[gwnn]

yikes!

http://www.mirror.co...15875-23175656/

[PassedOut]

gwnn, on 2011-June-04, 08:48, said:

yikes!

http://www.mirror.co...15875-23175656/

Bad stuff.

[Winstonm]

It's Darwin's fault - Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican, Oklahoma

[y66]

This is such an amazing story. Has anyone heard from Fluffy recently?

[USViking]

German health oficials now say that German-grown bean sprouts
are likely to have caused this outbreak:

European E coli Infections

Quote

German health authorities claim that locally grown beansprouts have been identified as the likely cause of an outbreak of E coli...

One big problem from the beginning with the theory that Spanish produce
was the culprit was the fact that the only two Spanish victims had recently
been in northern Germany.

Spain is understandibly upset by the $100s millions in economic loss resulting
from misattribution, and is threatening legal action against Germany.

[Aberlour10]

This is a real killer virus,hundreds are still at the intensive care units. I am living not so far from the "epicentrum", so often hand washing and exclusively canned vegetables, its all we can do at the moment.

[mgoetze]

Aberlour10, on 2011-June-05, 11:28, said:

often hand washing and exclusively canned vegetables, its all we can do at the moment.

21 people have died of this virus, about 2500 are infected. In an average month last year, 304 people died in car accidents, 5218 were severely injured and a further 27425 had light injuries. I can only assume you are avoiding cars at all costs.

[helene_t]

Aberlour10, on 2011-June-05, 11:28, said:

This is a real killer virusbacteria

fyp

[blackshoe]

Aberlour10, on 2011-June-05, 11:28, said:

This is a real killer virus bacteria bacterium.

helene_t, on 2011-June-05, 12:02, said:

fyp

fyfyp.

[Aberlour10]

mgoetze, on 2011-June-05, 11:57, said:

21 people have died of this virus, about 2500 are infected. In an average month last year, 304 people died in car accidents, 5218 were severely injured and a further 27425 had light injuries. I can only assume you are avoiding cars at all costs.

You compare the incomparable.

Would you also say, no need for protecting on the issue of AIDS, because more people die in car accidents?

[helene_t]

it must be seen in relation to the sacrifice required to avoid the risk. How bad is it to have to live without cucumbers? without a car? without unprotected sex with casual partners?

[Fluffy]

y66, on 2011-June-04, 12:05, said:

This is such an amazing story. Has anyone heard from Fluffy recently?

Nevermind Bob, I don't eat much vegetables.

As far as spannish news tell, this has nothing to do with Spain at all. Germans have accoused us without any proof severily damaging our econmy and we are gonna demand repays.

Spannish media is not to be trusted anyway.

[1eyedjack]

helene_t, on 2011-June-05, 13:13, said:

it must be seen in relation to the sacrifice required to avoid the risk. How bad is it to have to live without cucumbers? without a car? without unprotected sex with casual partners?

Also, in the height of my arrogance I feel that I have some control over my potential death by car accident. Death by cucumber I probably cannot avoid otherwise than by randomly not eating a particular cucumber.

[Mbodell]

Maybe the Spanish people should get back at the Germans by having an economic crisis and forcing the Germans to bail them out?

[USViking]

mgoetze, on 2011-June-05, 11:57, said:

21 people have died of this virus, about 2500 are infected. In an average month last year, 304 people died in car accidents, 5218 were severely injured and a further 27425 had light injuries. I can only assume you are avoiding cars at all costs.

I suggest you bring this data to the attention of the German health authorities:

German Hospitls Struggling to Cope

(from link, emphasis added)

Quote

German hospitals are struggling to cope with the surge in patients caused by the E coli outbreak, as the death toll from the virus rose to 21.

The health minister, Daniel Bahr, said hospitals in northern Germany were finding it difficult to provide enough beds and treatment for patients, with the total number of cases increasing to 2,200...

Hospital authorities said blood supplies were running low and staff were exhausted and working round-the-clock, with the northern cities of Hamburg and Bremen the worst affected.

"They [the doctors] voluntarily come in on weekends and even sleep here," Oliver Grieve, a spokesman for the Kiel University hospital in northern Germany told Spiegel Online.

Hamburg's health minister, Cornelia Prüfer-Storcks, told a news conference the city was considering bringing doctors out of retirement. "We want to discuss with doctors about whether those who recently retired can be reactivated," she said.

Patients with less serious illnesses are now being moved to nearby hospitals and operations for non-threatening diseases are being postponed...

I am not sure medical staff will appreciate your suggestion that no one need
take any measures to reduce the risk of coming down with this illness. Maybe if
you explain very slowly and carefully to them...

[mgoetze]

USViking, on 2011-June-05, 15:34, said:

I suggest you bring this data to the attention of the German health authorities:

Seems like my data is very similar to the data you cited, why do you think they are not aware of it?

Quote

I am not sure medical staff will appreciate your suggestion that no one need
take any measures to reduce the risk of coming down with this illness. Maybe if
you explain very slowly and carefully to them...

Hold on... are you saying the measures Aberlour10 is taking significantly reduce the risk of contracting this illness? Why?

Meanwhile, I'm willing to bet that in the long run, medical staff would appreciate a 10% decrease in car-related injuries much more than a 10% decrease in E. coli cases.

[USViking]

mgoetze, on 2011-June-05, 15:48, said:

Seems like my data is very similar to the data you cited, why do you think they are not aware of it?

Please read a bit more carefully, and think a bit more carefully about
what you have read.

The information I obviously meant to convey, emphasized in bold, was
not data, it was the fact that health care facilites and staff are in a state
of crisis overload due to this E coli epidemic.

Quote

Hold on... are you saying the measures Aberlour10 is taking significantly reduce the risk of contracting this illness? Why?

If health officials are right that bean sprouts are the source of this infection,
then yes, I think there is enough of a possbility of significant reduction in risk
to avoid eating bean sprouts for the time being.

Quote

Meanwhile, I'm willing to bet that in the long run, medical staff would appreciate a 10% decrease in car-related injuries much more than a 10% decrease in E. coli cases.

And I am willing to bet that a sudden overwhelming epidemic such as this is among
the LAST thing any medical profession ever wants to see.

[USViking]

mgoetze, on 2011-June-05, 15:48, said:

Hold on... are you saying the measures Aberlour10 is taking significantly reduce the risk of contracting this illness? Why?

I misunderstood this- I thought "Aberlour10" was a German goverment health organization.

I thought rinsing produce was modern standard operating procedure, and that there was no
disagreement that doing so significantly reduces the chances of contacting food-bourne illness.
I do not know how effective rinsing is specifically against E coli. I suspect it is enough better
than doing nothijg to make it a worthwhile practice.

[y66]

From Mark Bitmann's op-ed in today's NYT

Quote

The dangerous E. coli, the ones causing the horrorshow in Germany right now, are called STEC (Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli, for the name of their horrific poison, and pronounced ess-teck). And if you think it’s only a German problem, you’re so wrong.

STEC usually migrate to food through direct or indirect contact with the contents of the animal’s intestinal tract: dung, not to put too fine a point on it.

...

What is known is that if you keep STEC out of beef you partially solve the problem, and if you keep manure off other foods you partially solve the problem, too. It isn’t easy, and it’s never going to be foolproof, but these are the steps to take. If you’re the cattle industry, you’d rather blame the whole thing on sprouts that were “somehow” contaminated. (Ban sprouts! No one really likes them anyway.) But blaming the sprouts is like blaming your nose for a virus-containing sneeze: That STEC came from somewhere, and in its history is an animal’s gut.

Because they’re grown in a warm, moist, gut-like environment, sprouts are an excellent vehicle for maintaining and maybe even reproducing STEC (indeed, so excellent that the Centers for Disease Control un-recommends them), but their involvement may never be proven.

Still, it’s likely that most of the thousands of people sickened in Germany ate a vegetable that was contaminated in its handling: manure got into the growing or rinsing water; or it was on the hands of a picker; or it got dropped on a veggie by a bird, or brushed onto it by a wandering animal; or it was in a truck that took the sprouts to the packager, or some other innocent accident, the kind we must do our best to prevent, the kind that’s magnified by combining huge lots of food from dozens of different sources and handling them all together. Remember, 50 STEC are enough to make you sick; one head of lettuce with a few hundred thousand bacteria, tossed together with a few tons of uncontaminated greens, then sold in thousands of packages, can mess up a lot of people.

Outbreaks of the deadly kinds of STEC — there are at least seven really toxic strains, including the German one — are common enough. But these outbreaks are the tip of the iceberg; there are tens of thousands of “sporadic” cases from STEC every year in the United States alone, most of them unreported but no less deadly for that.

To slow the deadly effects of STEC, we need more and better basic and applied research to identify them and test for them. We also need more testing of water used for irrigation and washing; reduced animal intrusions; alert farmworkers (an aside: people tend to be more alert if they’re more valued and less overworked and underpaid); and increased testing before people get sick and better reporting when they do get sick. (Less cow manure would help, but that isn’t about to happen.) All of these steps take money.

Even more important, we need to immediately acknowledge that O157 is not the only deadly STEC out there (non-O157 STEC has been found in up to six percent of a random sampling of meat, and not just hamburger), an acknowledgment that — of course — the meat industry is unwilling to make. And we need to declare those other STEC as “adulterants” and get them out of the food supply to the best of our ability. The two agencies that can act on this are USDA and FDA, and both are hamstrung by budget policy (the FDA needs more money for inspection; the House wants to give it less) and, of course, by the meat lobby and its allies.

[luke warm]

helene_t, on 2011-June-05, 13:13, said:

it must be seen in relation to the sacrifice required to avoid the risk. How bad is it to have to live ~~~ without unprotected sex with casual partners?

oh i get it... trick question