OT - New way to kill off the world..

[Cdnwolf]

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A brain-eating amoeba has killed at least 10 people in Pakistan's most populous city since May, a World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.

Naegleria fowleri has a fatality rate of more than 98 percent. It is transmitted when contaminated water enters the body through the nose and cannot be passed person-to-person.

The 10 confirmed cases have all occurred in the southern port city of Karachi, said Dr Musa Khan, head of the WHO's Disease Early Warning System in Pakistan.

It is unclear if all cases have been reported as residents may not be familiar with the disease and Pakistan's hospitals are severely overstretched.

The amoeba travels from the nasal membranes to the brain. Symptoms are initially very mild, including a headache, stiff neck, fever and stomach pain. Death usually occurs five to seven days after infection.

[weswood]

Sounds like the start of the Zombie Apocalypse. And I managed to break the extractor/ejector or whatever that damn thing is called on my .45 this week.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I hate to say this but...slow news day.

We've got that bug here in FL, kills a few people periodically, particularly if we've had little rain and a hot summer (which, fortunately, we didn't have this year).

Kinda like how a dozen or so people die every year from bubonic plague in the southwest, yet it goes unreported. Why does it go unreported? Because it's statistically insignificant. A few years back there was this sudden spike in the number of shark attacks - except it wasn't a spike at all, it was right in line with what numbers should have been. That didn't stop the news-wires from going nuts with talk of "Growing numbers of shark attacks this summer." Or years and years ago I remember we had some wildfires in the SW and SE plus tsunamis and an earthquake and Time did it's usual alarmist bullshit shtick about "IS NATURE STRIKING BACK?" when of course the hell it wasn't: everything that was mentioned in that very special issue was kind of standard for weather and geological patterns.

So...yeah, an "outbreak" of brain-eating amoeba is sad for the people who die from it, but it's entirely routine. Considering your odds are greater of dying in a traffic accident or train accident in Islamabad (or, I hate to say, probably greater odds of dying in a terrorist attack there), I wouldn't worry the least about this amoeba...

[Targan]

Originally Posted by weswood

And I managed to break the extractor/ejector or whatever that damn thing is called on my .45 this week.

Noooooo!