CDC confirms that yes we are probably ****ed [Post Antibiotic Edition]

[kentonio]

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just published a first-of-its-kind assessment of the threat the country faces from antibiotic-resistant organisms, ranking them by the number of illnesses and deaths they cause each year and outlining urgent steps that need to be taken to roll back the trend.

The agency’s overall — and, it stressed, conservative — assessment of the problem:

Each year, in the U.S., 2,049,442 illnesses caused by bacteria and fungi that are resistant to at least some classes of antibiotics;
Each year, out of those illnesses, 23,000 deaths;
Because of those illnesses and deaths, $20 billion each year in additional healthcare spending;
And beyond the direct healthcare costs, an additional $35 billion lost to society in foregone productivity.

“If we are not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era,” Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC’s director, said in a media briefing. “And for some patients and for some microbes, we are already there.”

The report marks the first time the agency has provided hard numbers for the incidence, deaths and cost of all the major resistant organisms. (It had previously estimated illnesses and deaths from some families of organisms or types of drug resistance, but those numbers were never gathered in one place.) It also represents the first time the CDC has ranked resistant organisms by how much and how imminent a threat they pose, using seven criteria: health impact, economic impact, how common the infection is, how easily it spreads, how much further it might spread in the next 10 years, whether there are antibiotics that still work against it, and whether things other than administering antibiotics can be done to curb its spread.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/cdc-amr-rpt1/

Guess it shouldn't be a surprise as medical groups have been warning about it for years, but I must admit I was kind of hoping for some amazing new leap in medicine that would avoid it before it became a huge threat.

[Sava]

OH MY GOD WE'RE GONNA DIE

DAMN MUSLIM MICROBES

THANKS OBAMA

[regexcellent]

Sava needs to work not constructing 30 foot straw men and running them over with a combine harvester.

[Sava]

My posts generally aren't coherent enough to be considered legitimate strawmen.

[kentonio]

OH MY GOD WE'RE GONNA DIE

Almost inevitably, and if we truly enter a post-antibiotic world then quite possibly quicker than we were hoping.

[Dinner]

The sad thing is this is 100% preventable but we're too lazy and stupid to do what needs to be done.

[Sava]

seems relevant

[Felch]

Who else is excited about the apocalypse?

[kentonio]

I was kind of hoping for zombies rather than the slow descent back into untreatable disease.

[Hauldren Collider]

You brits are ****ed in a zombie apocalypse. Well, the Scottish islands like Orkney will probably be ok.

[Felch]

Yeah, are you still allowed to have longbows at least? If you are, remember your patriotic duty and practice every Sunday. A good longbowman should be able to kill zombies at a respectable rate.

[Sava]

I don't understand why you'd wanna survive a zombie apocalypse anyways. Sure, you are alive. But everyone is a zombie now.

[Hauldren Collider]

Yeah, are you still allowed to have longbows at least? If you are, remember your patriotic duty and practice every Sunday. A good longbowman should be able to kill zombies at a respectable rate.

I thought Frenchmen were the traditional target of choice for Englishmen with longbows?

[MOBIUS]

We are literally going to be ****ed: Gonorrhea

[kentonio]

You brits are ****ed in a zombie apocalypse. Well, the Scottish islands like Orkney will probably be ok.

We'd just dispatch our zombies like men, using swords.