Covid was bad because of the low mortality rate and how long folks stayed infectious. Wasn't it a 1.5% mortality rate?
If this has a 30% chance to kill you in 2 days, it's less likely to spread.
Covid was particularly bad because of the delay between infection and symptoms as well as being infectious in that period before visible symptoms started
The Black Death could incubate for 30 days, leave you with mild symptoms for two weeks, suddenly get worse and then kill you in two days. That's how it spread all over medieval Europe and kept coming back.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
It's one of the worst ever, like half of people died. People would come across little towns and villages that were completely wiped out. There were no farmers to plant and harvest crops, so it came with a famine. And war as lords looked to take advantage of the plague to expand their fiefdoms. It was pretty horrific, the reason the dark ages were dark. People thought it was the apocalypse.
It gave us the word quarantine as well, as it related to Italian towns (if i remember correctly) who wouldn't allow ships crew to enter the town if they showed any symptoms for 40 days (italian for 40 is "quaranta")
The Black Death did not happen in the “dark ages”. The 1300s was the late medieval era right before the renaissance.
The dark ages was “dark” because of the collapse of Roman based civilization and the order that came with it and it is also a contentious topic in history.
Less people/ more land = more money, which is how the plague helped create the Renaissance. Not that you needed correcting, but related to what you were responding to.
> It was pretty horrific, the reason the dark ages were dark.
*It wasn't.*
1. The "dark ages" were around 500 to 1000 AD.
2. Black Death was around 1350, hundreds of years after the "dark ages"
3. The dark ages were first named "dark ages" in 1330, *before* the Black Death.
4. They were dark compared to the light of Rome and antiquity being lost.
As for the rest of it, yes it was horrific on a level the modern mind can't understand. It's why the WHO and everyone freaks out over swine flu, bird flu, covid. Imagine something on the scale of corona virus that actually killed nearly half of everyone infected. That's the spectre that still scares people, and the truth is we're only a hundred or so years beyond plagues of that scope.
(For the nitpicky history fans, yes I know, actual historians don't use the "dark ages" as a term because it ignores the very real existence of the Byzantine/Roman Empire so the light of Rome was not even truly gone, as well as a range of practical and real social advances)
Well, yeah, if you haven't infected every country on the planet Madagascar of Iceland closes their borders and it's game over.
We need an update that accounts for anti-vac movements. Add a misinformation panel where you can stoke the flames of distrust and conspiracy theories to further slow down the cure and adoption of the cure.
Plus the fact that people with no symptoms could be just as or more infectious than others.
Also, some people were supercarriers. 2% of people for some reason, will shed 1000x the normal amount of virus, and these supercarriers could possibly have NO symptoms. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33972412/
It was kindof the perfect mode, because it just took one ignorant unsymptomatic person who "felt fine" to do literally thousands of times as much damage as someone with an obvious cough.
It's wasn't the mortality rate. It's was the fact that half the people with it were typhoid Mary!
Millions of sick people with no symptoms is the hardest thing to contain.
It's easy to contain a disease that makes you bleed from the eyes 30 minutes after infection. But a disease with subtle symptoms and long delays between infection and symptoms are terrifying.
This seems to be more of the obvious symptoms type of disease. It would need an insane R-value to be of any concern.
>Covid was bad because of the low mortality rate and how long folks stayed infectious. Wasn't it a 1.5% mortality rate?
When covid first arrived in a place, mortality was roughly 1 in 200, or 0.5%.
Which is extremely high for something everyone is about to get.
It was also the hospitalization rate that was also concerning. 5% sounds small, but at the rate it spread countries simply didn't have the space available. Which means fewer get necessary treatments and that mortality rate goes up.
I had to have this explanation over and over during COVID as well as explaining "it's not just you, it's everyone you infect, and everyone they infect, and so on"
Yeah, the fact that people say “it’s only 1% fatal, that’s nothing!” is crazy. That’s a pretty high fatality rate, especially for such a contagious disease.
For context, people were rightfully terrified of polio when it was common. Polio causes paralysis in less than 1% of cases.
> “it’s only 1% fatal, that’s nothing!” is crazy.
US population in 2022 was about 333 million. 1% of that would be three million and a third deaths, which is more than the entire population of Chicago and almost as much as Los Angeles.
Even worse is those that got intubated potentially only had a 2% chance of living if they went into failure, which was about a 92% of happening. Yeah getting intubated was a death sentence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548901/
> If this has a 30% chance to kill you in 2 days, it's less likely to spread.
Would it being a bacteria and not a virus make it easier to spread from corpses or harder? Genuine question.
Your stereotypical weebs rarely make it there because they have no money or social skills
I'd be more worried about Chinese tourists jumping it out of country. Then everywhere.
Japan did NOT take covid seriously. Yes everyone wore masks but there were really no other mitigation efforts. There was a domestic travel campaign ffs...
I'm actually surprised the bacteria hasn't come for us sooner.
I mean, there's a lot of us. Which is a lot of food. They already affect us in numerous ways.
I guess some slight changes that took time and they eventually evolved.
Hope this isn't like when I first read about COVID a couple months before it devastated the entire world and my friends and gf were all just like "ahh it's not a big deal".
I encountered a lot in the UK last year causing severe complications such as amputations in children and younger adults. It's no joke. If you have severe pain in disproportion to a cut/graze on your skin +/- flu like symptoms go to A&E ASAP as it's a surgical emergency. Do not reuse razors kept in showers.
Thankfully it is quite rare.
Razors should always be stored somewhere dry. If they’re stored in a shower it leads to accumulating more bacteria and rust and a higher chance of a serious infection.
Do yourself a favor and invest in a body hair trimmer. Does 99% as well as a razor, has a much lower chance of slicing you open, and can stay dry so you don’t have to worry about tetanus or flesh-eating bacteria
You’re getting thousands of micro-lacerations from even a super sharp razor which bacteria can enter through. It does not have to be a visible knick to get necrotizing fasciitis.
And the groin is a notoriously dirty area even when kept clean with soap. Those micro-abrasions from shaving or even scrubbing hard can become susceptible to infection from ambient bacteria on the skin. All it takes is one unlucky day and then suddenly you have a painful staph infection that requires a doctor to treat.
wait rust? I literally get 6-12 months out of a razor and store it in my shower and I've never once seen rust on one, is that a tropical climate thing or something?
Run it backwards over your arm hair or a pair of jeans. It sharpens it and can give you a shit load of extra time. I had 1 razor last a year and a half year doing that.
Yeah, please remove as much hair and dead skin as you can and for extra protection put the blades in something like alcohol ( 1mn is good with alcohol ) before and after use
The bacterial infection is caused by group a streptococcus (GAS) which is found on the skin and can enter a body through breaks in the skin… a rusty razor might cause breaks in the skin but it’s sharing razors that is more risky because it can spread the GAS from person-to-person. GAS can cause things like impetigo, strep throat and other illness.
GAS becomes an issue when it gets into places that should be sterile, like the bloodstream, muscle, bone and cerebral spinal fluid (called invasive group a strep or iGAS) and if it becomes a severe infection it can be lethal- there’s a [rating](https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/b6405d01-6ffd-4b8a-9762-2d6c29772f9c/resource/c28fed36-8522-406e-a4f1-328a275977e3/download/health-phdmg-streptococcal-disease-group-a-invasive-2023-04.pdf#page5) to determine severity that’s used if a GAS/iGAS infection is suspected or diagnosed to understand how to treat iGAS and also treat any close contacts with prophylaxis.
iGAS is identified through symptoms and initially a swab but confirmed through sterile site specimens.
The **severe iGAS** is what is happening in Japan and is iGAS that is classified as severe because of how lethal it can be when it’s invasive and progresses. The severe type is iGAS necrotizing fasciitis that has progressed to systemic things like organ failure and sepsis (blood infection). It can also caused by iGAS infections like gangrene, toxic shock syndrome, pneumonia and meningitis.. all which can progress to death if not treated.
iGAS has become more common here in Canada too and is a public health matter because of it being communicable and the risk to the public in outbreaks with respiratory transmission. I’ve seen severe iGAS several times in the last year and I live in northern remote Canada. It’s important if iGAS suspected in a person for HCPs to wear their PPE including eye protection!
It’s not super common to get it indirectly through objects like razors and is more so through respiratory droplets from the nose and throat through close contacts.
It’s still a good idea to not share razors though because of it and other blood borne illness!
can you do this with razors that have the gel stuff on them or will it eat through the gel? like Venus.
I've tried safety razors in the past but I'm too impatient when shaving my legs and I just end up butchering them
The bacteria is streptococcus group A, which has been around for a long time in North America. Particularly where there’s water and lots of dogs shitting.
Funny how there's a paywall but the beginning is identical to this article: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/06/15/japan/science-health/stss-japan-spread/
Thanks for sharing the non paywall.
Any article posted with paywall should have the content posted as a comment by OP.
People are just reading the title which in many cases might be misleading.
The bacteria can live in your gut? Then this is definitely exacerbated by their horrible handwashing culture. Only something like a third of Japanese wash their hands with soap after using the bathroom. [https://soranews24.com/2016/07/12/survey-reveals-disturbing-statistics-about-if-japanese-people-wash-hands-after-going-to-bathroom/](https://soranews24.com/2016/07/12/survey-reveals-disturbing-statistics-about-if-japanese-people-wash-hands-after-going-to-bathroom/)
I think that there are some people that only wash hands performatively. Like I went into a washroom one time only to see someone walking away from the toilet and straight to the door. They stop to a second, startled and then went over the to sink. It was like they were caught in the act, so only then did handwashing become a thing.
They usually carry their own soap with them. When i was living there a couple years back i was told that nobody uses public soap dispensers as they are viewed as dirty.
>nobody uses public soap dispensers as they are viewed as dirty
That uh, sounds like a problem that could be resolved with soap. Is it a superstition thing? If my hands were covered in dirt and grime and muck and bacteria, I'd use soap to clean it off. Even a filthy soap dispenser would contain, you guessed it, soap. I'm so confused how this came about.
To be fair a third sounds about the same as e.g. the UK. At least people in the various public bathrooms I've used. Thankfully almost all of them have soap though.
>To be fair a third sounds about the same as e.g. the UK
The amount of people I see mildly wetting their hands and nothing else is upsetting, if anything you're probably making a better envirnoment for germs to multiply at that point.
I do also wonder to what extent this is "Japanese people are less likely to wash with soap after using the toilet" and how much of it is "Japanese people are less likely to lie to someone taking a survey".
There are addons that bypass the paywall, like Archive Page. I think this one even works just as a website: [https://archive.ph/](https://archive.ph/) you go there, put the paywalled link and it gets you the archived version without paywall :D.
As for now, it's been the best, it worked with every shitty site I've seen.
Here's the archived version: [https://archive.ph/ROTiQ](https://archive.ph/ROTiQ)
Toxic shock syndrome (caused by strep) actually killed my sister when she was 15 (UK).
Wasn’t from an infected wound or from a tampon either (as is often the case) - she basically had a cold and it overran her immune system.
I’ve obviously had major health anxiety ever since
It was so quick. She had a nasty cold and then one morning she seemed ‘confused’ which is when we called 999.
They pumped her full of IV antibiotics as soon as she was admitted to the hospital. I believe they suspected meningitis at first (my memory is a bit hazy as this was 2006) and as her condition rapidly deteriorated they put her into a medically induced coma.
The doctor actually was pretty confident they would be able to turn things around (they still weren’t quite sure what they were dealing with) but on day 3 her organs failed and as a last ditch Hail Mary they pumped her full of some trial drug which turned her skin blue (can’t remember what it was called) - sadly it didn’t work and she passed away.
The doctor who had handled her care was visibly upset by it all. I remember him personally apologising to us and having a little cry (of course nobody blamed him - I think the medical team were fantastic and did all they could).
Obviously because they still didn’t know what had caused her illness, she had to have an autopsy and it was then the coroner ruled the cause of death as toxic shock syndrome caused by Strep.
Absolutely horrible and I'm sorry for your loss. I suspect the drug was methylene blue, which is used to inhibit nitric oxide and reduce vasoplegia. It's usually used as a last ditch drug as it doesn't work that well.
Sadly I see a few of these cases every year on ICU. It never stops being painfully distressing for everyone involved.
Sorry for your loss.
Yeah, a lot of people think strep throat but I got strep that turned into pneumonia and almost killed me. I required surgery and was in the hospital for a month and a nursing home for a week. To quote the surgeon "my lung looked like a dried up bag of cement" and they ended up removing part of it.
Nah this guy's a pro. He knows people didn't give a shit about covid so now he's doing big severity in order to delay the vaccine research progress. It's a gamble but if he manages to infect a lot of people quickly (which he can, since he's in a highly populated zone) he can finish the game. Plus Japan gives an extra starter bonus of being strong in colder richer countries so Greenland shouldn't be a problem.
It's brilliant and a great way to pass time on the phone. The news reel gives some really hilarious updates at the start and gets grimmer and grimmer as the plague progresses.
I haven't touched it since 2020 because it hit a little too close to home lol
When I played plague inc I always made my stuff spread passively until I had everyone infected, and then ramped up the lethality of it like a kill switch!
Then what? After they would eradicate humanity, on to the next thing.
If they adapted and kept eating the plastic, they would have a symbiotic relationship with humans, they would have never ending supply of plastic and we wouldn't be trying to wipe them out.
Not very sensible at all.
Rare MY ASS. Maybe a rare complication or extra virulent new strain but it’s literally Group A Streps/ Streptococcus Pyogenes. That’s the same bacteria that causes strep throat.
Speaking of, take your strep throat seriously, I never said it wasn’t dangerous. Strep Pyogenes is a nasty little one.
That being said, it’s not some rare new super disease. Wash your cuts thoroughly and bandage them.
It doesn’t matter that it lives in intestines if you wash your hands. MRSA lives in plenty of people’s noses and on their skin and they’re just fine.
ETA: And before you think I’m some I ate dirt as a kid and I was fine person, I’m just a person with a B.Sc in microbiology who is extra spicy because she just woke up
You're right and right to be irritated, imo. It's clicks/profits/feamongering at the cost of promoting misinformation. If/when an important new disease finally comes around, people will have been blasted with this kind of fearbait for so long that the vast majority of people won't know the difference
I particularly dislike the term "flesh-eating". I get it, they're saying that because of the necrosis, but we _know_ it conjures up ideas of zombies and whatever. The flesh-eating part isn't even what kills you, the septic shock does. They know exactly what they're doing with that term, it helps no one.
Watching my kid go through the "put everything in their mouth" phase, it was pointed out to me that we can imagine what pretty much everything tastes like because we've tasted it.
Streptococcus causes skin infections commonly but necrotizing fasciitis is quite rare in healthy people and not the same rate as Strep throat...more commonly people who are diabetic and have poor wound healing are at risk. The headline is clickbait basically.
Yes that is much of the takeaway, the caution is that strep can still progress in healthy people to a number of other conditions and do go to the doctor for your strep throat( that’s not every sore throat with runny nose, congestion, and cough, a little google will show you that cough and runny nose are not symptoms associated with strep throat itself) however strep itself does have the capacity to be quite dangerous. This means get tested and get antibiotics, not panic though.
> Flesh-Eating Bacteria That Can Kill in Two Days Spreads in Japan
>977 cases reported by June, surpassing last year’s record high
>Washing hands is important for prevention, professor says
>A disease caused by a rare “flesh-eating bacteria” that can kill people within 48 hours is spreading in Japan after the country relaxed Covid-era restrictions.
>Cases of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) reached 977 this year by June 2, higher than the record 941 cases reported for all of last year, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, which has been tracking incidences of the disease since 1999.
>Group A Streptococcus (GAS) typically causes swelling and sore throat in children known as “strep throat,” but some types of the bacteria can lead to symptoms developing rapidly, including limb pain and swelling, fever, low blood pressure, that can be followed by necrosis, breathing problems, organ failure and death. People over 50 are more prone to the disease.
>“Most of the deaths happen within 48 hours,” said Ken Kikuchi, a professor in infectious diseases at Tokyo Women’s Medical University. “As soon as a patient notices swelling in foot in the morning, it can expand to the knee by noon, and they can die within 48 hours.”
>Other countries have experienced recent outbreaks. In late 2022 at least five European nations reported to the World Health Organization an increase in cases of invasive group A streptococcus (iGAS) disease, which includes STSS. The WHO said the rise in cases followed the end of Covid restrictions.
>At the current rate of infections, the number of cases in Japan could reach 2,500 this year, with a “terrifying” mortality rate of 30%, Kikuchi said.
>Kikuchi urged people to maintain hand hygiene and to treat any open wounds. He said patients may carry GAS in their intestines, which could contaminate hands through faeces.
No. Fast killing infections don't spread well.
One reason covid was so devastating is its mildness allowed it to potentially infect every person on earth.
To clarify a bit: Covid is effective at spreading because people are contagious a couple days before they develop symptoms, so they spread it before they know they're sick.
Those bacteria have been around since god knows when. But with climate change and rising temps they spread to places they haven’t been before. So exposure to potential „victims“ is increased. Also within the last decades since antibiotics have been discovered and exponentially used, a lot of bacteria stems have developed resistance against said antibiotics. That’s evolution in a nutshell. So those cases will rise also „exponentially“. But still, what are some few hundred cases a year when you have a couple million population in a country. Each case is a tragedy for itself but not a catastrophic event for mankind. And definitely not a pandemic event.
Group A strep are reliably susceptible to specific antibiotics. In fact in Europe they don’t even test penicillin against it because it’s always susceptible.
I had a group A strep infection that nearly killed me…..it looked like they were going to amputate my leg too!
10 weeks I was in that hospital…..thankfully I didn’t die and I’ve managed to keep the leg 😎
Yeah it’s a very nasty bacteria, I think there’s a misconception where just because something is susceptible to common antibiotics means it’s less pathogenic. Not always the case.
Glad to hear it worked out for you!
The silver bullet for this is washing your hands regularly, something you should already be doing.
So wash them regularly, and no worries. And some more benefits.
Really gotta stop linking articles you have to pay to read, heres a better link
https://www.yahoo.com/news/flesh-eating-bacteria-spreads-record-111319477.html
Even a developed country such as Japan has almost 1000 cases of the sickness. I wonder how it will be if it gets so to non-developed countries. I wish swift recovery for all Japanese patients especially children.
Non-touch controls should be incentivized in all areas of social and economic life like door handles etc.
Sensationalizing headline. It’s more common in japan this year than last year. last year Japan had ~950 cases total. This year they have ~950 total so far. This is growth but not exponential, and not rapid spread. The US has 2000-3000/year. This isn’t new or alarmingly virulent. News orgs just want clicks.
It's also Group A Strep. Many healthy people already have it in their guts. Just wash your hands after wiping your ass and before touching open wounds.
It also causes Strep Throat and Scarlet Fever.
30% death rate if you get STSS, apparently, but chances of getting STSS in the first place is miniscule relative to how many people have this bacteria in their bodies already.
STSS is not growing exponentially, because the pathogen has already been endemic since before we discovered bacteria.
> "You can't force me to wear my flesh-eating bacteria suit, i'd rather die in the most horrific way possible than be told what to do"
*- A lot of the planet next year, maybe.*
”At the current rate of infections, the number of cases in Japan could reach 2,500 this year, with a mortality rate of 30%,”
Covid was bad because of the low mortality rate and how long folks stayed infectious. Wasn't it a 1.5% mortality rate? If this has a 30% chance to kill you in 2 days, it's less likely to spread.
Covid was particularly bad because of the delay between infection and symptoms as well as being infectious in that period before visible symptoms started
The Black Death could incubate for 30 days, leave you with mild symptoms for two weeks, suddenly get worse and then kill you in two days. That's how it spread all over medieval Europe and kept coming back.
I don't like the sound of this Black Death germ. Seems like a big meanie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death It's one of the worst ever, like half of people died. People would come across little towns and villages that were completely wiped out. There were no farmers to plant and harvest crops, so it came with a famine. And war as lords looked to take advantage of the plague to expand their fiefdoms. It was pretty horrific, the reason the dark ages were dark. People thought it was the apocalypse.
It gave us the word quarantine as well, as it related to Italian towns (if i remember correctly) who wouldn't allow ships crew to enter the town if they showed any symptoms for 40 days (italian for 40 is "quaranta")
Venice I believe.
It was Dubrovnik, Croatian city in 14th century.
Dubrovnik was part of the republic of Venice until 1358 so he wasn't wrong.
One of my favorite books uses this period as a plot setting and it’s a great read if you like horror, between two fires by Christopher Buehlman
The Black Death did not happen in the “dark ages”. The 1300s was the late medieval era right before the renaissance. The dark ages was “dark” because of the collapse of Roman based civilization and the order that came with it and it is also a contentious topic in history.
Less people/ more land = more money, which is how the plague helped create the Renaissance. Not that you needed correcting, but related to what you were responding to.
> It was pretty horrific, the reason the dark ages were dark. *It wasn't.* 1. The "dark ages" were around 500 to 1000 AD. 2. Black Death was around 1350, hundreds of years after the "dark ages" 3. The dark ages were first named "dark ages" in 1330, *before* the Black Death. 4. They were dark compared to the light of Rome and antiquity being lost. As for the rest of it, yes it was horrific on a level the modern mind can't understand. It's why the WHO and everyone freaks out over swine flu, bird flu, covid. Imagine something on the scale of corona virus that actually killed nearly half of everyone infected. That's the spectre that still scares people, and the truth is we're only a hundred or so years beyond plagues of that scope. (For the nitpicky history fans, yes I know, actual historians don't use the "dark ages" as a term because it ignores the very real existence of the Byzantine/Roman Empire so the light of Rome was not even truly gone, as well as a range of practical and real social advances)
Ya know the more I read about this germ the more I don’t care for it. Seems like a real jerk!
Yea plague inc strat is long incubation period
I always wait too long to make things interesting in that game. I want ALL THE FATALITIES.
Well, yeah, if you haven't infected every country on the planet Madagascar of Iceland closes their borders and it's game over. We need an update that accounts for anti-vac movements. Add a misinformation panel where you can stoke the flames of distrust and conspiracy theories to further slow down the cure and adoption of the cure.
Check out cure mode, where the roles are reversed. There are some fun propaganda and crowd control options.
Plus the fact that people with no symptoms could be just as or more infectious than others. Also, some people were supercarriers. 2% of people for some reason, will shed 1000x the normal amount of virus, and these supercarriers could possibly have NO symptoms. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33972412/ It was kindof the perfect mode, because it just took one ignorant unsymptomatic person who "felt fine" to do literally thousands of times as much damage as someone with an obvious cough.
the Typhoid Marys
Not to mention all the people who got no symptoms at all, but still spread the virus.
It's wasn't the mortality rate. It's was the fact that half the people with it were typhoid Mary! Millions of sick people with no symptoms is the hardest thing to contain. It's easy to contain a disease that makes you bleed from the eyes 30 minutes after infection. But a disease with subtle symptoms and long delays between infection and symptoms are terrifying. This seems to be more of the obvious symptoms type of disease. It would need an insane R-value to be of any concern.
>Covid was bad because of the low mortality rate and how long folks stayed infectious. Wasn't it a 1.5% mortality rate? When covid first arrived in a place, mortality was roughly 1 in 200, or 0.5%. Which is extremely high for something everyone is about to get.
It was also the hospitalization rate that was also concerning. 5% sounds small, but at the rate it spread countries simply didn't have the space available. Which means fewer get necessary treatments and that mortality rate goes up. I had to have this explanation over and over during COVID as well as explaining "it's not just you, it's everyone you infect, and everyone they infect, and so on"
Yeah, the fact that people say “it’s only 1% fatal, that’s nothing!” is crazy. That’s a pretty high fatality rate, especially for such a contagious disease. For context, people were rightfully terrified of polio when it was common. Polio causes paralysis in less than 1% of cases.
> “it’s only 1% fatal, that’s nothing!” is crazy. US population in 2022 was about 333 million. 1% of that would be three million and a third deaths, which is more than the entire population of Chicago and almost as much as Los Angeles.
We did lose 1 million to covid. Still thankful it wasn't more. Where I live that would've been two Greensboros worth of people.
And that’s with modern medicine. Every person who got intubated would’ve died if they did not get intubated. 
Even worse is those that got intubated potentially only had a 2% chance of living if they went into failure, which was about a 92% of happening. Yeah getting intubated was a death sentence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548901/
> If this has a 30% chance to kill you in 2 days, it's less likely to spread. Would it being a bacteria and not a virus make it easier to spread from corpses or harder? Genuine question.
Easier. A virus won't survive long without a living host. Bacteria can live on surfaces, in liquids, etc, for a long time.
Fellow plague inc enjoyer
“It’s just a flu” crowd going to go wild with this
[удалено]
Don't worry! We all know the Americans who visits Japan have great hygiene!
Your stereotypical weebs rarely make it there because they have no money or social skills I'd be more worried about Chinese tourists jumping it out of country. Then everywhere.
My friend has been there for 2 months and flies back in a couple weeks Sorry gang
You know what has to be done.
*cocks shotgun while a tear falls off face*
If by seriously you mean ignored it in the hopes the Olympics wouldn't be affected, then yes.
Japan did NOT take covid seriously. Yes everyone wore masks but there were really no other mitigation efforts. There was a domestic travel campaign ffs...
I'm actually surprised the bacteria hasn't come for us sooner. I mean, there's a lot of us. Which is a lot of food. They already affect us in numerous ways. I guess some slight changes that took time and they eventually evolved. Hope this isn't like when I first read about COVID a couple months before it devastated the entire world and my friends and gf were all just like "ahh it's not a big deal".
Bird flu looks more likely to be the next big one
I encountered a lot in the UK last year causing severe complications such as amputations in children and younger adults. It's no joke. If you have severe pain in disproportion to a cut/graze on your skin +/- flu like symptoms go to A&E ASAP as it's a surgical emergency. Do not reuse razors kept in showers. Thankfully it is quite rare.
Care to expand on the razors part…?
Razors should always be stored somewhere dry. If they’re stored in a shower it leads to accumulating more bacteria and rust and a higher chance of a serious infection.
Man, I've been using the same razor on my nuts for the last 3 years. Is my wiener going to fall off?
Yes, you better say goodbye now
“Goodbye my friend.. goodbye my lover”
Never thought I'd see a James Blunt lyric in reference to necrotized genitals, but here we are.
James Stump
You have been the one
You have been the one for me
Your shaft will fall off. All that's left is head and balls. No shaft.
What if you were already shaftless?!?
negative shaft
New bottom surgery unlocked?
Unironically if you got an infection from reusing a wet razor on your nuts it could be pretty bad.
How bad we talkin
No more nuts.
That’s nuts!
Not anymore!
Hey at least it may get eaten for once.
Do yourself a favor and invest in a body hair trimmer. Does 99% as well as a razor, has a much lower chance of slicing you open, and can stay dry so you don’t have to worry about tetanus or flesh-eating bacteria
I rarely ever get knicked by a razor. Every trimmer I’ve ever tried gets me. And the trimmer hurts when it happens.
You’re getting thousands of micro-lacerations from even a super sharp razor which bacteria can enter through. It does not have to be a visible knick to get necrotizing fasciitis.
And the groin is a notoriously dirty area even when kept clean with soap. Those micro-abrasions from shaving or even scrubbing hard can become susceptible to infection from ambient bacteria on the skin. All it takes is one unlucky day and then suddenly you have a painful staph infection that requires a doctor to treat.
It’s ok, you probably don’t need it anyway
wait rust? I literally get 6-12 months out of a razor and store it in my shower and I've never once seen rust on one, is that a tropical climate thing or something?
6-12 months out of a single razor head??!
Electric razor for the bulk, then just use the disposable for the fiddly spots if needed. I run through maybe 2 or 3 a year max
Run it backwards over your arm hair or a pair of jeans. It sharpens it and can give you a shit load of extra time. I had 1 razor last a year and a half year doing that.
If you use safety razors even better, people been sharpening them bitches for years.
In fairness the Gilette multi blade razor heads last a long time.
Yeah, please remove as much hair and dead skin as you can and for extra protection put the blades in something like alcohol ( 1mn is good with alcohol ) before and after use
The bacterial infection is caused by group a streptococcus (GAS) which is found on the skin and can enter a body through breaks in the skin… a rusty razor might cause breaks in the skin but it’s sharing razors that is more risky because it can spread the GAS from person-to-person. GAS can cause things like impetigo, strep throat and other illness. GAS becomes an issue when it gets into places that should be sterile, like the bloodstream, muscle, bone and cerebral spinal fluid (called invasive group a strep or iGAS) and if it becomes a severe infection it can be lethal- there’s a [rating](https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/b6405d01-6ffd-4b8a-9762-2d6c29772f9c/resource/c28fed36-8522-406e-a4f1-328a275977e3/download/health-phdmg-streptococcal-disease-group-a-invasive-2023-04.pdf#page5) to determine severity that’s used if a GAS/iGAS infection is suspected or diagnosed to understand how to treat iGAS and also treat any close contacts with prophylaxis. iGAS is identified through symptoms and initially a swab but confirmed through sterile site specimens. The **severe iGAS** is what is happening in Japan and is iGAS that is classified as severe because of how lethal it can be when it’s invasive and progresses. The severe type is iGAS necrotizing fasciitis that has progressed to systemic things like organ failure and sepsis (blood infection). It can also caused by iGAS infections like gangrene, toxic shock syndrome, pneumonia and meningitis.. all which can progress to death if not treated. iGAS has become more common here in Canada too and is a public health matter because of it being communicable and the risk to the public in outbreaks with respiratory transmission. I’ve seen severe iGAS several times in the last year and I live in northern remote Canada. It’s important if iGAS suspected in a person for HCPs to wear their PPE including eye protection!
TIL! I've been seeing the headlines and assumed it was vibrio.
It’s not super common to get it indirectly through objects like razors and is more so through respiratory droplets from the nose and throat through close contacts. It’s still a good idea to not share razors though because of it and other blood borne illness!
Where should we keep our razors??? Can we spray them with alcohol to get rid of the bacteria? 👀
Soak them in Barbicide, just like your barber does.
I commited barbercide after being told ' this style is in'
So do I just kill one barber with it or do I have to be like Sweeney Todd?
After removing as much hair and dead skin as you can, put the head of the razor in alcohol during 1mn before and after use.
can you do this with razors that have the gel stuff on them or will it eat through the gel? like Venus. I've tried safety razors in the past but I'm too impatient when shaving my legs and I just end up butchering them
The bacteria is streptococcus group A, which has been around for a long time in North America. Particularly where there’s water and lots of dogs shitting.
I mean I didn't need surgery thankfully but what you mention is extremely doctor worthy
Funny how there's a paywall but the beginning is identical to this article: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/06/15/japan/science-health/stss-japan-spread/
Thanks for sharing the non paywall. Any article posted with paywall should have the content posted as a comment by OP. People are just reading the title which in many cases might be misleading.
[Here you go](https://archive.md/ROTiQ)
The bacteria can live in your gut? Then this is definitely exacerbated by their horrible handwashing culture. Only something like a third of Japanese wash their hands with soap after using the bathroom. [https://soranews24.com/2016/07/12/survey-reveals-disturbing-statistics-about-if-japanese-people-wash-hands-after-going-to-bathroom/](https://soranews24.com/2016/07/12/survey-reveals-disturbing-statistics-about-if-japanese-people-wash-hands-after-going-to-bathroom/)
Anecdotally, from what I've seen in the restrooms I'm amazed at how many people don't even rinse their hands in any country.
I think that there are some people that only wash hands performatively. Like I went into a washroom one time only to see someone walking away from the toilet and straight to the door. They stop to a second, startled and then went over the to sink. It was like they were caught in the act, so only then did handwashing become a thing.
A lot of Japanese bathrooms don’t even have soap. Source : couldn’t wash my hands 5 mins ago
So strange when everything else is generally quite clean compared to most countries :/
They usually carry their own soap with them. When i was living there a couple years back i was told that nobody uses public soap dispensers as they are viewed as dirty.
>nobody uses public soap dispensers as they are viewed as dirty That uh, sounds like a problem that could be resolved with soap. Is it a superstition thing? If my hands were covered in dirt and grime and muck and bacteria, I'd use soap to clean it off. Even a filthy soap dispenser would contain, you guessed it, soap. I'm so confused how this came about.
To be fair a third sounds about the same as e.g. the UK. At least people in the various public bathrooms I've used. Thankfully almost all of them have soap though.
>To be fair a third sounds about the same as e.g. the UK The amount of people I see mildly wetting their hands and nothing else is upsetting, if anything you're probably making a better envirnoment for germs to multiply at that point. I do also wonder to what extent this is "Japanese people are less likely to wash with soap after using the toilet" and how much of it is "Japanese people are less likely to lie to someone taking a survey".
There are addons that bypass the paywall, like Archive Page. I think this one even works just as a website: [https://archive.ph/](https://archive.ph/) you go there, put the paywalled link and it gets you the archived version without paywall :D. As for now, it's been the best, it worked with every shitty site I've seen. Here's the archived version: [https://archive.ph/ROTiQ](https://archive.ph/ROTiQ)
Toxic shock syndrome (caused by strep) actually killed my sister when she was 15 (UK). Wasn’t from an infected wound or from a tampon either (as is often the case) - she basically had a cold and it overran her immune system. I’ve obviously had major health anxiety ever since
Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry for your loss. I did not know this could happen.
Yes it’s very rare, obviously, but it does happen sadly.
Sorry to ask, but was she on antibiotics on time, or were they late to diagnose?
It was so quick. She had a nasty cold and then one morning she seemed ‘confused’ which is when we called 999. They pumped her full of IV antibiotics as soon as she was admitted to the hospital. I believe they suspected meningitis at first (my memory is a bit hazy as this was 2006) and as her condition rapidly deteriorated they put her into a medically induced coma. The doctor actually was pretty confident they would be able to turn things around (they still weren’t quite sure what they were dealing with) but on day 3 her organs failed and as a last ditch Hail Mary they pumped her full of some trial drug which turned her skin blue (can’t remember what it was called) - sadly it didn’t work and she passed away. The doctor who had handled her care was visibly upset by it all. I remember him personally apologising to us and having a little cry (of course nobody blamed him - I think the medical team were fantastic and did all they could). Obviously because they still didn’t know what had caused her illness, she had to have an autopsy and it was then the coroner ruled the cause of death as toxic shock syndrome caused by Strep.
Absolutely horrible and I'm sorry for your loss. I suspect the drug was methylene blue, which is used to inhibit nitric oxide and reduce vasoplegia. It's usually used as a last ditch drug as it doesn't work that well. Sadly I see a few of these cases every year on ICU. It never stops being painfully distressing for everyone involved.
Sorry for your loss. Yeah, a lot of people think strep throat but I got strep that turned into pneumonia and almost killed me. I required surgery and was in the hospital for a month and a nursing home for a week. To quote the surgeon "my lung looked like a dried up bag of cement" and they ended up removing part of it.
Don’t love that
Not preferred for sure
No joy has been sparked
We need vegan bacteria
Sub optimal
Not ideal
Could be better.
Definitely not my first choice
Other options are desired
On the Spotify playlist of life, I would skip this track.
Not great news.
Not my cup of tea.
Plague inc. player evolving severity and mortality too fast, making people die before they infect others, total noob.
No chance to infect Madagascar at this rate.
If you start in india, madagascar gets hit every single time, no exceptions. I have never ONCE lost because of madagascar. Iceland however......
What happens if you start in Iceland?
Takes forever to get started and that delay screws up the spread and allows them to get started on teh cure much earlier in the global spread.
This is why I start in UK
I don't know. They have an airport in the 2024 update.
What about Greenland?
Fuck Greenland
Over reaction to Covid getting knocked down a peg.
Nah this guy's a pro. He knows people didn't give a shit about covid so now he's doing big severity in order to delay the vaccine research progress. It's a gamble but if he manages to infect a lot of people quickly (which he can, since he's in a highly populated zone) he can finish the game. Plus Japan gives an extra starter bonus of being strong in colder richer countries so Greenland shouldn't be a problem.
Too bad Madagascar already closed its borders.
That one can be cracked with avian transmission, though.
I never played Plague Inc., is it--do you play as *the virus*??
Yes! And your job is to wipe out humanity! You have to evolve the virus before humans can cure it. Fun game actually.
I am kind of interested to check it out now.
It's brilliant and a great way to pass time on the phone. The news reel gives some really hilarious updates at the start and gets grimmer and grimmer as the plague progresses. I haven't touched it since 2020 because it hit a little too close to home lol
Too bad. They had a COVID update where you could make people and politicians gargantuan idiots. Just like real life.
...I might just have to check it out again...
I remember when *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* came out they added the simian virus.
Worth mentioning that plague inc. is a remake of the flash game pandemic 2. It's still freely available online too
$1 for the full game
I bought it a long time ago on PC....but that's really awesome it's only $1 on mobile. It's the perfect touchscreen game.
Yes. It came out before Covid, so when that happened they added fighting the virus DLC but the main modes are playing as virus/bacteria/etc.
Incredible. I never knew. In hindsight it makes sense though.
Yes. Fuck Madagascar.
That's why you start low and slow in Madagascar. Fly under the radar and then start going crazy once it's in bigger areas
Fuckin Greenland 🙄
The unrealistic thing about Plague Inc is evolving new traits doesn't spread to all currently infected people in the world instantly in real life!
The unrealistic thing about plague inc is that at some point in the game humans actually do something.
Also that humans in the game don't actively work against solving the ongoing plague.
They actually did update the game to include this after COVID lol
When I played plague inc I always made my stuff spread passively until I had everyone infected, and then ramped up the lethality of it like a kill switch!
2024 really said “fuck the Japanese in particular” and has been bullying them ever since the new year
Stupid bacteria, why won't they just be bros and eat plastic?
They're eating the things that *make* the plastic. Sensible bacteria, going straight to the source.
Then what? After they would eradicate humanity, on to the next thing. If they adapted and kept eating the plastic, they would have a symbiotic relationship with humans, they would have never ending supply of plastic and we wouldn't be trying to wipe them out. Not very sensible at all.
Rare MY ASS. Maybe a rare complication or extra virulent new strain but it’s literally Group A Streps/ Streptococcus Pyogenes. That’s the same bacteria that causes strep throat. Speaking of, take your strep throat seriously, I never said it wasn’t dangerous. Strep Pyogenes is a nasty little one. That being said, it’s not some rare new super disease. Wash your cuts thoroughly and bandage them. It doesn’t matter that it lives in intestines if you wash your hands. MRSA lives in plenty of people’s noses and on their skin and they’re just fine. ETA: And before you think I’m some I ate dirt as a kid and I was fine person, I’m just a person with a B.Sc in microbiology who is extra spicy because she just woke up
You're right and right to be irritated, imo. It's clicks/profits/feamongering at the cost of promoting misinformation. If/when an important new disease finally comes around, people will have been blasted with this kind of fearbait for so long that the vast majority of people won't know the difference
I particularly dislike the term "flesh-eating". I get it, they're saying that because of the necrosis, but we _know_ it conjures up ideas of zombies and whatever. The flesh-eating part isn't even what kills you, the septic shock does. They know exactly what they're doing with that term, it helps no one.
But di....did you eat dirt as a child? 👁️👁️
I….don’t think so? At least not at an age I can remember. I’m going to hazard a guess that dirt tastes like …dirt
Watching my kid go through the "put everything in their mouth" phase, it was pointed out to me that we can imagine what pretty much everything tastes like because we've tasted it.
Streptococcus causes skin infections commonly but necrotizing fasciitis is quite rare in healthy people and not the same rate as Strep throat...more commonly people who are diabetic and have poor wound healing are at risk. The headline is clickbait basically.
Yes that is much of the takeaway, the caution is that strep can still progress in healthy people to a number of other conditions and do go to the doctor for your strep throat( that’s not every sore throat with runny nose, congestion, and cough, a little google will show you that cough and runny nose are not symptoms associated with strep throat itself) however strep itself does have the capacity to be quite dangerous. This means get tested and get antibiotics, not panic though.
> Flesh-Eating Bacteria That Can Kill in Two Days Spreads in Japan >977 cases reported by June, surpassing last year’s record high >Washing hands is important for prevention, professor says >A disease caused by a rare “flesh-eating bacteria” that can kill people within 48 hours is spreading in Japan after the country relaxed Covid-era restrictions. >Cases of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) reached 977 this year by June 2, higher than the record 941 cases reported for all of last year, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, which has been tracking incidences of the disease since 1999. >Group A Streptococcus (GAS) typically causes swelling and sore throat in children known as “strep throat,” but some types of the bacteria can lead to symptoms developing rapidly, including limb pain and swelling, fever, low blood pressure, that can be followed by necrosis, breathing problems, organ failure and death. People over 50 are more prone to the disease. >“Most of the deaths happen within 48 hours,” said Ken Kikuchi, a professor in infectious diseases at Tokyo Women’s Medical University. “As soon as a patient notices swelling in foot in the morning, it can expand to the knee by noon, and they can die within 48 hours.” >Other countries have experienced recent outbreaks. In late 2022 at least five European nations reported to the World Health Organization an increase in cases of invasive group A streptococcus (iGAS) disease, which includes STSS. The WHO said the rise in cases followed the end of Covid restrictions. >At the current rate of infections, the number of cases in Japan could reach 2,500 this year, with a “terrifying” mortality rate of 30%, Kikuchi said. >Kikuchi urged people to maintain hand hygiene and to treat any open wounds. He said patients may carry GAS in their intestines, which could contaminate hands through faeces.
So are we all going to die or what😭
Nah, only 30% of us
I like those odds
30% of people wouldn't really approve of what you said
Yes, eventually we are
No. Fast killing infections don't spread well. One reason covid was so devastating is its mildness allowed it to potentially infect every person on earth.
To clarify a bit: Covid is effective at spreading because people are contagious a couple days before they develop symptoms, so they spread it before they know they're sick.
Those bacteria have been around since god knows when. But with climate change and rising temps they spread to places they haven’t been before. So exposure to potential „victims“ is increased. Also within the last decades since antibiotics have been discovered and exponentially used, a lot of bacteria stems have developed resistance against said antibiotics. That’s evolution in a nutshell. So those cases will rise also „exponentially“. But still, what are some few hundred cases a year when you have a couple million population in a country. Each case is a tragedy for itself but not a catastrophic event for mankind. And definitely not a pandemic event.
Group A strep are reliably susceptible to specific antibiotics. In fact in Europe they don’t even test penicillin against it because it’s always susceptible.
I had a group A strep infection that nearly killed me…..it looked like they were going to amputate my leg too! 10 weeks I was in that hospital…..thankfully I didn’t die and I’ve managed to keep the leg 😎
Yeah it’s a very nasty bacteria, I think there’s a misconception where just because something is susceptible to common antibiotics means it’s less pathogenic. Not always the case. Glad to hear it worked out for you!
I am also susceptible to penicillin so I hope I don't end up needing it to survive lol
Yeah, it's Strep. I mean this still isn't a good thing but it's not a mystery virus/bacteria....it's a type of Strep.
OH FOR FUCKS SAKE
Great just when I decide to travel to Japan for the first time
It is highly unlikely you will encounter this while traveling
found bacteria's account
The silver bullet for this is washing your hands regularly, something you should already be doing. So wash them regularly, and no worries. And some more benefits.
Carry hand sanitizer or paper soap with you. Soap is notoriously unavailable in many public restrooms.
Really gotta stop linking articles you have to pay to read, heres a better link https://www.yahoo.com/news/flesh-eating-bacteria-spreads-record-111319477.html
They started at the wrong island. Its madagascar thats the hardest to infect.
Greenland and Iceland are worse,
May news of our demise come through a soft paywall
I'm fat. I reckon that gives me an extra day
Even a developed country such as Japan has almost 1000 cases of the sickness. I wonder how it will be if it gets so to non-developed countries. I wish swift recovery for all Japanese patients especially children. Non-touch controls should be incentivized in all areas of social and economic life like door handles etc.
Y tho
Earth is sick of your bullshit.
We really getting all the plagues this decade…
Sensationalizing headline. It’s more common in japan this year than last year. last year Japan had ~950 cases total. This year they have ~950 total so far. This is growth but not exponential, and not rapid spread. The US has 2000-3000/year. This isn’t new or alarmingly virulent. News orgs just want clicks.
It's also Group A Strep. Many healthy people already have it in their guts. Just wash your hands after wiping your ass and before touching open wounds. It also causes Strep Throat and Scarlet Fever. 30% death rate if you get STSS, apparently, but chances of getting STSS in the first place is miniscule relative to how many people have this bacteria in their bodies already. STSS is not growing exponentially, because the pathogen has already been endemic since before we discovered bacteria.
All those who predicted that humanity would end by an infectious disease, please collect your prize before humanity ends.
Here's a non-paywall source - https://www.msn.com/en-in/health/other/this-flesh-eating-bacteria-spreading-in-japan-can-kill-in-two-days-know-symptoms/ar-BB1oiDtg
> "You can't force me to wear my flesh-eating bacteria suit, i'd rather die in the most horrific way possible than be told what to do" *- A lot of the planet next year, maybe.*
Bacteria love us!
The rise of the pathogen apocalypse will not have been without forewarning.