#or infectious diseases

[cynically-optomistic]

I dont think there should be a time frame on panic actually

[dsudis]

Help win cleaner indoor air!

The Airborne Act (H.R. 9000) creates incentives to clean up indoor air! It offers tax credits to commercial building owners for conducting indoor air quality assessments and making upgrades to ventilation and air filtration.

Indoor air quality upgrades can reduce substantially airborne diseases—protecting our health and decreasing health care expenses, lost wages and lost productivity.

[pandemic-info]

Excerpts:

“Some things that I love that I can’t do any more are exercising, lifting weights, hiking and reading an hour a day,” he said. ...“Having to still think about Covid fucking sucks. Trust me, I get it,” he said. “But empathy alone is not enough without actions of solidarity.”

According to one report, 400 million people have been affected by long Covid. But it is under-diagnosed and misunderstood. McGorry said in the video he hesitated to speak publicly about his health “primarily because of fear of career discrimination and also people making assumptions about what I can and can’t do”.

...having to convince people that accessibility and disability justice are social justice issues in the first place is incredibly dehumanizing and exhausting and usually very fruitless.”

One of the most common ways disabled people are discriminated against is people making assumptions about their capacities and not consulting them about it.

I’m new to experiencing it first-hand, but a lot of the systemic oppression that disabled people face is neglect. It may not be outright vitriol. If you don’t take the action to make the space accessible, we can’t be there, or we can’t be there safely. We have to risk our lives.

We’re used to being told that you get healthier by putting in effort. But with long Covid, to recover, many experts say to do less and rest. I was a personal trainer for a decade, including during my first two seasons of Orange Is the New Black. I was heavily indoctrinated into diet culture and thin supremacy. We’re taught you just have to keep pushing. A person that I help care for is mostly housebound, and often bed-bound. I was in a session with them with a neurologist recently, who was like, “But you should get up and walk around the block.” So it runs deep.

As an able-bodied person, you trust that your doctor is going to steer the ship if something pops up. But if I were to wait for them and not be proactive, my health would have continued to decline. So, for me, it looks like reading studies, following people who are at the forefront of the science, and cross-referencing with other people in the [long Covid] community. 

Before I had long Covid, when I was unconsciously invested in ideas of health and goodness and virtue, there was pride in being a good patient at the doctor. ... The more you have a complex illness, the more you end up having to push and advocate for certain things, including masking in the offices, which is absolutely exhausting.

I think people don’t understand that. You’re asking, “Hey, would you mind protecting my life?” When someone’s like, “Oh God, what a pain in the ass,” experiences like that make you reticent to ask in the future.

If we’re only focused on individual change and not on the systemic issues that actually have a larger impact on health, like poverty and lack of access to medical care, then what we’re doing is not really about health. It’s about thinness and desirability and social status. If we don’t have accessible healthcare, both for cost and when people feel safe to show up and not get infected, what we’re doing is not health. We’re excluding the people that actually need it the most, which in any other social justice issue we would understand is a huge fucking problem and that something needs to be done about it.

...it really comes down to respirators and getting updated vaccines, which most people just do not do these days. The science is really clear that getting Covid over and over again is not good for anyone. I... And I understand that it emotionally costs something – to admit that there is a risk disrupts the illusion of denial and back to normal.

[thehappyvet]

Where do people get this misconception that every single wildlife case at a vet clinic is euthanased so it's better to not take them in even if they're obviously hurt or sick and in need of treatment?!?!

Friendly reminder that a member of the public should not be able to easily pick up or catch a wild animal. We are not in a disney movie. If you can pick it up*, 80% of the time its extremely hurt or sick.

Wildlife, and most animals for that matter, do not show pain as humans do. That does not mean they are not in pain and suffering.

Veterinarians only euthanase wild animals that are suffering from extreme injury or illness, or animals that would stress themselves to death in a hospital setting that cannot be released and survive in the wild with their issue.

We do euthanase some animals, but that's because it's the best welfare decision for that animal and its specific problem.

Maybe trust the professionals trained in providing treatment to animals instead of some Karen on Facebook who demonises vets because she can't understand a bird with multiple wing and shoulder fractures is very unlikely to regain flight and return to the wild and her plan of keeping it means it will live a life of chronic pain and suffering.

*Disclaimer: If you live in a country where diseases such as rabies are endemic, you should not handle wildlife at all if you are not trained or vaccinated. This post is not recommending members of the public handle wildlife in any country.

[reasonsforhope]

"Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.

While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine to provide lasting protection has eluded researchers for decades. Now, there may finally be a viable strategy for making one.

An experimental vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were published today [May 17, 2024] in the scientific journal Cell.

“This is one of the most pivotal studies in the HIV vaccine field to date,” says Glenda Gray, an HIV expert and the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, who was not involved in the study.

A few years ago, a team from Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) showed that it was possible to stimulate the precursor cells needed to make these rare antibodies in people. The Duke study goes a step further to generate these antibodies, albeit at low levels.

“This is a scientific feat and gives the field great hope that one can construct an HIV vaccine regimen that directs the immune response along a path that is required for protection,” Gray says.

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024. Article continues below.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a virus or other pathogen. They introduce something that looks like the virus—a piece of it, for example, or a weakened version of it—and by doing so, spur the body’s B cells into producing protective antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that when a person later encounters the real virus, the immune system remembers and is poised to attack.

While researchers were able to produce Covid-19 vaccines in a matter of months, creating a vaccine against HIV has proven much more challenging. The problem is the unique nature of the virus. HIV mutates rapidly, meaning it can quickly outmaneuver immune defenses. It also integrates into the human genome within a few days of exposure, hiding out from the immune system.

“Parts of the virus look like our own cells, and we don’t like to make antibodies against our own selves,” says Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and one of the authors on the paper.

The particular antibodies that researchers are interested in are known as broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can recognize and block different versions of the virus. Because of HIV’s shape-shifting nature, there are two main types of HIV and each has several strains. An effective vaccine will need to target many of them.

Some HIV-infected individuals generate broadly neutralizing antibodies, although it often takes years of living with HIV to do so, Haynes says. Even then, people don’t make enough of them to fight off the virus. These special antibodies are made by unusual B cells that are loaded with mutations they’ve acquired over time in reaction to the virus changing inside the body. “These are weird antibodies,” Haynes says. “The body doesn’t make them easily.”

Haynes and his colleagues aimed to speed up that process in healthy, HIV-negative people. Their vaccine uses synthetic molecules that mimic a part of HIV’s outer coat, or envelope, called the membrane proximal external region. This area remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block many circulating strains of HIV.

The trial enrolled 20 healthy participants who were HIV-negative. Of those, 15 people received two of four planned doses of the investigational vaccine, and five received three doses. The trial was halted when one participant experienced an allergic reaction that was not life-threatening. The team found that the reaction was likely due to an additive in the vaccine, which they plan to remove in future testing.

Still, they found that two doses of the vaccine were enough to induce low levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies within a few weeks. Notably, B cells seemed to remain in a state of development to allow them to continue acquiring mutations, so they could evolve along with the virus. Researchers tested the antibodies on HIV samples in the lab and found that they were able to neutralize between 15 and 35 percent of them.

Jeffrey Laurence, a scientific consultant at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, says the findings represent a step forward, but that challenges remain. “It outlines a path for vaccine development, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he says.

For one, he says, a vaccine would need to generate antibody levels that are significantly higher and able to neutralize with greater efficacy. He also says a one-dose vaccine would be ideal. “If you’re ever going to have a vaccine that’s helpful to the world, you’re going to need one dose,” he says.

Targeting more regions of the virus envelope could produce a more robust response. Haynes says the next step is designing a vaccine with at least three components, all aimed at distinct regions of the virus. The goal is to guide the B cells to become much stronger neutralizers, Haynes says. “We’re going to move forward and build on what we have learned.”

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024

[tomorrowusa]

People need to be reminded of Trump's woeful incompetence which came to a head during the pandemic emergency and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The Obama administration successfully dealt with the threats from swine flu and Ebola. There was no swine flu disaster, there was no Ebola disaster, and there was even no Zika disaster because competent people were running the US. Near the end of Obama's term, his National Security Council staff put together a 69-page playbook on how to deal with pandemic emergencies. It's called "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents". Of course Trump ignored the document and plunged the nation into COVID hell.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

Michelle Obama, in one of her best speeches ever in Kalamazoo this weekend, excoriated Trump's incompetence.

Michelle Obama laced into Donald Trump in a searing speech in Michigan on Saturday, accusing the former president of “gross incompetence” and having an “amoral character” while challenging hesitant Americans to choose Kamala Harris for US president. “By every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready,” the former first lady told a rapt audience in Kalamazoo. “The real question is, as a country, are we ready for this moment?” [ ... ] In raw and strikingly personal terms, she asked why Harris was being held to a “higher standard” than her opponent. Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election should alone be disqualifying, Obama argued. But now the people who worked closest with him when he was president – his former advisers and cabinet secretaries – had stepped forward with a warning that he should not be allowed to return to power.

ICYMI, here is Michelle Obama's speech in Michigan.

Too many people have been afflicted by Trumpnesia. They seem to have forgotten the catastrophe that happened starting on 22 January 2020 when the first COVID infection was discovered on US soil. On that day Trump told CNBC: "we have it totally under control" and "it's going to be just fine".

Instead of following Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, Trump did the usual bullshit Trump things like criticize the Oscars and rage-tweet from the bathroom. He belatedly declared a state of emergency on Friday the 13th of March – the day after the stock market crashed.

Don't let anybody in real life get away with describing the Trump years as some sort of utopia.

Some people disingenuously claim they don't know enough about Kamala Harris despite her 20 years in public service. We all know more than enough about Trump's egregious ineptitude which turned a national emergency into a prolonged national nightmare.

[transfemmbeatrice]

taskmaster contestants ask you things......... TWO (part one)

[amaditalks]

The thing that I will never get over nor forgive is the lying.

Enough white women lied to pollsters, phonebankers, and canvassers at their doors about voting for Harris against their husbands’ wishes, or wanting to vote for Harris but being concerned about what their Trump supporting husbands would do that an entire PSA campaign arose, and talking points went out to phone bankers from every organization to remind those women that their votes were private and that their husbands could never find out who they voted for.

But then those white women went out and they voted for the rapist in almost the exact same percentages as they did in the last two elections. 

Why all the performance? It feels like an intentional ratfucking effort.

There is a pernicious moral rot and an integrity vacuum amongst white voters. And it’s only other white people who can fix that.

[wat3rm370n]

Unmasked and making everyone sick.

I’ve been hearing about people showing up to work sick, testing positive for covid, and not wearing a mask and working sick, despite the CDC’s recommendation that people “Stay home and away from others”, and even after feeling better they say to mask when resuming normal activities.

CDC - Respiratory Virus Guidance March 1, 2024 Preventing Spread of Respiratory Viruses When You're Sick When you go back to your normal activities, take added precaution over the next 5 days, such as taking additional steps for cleaner air, hygiene, masks, physical distancing, and/or testing when you will be around other people indoors. This is especially important to protect people with factors that increase their risk of severe illness from respiratory viruses. Keep in mind that you may still be able to spread the virus that made you sick, even if you are feeling better. You are likely to be less contagious at this time, depending on factors like how long you were sick or how sick you were.

All year long I keep hearing stories about people who are actively sick and coughing and refusing to mask in confined spaces like subway trains and crowded workplaces. And even people refusing to mask when asked to by trapped elderly people in airplanes and healthcare settings. This is a very dicey situation with the coming American public health dark age and the threat of bird flu and mask bans.

[nando161mando]

COVID denialism and misinformation has led to Olympic athletes not even washing their hands because they wrongly think it will help them become more resistant against disease.

There is no evidence handwashing weakens your immune system. There is no evidence that adopting unsanitary practices makes your immune system stronger. But there is a lot of evidence that handwashing and other precautions protects you and others from infectious diseases, especially in risky environments like bathrooms.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/

[serpentface]

Cold sores are thought to be best addressed by lancing the sore to remove polluted blood, washing with vinegar, applying a paste of honey + tansy + horsefat. In frequently recurring cases, it's considered best practice to also shave the face to eliminate any lingering traces of infection. This is the most psychologically devastating thing that Brakul has ever experienced in his life.

[x-x-angel]

What if I just.. yes this is a new Handplates infection au called Necrophobia (The fear of corpses and dead things), in this au the skele brother’s encounter these 2 doppelgängers roaming around the lab while testing, there is a gaster doppelgänger that is unidentified,

Handplates by @zarla-s

[chronicsheepdeprivation]

There's a possible effective treatment for the Amphibian Chytrid Fungus!

This fungus has been the cause of devastating mass deaths and extinctions in several frog species but now we have a way to help combat it!

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

Me and my friends have a monthly game night, where we play a game or competition, and the loser has to make a donation to a charity of the winners choosing. Next month is gonna be racing Go-Karts, and I've got this in the bag. Are there any TB related charities you would recommend I send my friends to?

YES. The folks leading the charge at expanding treatment access are:

The Stop TB Partnership

MSF

Partners in Health

The Treatment Action Group (which was founded by ACT UP but has now expanded to seek better treatment for people living with TB as well as HIV).

[3dfeels]

at this point i think i own wolfwood as my own personal cowboy character

[macgyvermedical]

Incubation Periods List

Hi all!

The following is a list of incubation periods for various infectious diseases for all your writing needs. An incubation period is the amount of time between exposure to an infectious agent (bacteria, virus, protozoa or prion) and the person having the first symptoms of the resulting illness. Knowing this is helpful in creating a timeline for your story.

Anthrax: Incubation period of 1-60 days

Avian Flu: Incubation period 3-9 days

Botulism: Incubation period 12-72 hours

Chikungunya: Incubation period 3-7 days

Chlamydia: incubation period 7-21 days

COVID-19: Incubation period 5-10 days

Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease: Incubation period 10-20 years

Dengue: Incubation period 5-7 days

Diphtheria: Incubation period 2-5 days

Ebola: Incubation period 2-21 days

Hantavirus: incubation period 1-8 weeks

Hepatitis A: incubation period about 28 days

Herpes: Incubation period 2-12 days

Herpes Zoster/Varicella (Chickenpox): Incubation period 14-16 days

Herpes Zoster (Shingles): Incubation period- technically none, as this is a reactivation of the virus that causes chickenpox

HIB: Incubation period 2-10 days

HIV: Incubation period 1-6 weeks to prodrome, approximately 10 years to AIDS

Influenza: Incubation period 1-4 days

Legionnaires Disease: Incubation period 5-6 days

Leprosy: Incubation period 9 months to 20 years

Lyme Disease: Incubation period 3-30 days

Malaria: Incubation period 7-30 days

Measles: Incubation period 10-12 days

Meningitis, Bacterial: Incubation period 2-10 days

Meningitis, Viral: Incubation period 3-10 days

Monkeypox: Incubation period 1-2 weeks

Mumps: Incubation period 16-18 days

Norovirus: Incubation period 12-48 hours

Pertussis: Incubation period 7-10 days

Plague: Incubation period 2-8 days

Pneumococcal Pneumonia: Incubation period 1-3 days

Polio: Incubation period 7-10 days

Q-Fever: Incubation period 2-3 weeks

Rabies: Incubation period 20-90 days

RSV: Incubation period 4-6 days

Smallpox: Incubation period 7-17 days

Syphilis: Incubation period 10-90 days

Tetanus: Incubation period 3-21 days

Tuberculosis: Incubation period 2-10 days

Typhoid: Incubation period 6-30 days

Typhus: Incubation period 1-2 weeks

West Nile Virus: Incubation period 2-6 days

Yellow Fever: Incubation period 3-6 days

Zika: Incubation period 3-14 days