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Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

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Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#361

Post by Yeul »

poulpy123 wrote: post #333
mhandley wrote: post #51

Not being from the US, I find it odd that the article didn't mention anything about vaccination. Until 2005, pretty much everyone in the UK received the BCG vaccine. After that the TB rate fell too low to merit routine vaccination, but even today it's still given routinely in a few areas where the rate merits it, or if there's elevated risk of exposure via family from abroad, etc. Has vaccination in general become su…

I just checked and it's not mandatory anymore in France, which probably absurd because there is a surge of tuberculosis due to migration and international travel

In the Netherlands people who travel to non Western countries can get their vaccinations.

There's an old Dutch fort in Ghana with a graveyard. Prior to modern medicine white people dropped like flies in Africa.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#362

Post by exe34 »

mhandley wrote: post #51

Not being from the US, I find it odd that the article didn't mention anything about vaccination. Until 2005, pretty much everyone in the UK received the BCG vaccine. After that the TB rate fell too low to merit routine vaccination, but even today it's still given routinely in a few areas where the rate merits it, or if there's elevated risk of exposure via family from abroad, etc. Has vaccination in general become su…

natural selection also applies to memes. memes that cause their host to fail to raise children to reproductive age will get weeded out, but it can take many generations.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#363

Post by amluto »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #351
danw1979 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of related to your point… I remember my maternal Grandmother was looking after me one day and I’d either missed or skipped my earlier vaccination appointment in school (which, I think was a BCG or booster, it was in the early 1990s). She was raised by her maternal Grandmother after her mother died from TB when she was 2 years old. Her father died of… something infectious when she was teenager (the oral history i…

Tried-and-true vaccines are like plumbing or city infrastructure: Once established, it’s taken for granted and the true value can’t be intuited.

BCG, sadly, is not really in that category.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#364

Post by lazide »

mark-r wrote: post #350
lazide wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when it’s dress/tank top weather, you can see what part of the world people grew up in by the upper-left-arm scar. [ https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/tuberculosis/Pages/... ]

My upper left arm scar wasn't made by TB vaccine though, it was Rubella vaccine. I didn't associate it with aftereffects of the vaccine itself, it was the unique method of delivery - an airgun instead of a needle. Never seen that before or since.

The MMR vaccine doesn’t cause that type of scar. I’ve found nothing saying air vaccination guns do either.

Smallpox and TB vaccines both do though.

Perhaps you got a combo?

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#365

Post by noneeeed »

amluto wrote: post #363
nobodyandproud wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried-and-true vaccines are like plumbing or city infrastructure: Once established, it’s taken for granted and the true value can’t be intuited.

BCG, sadly, is not really in that category.

What's the issue with the BCG? My understanding was that it had been sucessful, is that a bit of a myth?

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#366

Post by noneeeed »

gambiting wrote: post #317
Animats wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BCG vaccine does exist, but it's an 90 year old live-virus vaccine with short-term side effects. Because it's a live-virus "natural" vaccine, it can't be used on people who are immunocompromised or have HIV. There's work on more modern vaccines.[1] No big successes yet. The safety record of the BCG vaccine, in terms of permanent harm, is pretty good. But a normal side effect is "The usual expected reaction to BCG…

>>Mass vaccination will have parents screaming "my perfect baby has an open sore from the vaccine" on Instagram, with pictures. That's so weird to me given that literally everyone where I'm from(Poland) has this on their left arm. Nothing to post on Instagram about. It's as universal as having a belly button - not having a vaccine scar on your arm would be the thing to post about if anything.

Likewise. I grew up in the UK and there was no pushback at all from what I remember.

Although I do remember school being very strict about anyone whacking someone elses BCG arm.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#367

Post by amluto »

noneeeed wrote: post #365
amluto wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BCG, sadly, is not really in that category.

What's the issue with the BCG? My understanding was that it had been sucessful, is that a bit of a myth?

It’s not very effective, and it’s apparent efficacy is bizarrely variable.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#368

Post by eth0up »

Fomite wrote: post #310
scythe wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's probably time we start looking a bit harder for "natural" or alternate treatments. Some in medical journals, are under scrutiny, but inconclusive. We are looking, quite hard, in fact. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is among the most studied microörganisms. Like HIV, it is notable particularly for being able to defeat the attempts of the immune system cells to kill it, and it in fact infects and reproduces within ma…

This - TB is very well studied compared to most infectious diseases. I think really only HIV and Malaria edge it out.

Not to say that it's always the case, but research isn't always at face value - i.e., sometimes there's circularity, economical or political dynamics, etc, that perpetuate dead ends while neglecting more viable avenues.

An example might be enzymes (notably in cancer research), where in the US there has been significantly less pursuit than elsewhere. To avoid attacks, I'll cite a source[0] which readers can maim rather than my comment.

0. Enzymes, The Fountain of Life DA, Lopez MD RM, Williams MD PhD K, Miehlke MD

In some pirtions of this book, entities other than pinata boy on HN, express concern regarding the quality, fairness or whatever's of research, with indications that 'research' may not always be equally noble or pragmatically guided. I suspect it's one of many where that particular subject is grazed upon. But my point is, if not overemphasized, that there may be quantity over quality issues, with viable options hiding in plain sight.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#369

Post by tekno45 »

macinjosh wrote: post #229
api wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the supposed rationale for this? Or is this just a general ideological purge of the government? This is going to be a crazy four years, if it’s only four.

The freeze will be lifted once RFK Jr. is approved by the Senate. The purpose is to stop progressive ideologues in the agencies from doing things in protest of their new boss.

like telling people about TB outbreaks and food recalls?

Fight the ideologues, them and their expertise are the problems.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#370

Post by biohcacker84 »

spuz wrote: post #332
williadc wrote: post #87

John Green, author of "The Fault in Our Stars", "Turtles All the Way Down", "The Anthropocene Reviewed", and other fine books is releasing a book called "Everything is Tuberculosis." If you are interested in the topic or just like to read well-written prose, I recommend joining me in pre-ordering it.

For what reasons do you recommend it?

Because even bad writers have fans.
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