to Italy in antibiotics usage. SK hasn’t had the same trajectory with the virus, so even if true it still just cycles back to mitigation strategies.

South Korea has of course very actively tested & isolated the shit out of it. So I'm a bit hesitant to compare any European country (or US) with their stats. We don't have the preparation they have (after SARS, MERS) and we definitely don't have the self discipline.

wease wrote:Antibiotics don't work on viruses.

True, but that was not the point. It's the secondary infections.

96583UP wrote:i think you can get at least a few hospitals for $17B

At least one

Who will staff it?

A deadly mix of resistant bacteria and coronavirus may be the cause of high death rates in Italy.

6,000 people have died of coronary infection in Italy in just two months. The high death rate has caused concern for a whole world, not least here at home when NRK used them in a debate program to create a worst-case scenario for Norway.

Many have pointed out that Italy has a high age average and that this may be one of the causes of the high death rates. But that is far from the whole explanation.

In addition to the epidemic surprisingly coming to the authorities, Italy's underlying antibiotic crisis has probably worsened the situation dramatically. A deadly mix of resistant bacteria and coronavirus may be the cause of high death rates in Italy.

The reason is that many people who are now infected with corona (sars-cov-2) in Italy probably do not die from the virus itself, but rather from secondary bacterial infections caused by resistant microbes. How can this be related?

It is a known case that respiratory infections of viruses generally weaken the immune system, allowing bacteria to attack more easily. This is also common for viruses that cause flu or colds. Between 10 and 30 per cent of patients admitted to hospitals with a virus-based respiratory infection subsequently receive a secondary bacterial infection, figures from the UK Antibiotic Center show. However, Covid-19 differs from regular seasonal flu in that several of the patients develop pneumonia. Serious cases are treated with artificial oxygen supply to help the patient's immune system fight back the virus.

In order to ensure that such intensive patients do not receive a secondary bacterial infection, antibiotics are often administered as part of the treatment. Antibiotics have no known effect on the coronavirus sars-cov-2, but will eliminate any bacteria that see their incision to attack while the patient is in the respirator.

But how common is this for sars-cov-2?

Half died
In a study published in acclaimed The Lancet this month, researchers found that over half of patients who died of the Wuhan virus in China had sustained a secondary bacterial infection before they died.

The study suggests that secondary bacterial infections play a crucial role in covid-19 mortality, although more documentation is needed.

The reason is that a bacterial infection can attack important stem cells in the airways that are necessary for the lung tissue to regenerate.

Even with aggressive, virus-based pneumonia, it is usually possible to recover, often with the help of oxygen supply, as long as stem cells in the lungs can repair the damage again. But if the stem cells die, you are done.

Fortunately, a simple antibiotic regimen will hold back the bacteria. Then the immune system can concentrate on fighting the viral infection and hopefully the patient will recover.

In Norway, it will be reasonably easy to treat a secondary bacterial lung infection with antibiotics, which could have a positive effect on the death rate of corona. This is not the case in Italy.

Resistant bacteria
Italy is the country in Europe where most people die from resistant bacteria. Each year, nearly 11,000 patients die in Italy from resistant microbes. Corresponding figures for Norway are 69.


The latest data from the European Disease Control Agency (ECDC) shows that 30 percent of all bacterial infections in Italy caused by E.coli were resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, a very important antibiotic.

Corresponding figures for klebsiella infections showed that 26.8 percent of the bacteria were resistant to carbapenem, a so-called cystic antibiotic. According to the ECDC, several resistant bacteria are now endemic in Italian hospitals, which means they have more or less colonized the hospitals permanently.

If a coronary patient is first infected by a bacterium at an Italian hospital, it is therefore very likely that the bacterium is resistant and cannot be treated.

Wasting antibiotics
The prevalence of resistant bacteria is directly linked to high consumption of antibiotics. In primary medicine, the Italians distribute almost twice as much antibiotics as we do in Norway.

Even worse, it is in meat production: Tons of our most important medicines go straight into a swelling pig production in the country that produces 10 million pigs a year.

The center for industrialized Italian grass production is located in the Lombardy region, which is now also experiencing the highest death rates associated with covid-19. Lombardy had registered 3456 deaths on Sunday. This means that Lombardia alone now has more deaths than China overall.

It remains to be seen whether there are clear links between the death rate Italy is currently experiencing and the prevalence of resistant bacteria.

But 70 percent of E. coli bacteria in pig production in Lombardy are so-called ESBL bacteria, which are resistant to several important antibiotics. It is a fact that such bacteria also infect humans.

A problem also in Spain
There is no doubt that the coronavirus is dangerous enough in itself that it can kill people completely without subsequent bacterial infection. However, if the health care system has the capacity and resources to provide good intensive care, the vast majority of intensive care patients will still survive.

Worse, the intensive care unit is also infected by a resistant bacterium. Should it prove that a large number of patients now dying of covid-19 in Italy could have been saved with effective antibiotics, it is a health policy scandal.

It is worth noting here that Spain also has a high prevalence of resistance. Like Italy, they also experience many deaths related to corona.

Must chart the deaths
Every year, 700,000 people die of resistant bacteria worldwide. The figure will quickly increase if resistant microbes are now allowed to spread freely under the chaotic health situation in Europe.

It is therefore crucial that health authorities now map how many of the deaths in Lombardy and the rest of Italy are due to covid-19, and how many are due to the bacterial infection of resistant microbes.

Here at home, we should now be very grateful that we have a health system that saves antibiotics until we really need it, and farmers who barely use antibiotics on their animals. Probably our restrictive antibiotic policy will now save the lives of many corona patients

McParadigm wrote:Who will staff it?

Very nice reporting Anders.

Ireland just went almost total lockdown apart from flights and anyone who’s lost their job as a result will get 75% of their previous wage to 12 weeks.

So this is going to go on and on. But we knew that.

JFC.