If handwashing worked it would've worked already.

Not dead yet!

Well-Known Member
In today's news of the wierd, a 5 pronged approach is being touted to save us from 'superbugs' - but first of all the only superbug they mention is MRSA, and their advice will lead to more chronic infections, especially of Lyme which has to be treated early to significantly reduce the chance of chronic infection. On top of that, they seem to once again be reinforcing the false idea that viruses are less important than bacteria.

Take a look:

[article=https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/superbugs-dangerous-65-billion-threat-to-the-us-health-care-system.html]A five-pronged assault on antimicrobial resistance — promoting better hygiene and sanitation among health-care workers; ending the overprescription of antibiotics; testing patients more quickly to determine whether they have viral or bacterial infections; delaying antibiotic prescriptions by three days, and creating more public awareness campaigns — could counter one of the biggest threats to modern medicine.[/article]

1. If handwashing worked, it would've worked by now. They need to focus on the concept of cross contamination. If you're using the same mop to clean my hospital room as you are to clean the room of a person with an infectious disease, you're missing the point that viruses are not alive and can just travel with your mop from place to place.

2. Who's being overprescribed antibiotics? For decades a person has had to struggle and beg for antibiotics. The limitation on antibiotics given to humans misses entirely the use of antibiotics on ordinary animals slaughtered for meat. Any reasonable analysis will tell you that the source of superbugs is factory farming that creates them, and then delivers them to your plate in medium rare beef, contaminated chicken breasts, or over easy eggs. Clean up abattoirs, then talk to me about overprescription.

3. Testing patients more quickly -- finally something I totally agree with... mandate that my insurance company pay for any testing my doctor wants without whining. Take the hobbles off infectious disease testing, take out all language on websites like the CDC that limit people being tested to only those who have a 'severe' case. That falsely lowers the statistics, hiding the real extent of the problem. Develop a task force to locate payments made from industry to government agencies that may influence the decision of when to test people and how severe their illness has to be before it's permitted to test them.

4. Delaying antibiotic prescriptions by 3 days? (apoplexy pause) So to limit MRSA, you're willing to let the elderly die of pneumonia, and condemn people with a simple Lyme infection to a lifetime of agony as the illness becomes chronic due to delayed care? And I bet that when people switch to alternative health, you'll criticize them for doing things that are not 'evidence based' while ignoring that for them, it's a matter of disability or no disability.

5. Create more public awareness campaigns. OK, let's have one about how 65% of chicken breasts in the grocery store are contaminated with E. Coli. Let's have another about how hogs are raised in factory farms in VA and NC, and how often those superbugs affect human health. If you're just going to tell people to wash their hands, you're missing the boat.

I thought medical care was supposed to be effective. And health initiatives were supposed to help. This doesn't look like it will help.

I get so frustrated when I see stuff like this. It's like they're living in a dream world where you can tell people infections are their own fault and, if they could just convince enough people, then it will make all the real sources go away.

Here's a recent article about a lawsuit in NC about hog farms: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article214096384.html People living near these factory farms (now owned by a Chinese company by the way) were literally having to power wash their homes of hog sewage several times a year. Every time they were hospitalized the hospital probably didn't take adequate precautions to prevent the travel of these bugs onto surfaces and tools.

There have been studies to show that endoscopes can carry infections from one person to another, despite measures to prevent it. But the source is the bad farming practices and bad slaughterhouse practices. Not lack of handwashing.

WebMD on Colonoscopies increasing the risk of infection: https://www.webmd.com/colorectal-cancer/news/20180606/colonoscopies-can-cause-greater-infection-risk

How about a campaign to come up with better colonoscopy tools that don't carry such risks?
 

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