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A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

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Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#131

Post by doodlebugging »

esseph wrote: post #119
doodlebugging wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It is common to see those used as area and volume examples. I think it is far less common for the audience to have a clear mental picture of the two terms though. It's easier for a football field to serve as a reference because more people have exposure to football fields. It is more difficult for an Olympic sized swimming pool to serve as a reference because there are fewer people who have seen one in perso…

> I think it is a bit comical to use swimming pools as a volumetric reference when most people's experience with swimming pools has been in a back yard setting or on visits to community pools, which may be any convenient size. A lot of US high schools and US colleges have Olympic pools.

>A lot of US high schools and US colleges have Olympic pools.

Especially for high schools it's also true that a lot of them don't. In the case of high schools I think an Olympic sized swimming pool is likely in mid to large cities or there may be one available locally. Swim teams at high school level are probably city school features instead of rural school features. I think there are more rural high schools than city high schools.

I don't know though.

Colleges. Hmmm. I suspect that all state colleges have pools. I am not sure about smaller colleges though. That's an interesting question. I'm sure the data is out there though.

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#132

Post by Lanzaa »

kalenx wrote: post #96
busssard wrote: post #42

We will see more and more fungi infecting mammals in the coming years. Mammals and birds evolved higher body temperatures in part to protect from fungal infections. As most fungi are dying above 37°C. But a high temperature summer is a selection pressure on any mushroom trying to survive, and hence might evolve to survive 40° summers and thus also survive in our bodies. I really hope cordyceps is one of the last to d…

Not sure about that. Outside temperature above 37 were common in many highly populated areas, even before "high temperature summer" (e.g., India, Indonesia, most of Brazil, etc.). If there was an actual selection pressure, we would have seen its results by now.

Have we not?

> there are many fungal infections that occur more frequently in tropical zones or are restricted to certain regions within the tropics [0]

I worry that one of the large variety of fungal species not resistant to high temperature will evolve to be resistant and cause great harm to our society. Similar to the way animal spillover events, like covid-19, are so devastating. A novel pathogen introduced to a naive population.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9834271/

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#133

Post by zelse »

trevithick wrote: post #63

The article doesn't address treatment efficacy in humans. How is it treated? How effective is the treatment? Can this develop resistance to the treatment? The spread mechanisms and persistence are concerning, but without info on treatment I'm not sure how much I should freak out about this.

We have very few effective antifungals, and discovering new ones is an order of magnitude harder than discovering new antibiotics due to fungi being more closely related to animals (what's toxic to them is often toxic to us). Resistance is an ongoing problem and will worsen in time; Sporothrix already has strains that are resistant to mainline treatment. I recall reading that at least one developing fungal pathogen of concern is in practice impossible to clear from the body fully once established with existing antifungals.

A further issue still is that some fungi exhibit extreme resistance to sterilization; one of the nosocomial emerging fungal pathogens of concern, for example, can easily survive the peroxide fogging technique often used to clean high-risk hospital rooms even at several times the standard exposure duration and concentrations.

Additional issues include treatment compliance - clearing fungal infections can require taking the drug for months without missing a dose.

We should be very concerned about emerging pathogens in light of anthropogenic climate change, but with proper funding and attention this is not necessarily apocalyptic.

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#134

Post by robocat »

mschuster91 wrote: post #102
MisterTea wrote: post #15

> “I’m convinced that half of the human cases that come from cats are people who are trying to stuff pills down their cat’s throats to treat the sporotrichosis,” Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. Problem solved. Difficult with multiple cats but I had two and one needed medication so I put this little guys on a window sill he loved to perch on which the other cat didn't care to reach.

> Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. This does not work on compounds sensitive to stomach acids. Some medications (both veterinarian and human) have to be specially coated to survive this environment [1], if you crush the pills the medication gets less effective, completely ineffective or, like ibuprofen, irritate the stomach. Or, worst case, the medication is designed for retarded release in the…

> like ibuprofen

Your conclusion is based on your misunderstanding: perhaps take more care in future, and be especially careful if sharing your misinformation.

  After absorption into the bloodstream, ibuprofen indirectly reduces the prostaglandins that normally protect the stomach lining

  crushing ibuprofen can make local irritation more intense and quicker, but this is usually not the main driver of ulcers
And sorry if the above is misleading, I'm no expert in this stuff either.

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#135

Post by elzbardico »

soiltype wrote: post #116
elzbardico wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as introducing species where they don't belong. Ecosystem are dynamic, several other animals serve as vectors for transporting species from a place to another. There's no such thing as a long term static equilibria where godess gaia looks like a Jehova's witnesses book illustration. This is an incredibly cultish and misanthropic position.

This is absurd. Without human intervention, catastrophic boundary crossing by organisms is slow and rare. With humans, it happens at unsustainable scale. We all know what it looks like for an invasive species to dominate an ecosystem and crowd out existing niches, and that's what it means to introduce a species where it doesn't belong. Just because it can also happen without humans around doesn't mean what we're doin…

Natural boundary crossing isn't rare; it's the mechanism that built much of the biosphere. Every fucking oceanic island on Earth, Hawaii, the Galápagos, New Zealand, the Mascarenes, was stocked entirely by organisms that crossed open ocean or sky without any help from us.

The entire South American primate and caviomorph rodent lineages (everything from capuchins to capybaras) descend from African ancestors that rafted across the Atlantic on vegetation mats roughly 40 million years ago.

When the Isthmus of Panama closed (~3 million years ago), North American placental mammals poured south and drove a large fraction of South America's endemic fauna—native ungulates, many marsupial lineages—to extinction.

Yeah. Some species get crowded out, maybe we should avoid that in a lot of cases, but is not the capital sin western people have been brainwashed to believe it when they replaced their christianism with new age Gaia worship. Species get extinct, eco-systems change, sometimes it is worth preventing that, in other, who fucking cares?

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#136

Post by giardini »

userulluipeste wrote: post #46
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #7

Reminds me of the TV Series "The Last of us" [0], which: "... is set decades after the collapse of society caused by a mass fungal infection that transforms its hosts into zombie-like creatures". Of course, minus the zombies. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_(TV_series)

We are lucky that mass epidemics that plagued humans so far didn't affect the brain. Affections like rabies, that require individuals biting each other, and which are the inspirational source of all those zombie fantasies, do not count. That is an attack vector easy to spot and manage. The scary scenario is the one like with this Sporothrix Brasiliensis fungus, which can spread by merely "sneezing out the infectious…

userulluipeste says "Affections like rabies"

and

"Any kind of pandemic is scary by the sheer magnitude of its reach, but one that would affect the brain? That would be another level of scary."

"Affections"? Are you talking about socialism or Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) perhaps?

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#137

Post by giardini »

esseph wrote: post #119
doodlebugging wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It is common to see those used as area and volume examples. I think it is far less common for the audience to have a clear mental picture of the two terms though. It's easier for a football field to serve as a reference because more people have exposure to football fields. It is more difficult for an Olympic sized swimming pool to serve as a reference because there are fewer people who have seen one in perso…

> I think it is a bit comical to use swimming pools as a volumetric reference when most people's experience with swimming pools has been in a back yard setting or on visits to community pools, which may be any convenient size. A lot of US high schools and US colleges have Olympic pools.

Olympic size pools are rare in my experience. They're too big to justify for most institutions.

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#138

Post by atombender »

MisterTea wrote: post #15

> “I’m convinced that half of the human cases that come from cats are people who are trying to stuff pills down their cat’s throats to treat the sporotrichosis,” Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. Problem solved. Difficult with multiple cats but I had two and one needed medication so I put this little guys on a window sill he loved to perch on which the other cat didn't care to reach.

You shouldn't do this, as others have said. Also, some medications must not be crushed at all.

In my experience, the best way to give cats pills is a pill pocket, e.g. from Greenies [1]. The pocket is a hollow, soft cat treat. You put the pill inside the pocket, close it, and feed it to the cat. With some larger pills, you may have to split them up (if the medication allows). Some cats don't love the flavor, but you can use a sauce packet and coat it with some sauce.

[1] https://www.greenies.com/collections/cat-pill-pockets

Re: A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

#140

Post by ahartmetz »

robocat wrote: post #134
mschuster91 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. This does not work on compounds sensitive to stomach acids. Some medications (both veterinarian and human) have to be specially coated to survive this environment [1], if you crush the pills the medication gets less effective, completely ineffective or, like ibuprofen, irritate the stomach. Or, worst case, the medication is designed for retarded release in the…

> like ibuprofen Your conclusion is based on your misunderstanding: perhaps take more care in future, and be especially careful if sharing your misinformation. After absorption into the bloodstream, ibuprofen indirectly reduces the prostaglandins that normally protect the stomach lining crushing ibuprofen can make local irritation more intense and quicker, but this is usually not the main driver of ulcers And sorry i…

To go further on this tangent, just mentioning it because it's rather useful: Studies show that vitamin C protects the stomach lining from stomach acid - unclear why exactly, but clear that it does. There are pills that combine the two, but you can also just buy some vitamin C and take it it with the pills. Like all water-soluble vitamins, you can't really overdose: the excess is excreted.
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