"The Superbug". It almost sounds like something really cool, like a tricked-out VW Beetle or a wicked-awesome crime fighter. But it’s not. It’s an antibiotic-resistant staph infection that is killing people. In clinical terms, a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.“Well how the hell did that come about?” you ask. Overuse of Penicillin. Doctors prescribe it for the sniffles now. Overprotective mothers throw an absolute fit every time little Johnny runs a temperature demanding that doctors prescribe a litany of antibiotics.
“But I want to keep my children safe. What’s a manic, obsessive, paranoid insecure mother who has tied her entire self-worth directly to the physical and emotional health of her perfectly healthy child to do?” Bingo! More antibiotics. Let’s all immediately go to Wal-Mart and buy a case of anti-bacterial soap, Clorox anti-bacterial wipes, anti-bacterial toilet bowl cleaner and anything else that kills 99.9% of all germs.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
Frankly I don’t think anything that kills 99.9% of anything is a good thing. But the problem here is that we are creating entirely new classes of diseases. Bacteria have been around for a while now. They have had millions of years to evolve into highly efficient killing machines. But apparently that's not enough for some of us. Rubbing every surface of your home down with anti-bacterial wipes is like exposing Bruce Banner to gamma rays. But instead of a giant green asshole with indestructible pants, we end up with invisible silent killers that propagate by the trillions in a matter of hours.
Thanks Mom. Because you want to keep your kid from getting a head-cold we all have to live in a world where touching absolutely fucking anything can kill us.
4 comments:
Thank you for that one. I make this argument all the time. We just had someone here collapse into a gagging fit due to a "superbug" type of deal, so there's a huge freakout. People were handing me all that Purell shit. I'm like, okay, first of all, this kills bacteria, not viruses. Don't confuse the two. Second of all, this shit is the problem, not the solution.
As a mother who has never believed in antibiotic for her kids unless the child is on death's door (what doesn't kill us makes us stronger), I still feel compelled to point out that a super bug was not created in the last couple of years from overuse of antibiotics. Our parents and our parents' parents all used antibiotics like crazy when they came out. Hell, you could buy them over the counter or doctors would prescribe huge amounts so you had extra at home. My mother-in-law still tries to shove them down my throat every time I sneeze.
I worked at a pediatric office from 1995 to 2000 and the doctors did not prescribe antiobiotics for colds or sniffles. It was common knowledge even then that giving antibiotics for anything other than an ear infection (which is usually bacterial) was bad medical practice. And now, they don't use antibiotics for ear infections unless the ear is oozing and bulging and about to burst.
Yes, people have gone a little purell crazy these last few years, but to blame the superbug on overly paranoid mothers in the present who want to keep their kids from getting a head cold is a little short sighted and fails to account for all the mothers in the past 60 years who weren't paranoid, but were just doing what their doctors told them to do.
That all being said, the earth can only handle so many human beings. Our population has taken off exponentially and nature keeps things in balance. When I studied evolutionary biology in the mid-90s, there were estimates that the if the human population continued to grow, it would collapse on itself sometime around 2015-2030. There are simply too many of us and its time to thin the herd.
So to be safe, I recommend washing your hands with good ol fashion soap, as hot of water as you can stand, several times during the day.
Patina, OK. I didn't mean to indict an entire class... well yes I did. But that class is pretty narrow in focus. Let's narrow that down to your mother in law and my mother and we'll call that a day. Honestly, I just assumed that overuse of antibiotics was still as common today as it was when I was growing up in the 70's and my brothers in the 80's. So let me go on record that it's the aggregate overuse of antibiotics over the last 50 years that's the problem which created this super bug.
That being said, my point (that I think you agree with) is that we are now mimicking that behavior once more with the use of antibiotic shower gel. I just heard it on the radio this morning. The announcers proudly declaring that as a result of this superbug, they constantly use disinfectant wipes all over the DJ booth every hour.
Whatever horrific bacterial nightmare we will face in the future, I suspect it will be the result of our over-use of these products today. In the future, some asshole like me will be bitching about anti-bacterial wipes and someone like you will defend the current crop of responsible citizens reminding him that it is not their fault, it's those idiots in the early 21st century and their damn handi-wipes. I just don't want to be in that class.
P.S. - Have you tried to find soaps that are NOT anti-bacterial? They are few and far between. It's a consumerist epidemic that will surely lead to, well... an epidemic.
Every soap is anti-bacterial, it just wasn't a good marketing ploy until they started showing movies and shows about pandemics on the TV. That and AIDS, and I know it's not a bacteria, but don't get me started on how stupid people are, that was a couple posts ago on your site.
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