Sunday, August 22, 2010

I don't wanna have to do with out antibiotics

Early notice is a key strategy to surviving the zombie apocalypse.

If you want to get clear of the cities in time, and by this I mean before the paths turn into a super rush hour deadlock, with extra emphasis on the DEAD. After all one man's traffic jam is another zombies' buffet.  So I want to be well clear of the city, holed up in my alpha site and chowing down on my breakfast of  Tactical Bacon & Eggs while the newspaper and radio is still at the 'reporting a mild outbreak of a new type of rabies' stage.

This is why I try to keep up with whats going on in the world of infection & disease.  In the last few weeks there has been reports of a new type of antibiotic resistance found in bacteria with a man dying in Belgium (not of boredom). We've seen antibiotic resistant bacteria before MRSA and VRE are two I can think of that I don't have to try and spell, but this new one isn't specific to a bacteria. This resistance is due to a gene that can make an enzyme called NDM-1 and whats scary is that this gene is in the form of a plasmid. Those of us who have spent hours playing BIOSHOCK know plasmids can be incorporated into other organisms to provide traits. In this case allowing bacteria to resist antibiotics.

It was first mentioned in a British Journal in November 2009 and then in June 2010 the Centres for Disease Control in its Weekly Morbidity and Mortality report put out an alert on NDM-1.

I like reading the stuff CDC puts out.

I like to imagine there is a super competent agency well resourced with trained experts who spend all day running scenarios that prepare them for emergencies. I desperately want to believe that.

But I work for a government agency, so I know how these things work.

I don't know if anyone around remembers what it was like before antibiotics, but it sucked. The was no internet porn and TV didn't have the sci-fi channel and people would more likely than not DIE if they got an infection in hospital. 

But that's why science rocks. Medical science has know this pharmageddon was coming and has been working to developed new ways to deal with bacteria. One discovery is a paint that when applied to a surface will continues to kill bacteria that come into contact.

So I won't be bugging out to the alpha site just yet, but world you are on notice. Just remember if can always get worse.

8 comments:

  1. I read your blog sometimes like I read the news because i know that when the shit goes down, YOU will have the first alert. Srsly, that's kinda scary about the antibiotics though. Very good premise for the beginning of a flesh eating frenzy.

    I've just ordered 100 cans of Tac-Bac. They should advertise more foods with pics of AK's on the front btw and I hope Someone gets on tactical doughnuts post haste!

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  2. Hell yeah Heidi that's a great idea for the Tac-Doughnuts.

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  3. As they do not degrade, I think Twinkies are actually tactical donuts.

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  4. and also make excellent bunker gap fillers.

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  5. testing to see if I can actually post for once...

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  6. No Chaz you can't.

    You had me at 'Tactical Bacon'.

    Ah the antibiotics arms race. That's actually a kinda cool endeavour because big pharma by and large has given up trying to develop new drugs because of the inherent pointlessness of fighting resistance (pointless in terms of their bottom line vis a vis R&D spend) so it's the academic labs who are cracking on with this - and more power to them.

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  7. YAY Chazfh posted

    mmmmm BACONNNY GOODNESS

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  8. Wow i think thats the first time in nearly six months that i've managed to post on your blog barnes.

    Tac-Bac love it!!

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