NEWS: Yet Another Deadly Superbug Surfaces

It's transmitted by skin to skin contact ? Symptoms include large boils on the skin and can cause fatal blood poisoning or even a flesh-eating form of pneumonia ?

I don't think I'll be hugging anyone. Ever.
Regardless of their sexuality.
Or shaking hands or thumb wrestling or touching things other people touched, like everything.
Yup, thats it. I'm never touching anything again. Rubber suit.

My therapists thank you Fatality .

Those damned gays in San Francisco!!!

I bet the Zeitgeist was ground zero for this outbreak.
Or the End Up.

But definitely not Club Universe.

These deadly, antibiotic resistant strains of STAPH have been on the rise for a decade now -- my infant son got a spot on his foot from an NYC hospital in 1999 that was frightening and would not go away for about a year*

While I appreciate that the LBGTQ community needs to be aware for purposes of health management and prevention and treatment, I also find the press release offensive and prone to yes, spurring on more homophobic retribution!!!

Can they use to say it better?

[*yes, it is true, my newborn infant was engaging in risky homosexual activity from birth]

I guess I am finicky as well. It is something that jumps out at me a lot.

Great piece, as I have an odd fascination with super bugs.

An editor at The Stranger, Seattle's weekly, got a letter saying just that, Fatality, that gays should go to hell for this.

Oh, fun. It begins...

That's another reason why I hate the general idiotic populace.

-TM

You mean like Them?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Colinism said:

_Margot_ said:

Fatality said:
Maybe I'm being finicky, but I don't particularly like when comments like that seem to indicate that drug users or gays or whoever are not parts of "the general population." Probably being finicky...

I guess I am finicky as well. It is something that jumps out at me a lot.

Great piece, as I have an odd fascination with super bugs.

You mean like Them?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

I knew someone would do that.

NO No!! I think you did a great job covering it and what I meant is that I hear these horrendous news bites about a "Gay superbug"

and I appreciate that you were careful to cover this accurately

whoops. some of the conversation was in my head again

NO No!! I think you did a great job covering it and what I meant is that I hear these horrendous news bites about a "Gay superbug"

and I appreciate that you were careful to cover this accurately

whoops. some of the conversation was in my head again

Great article, Fatality.

Personally, if I were trying to assign blame here I'd start by looking at every consumer buying into the casual antibiotics fad lately, slathering their families and homes in antibiotic soap and lotion every day, with packets of scented antibiotic hand wipes for every time they touch a restaurant fork or a telephone. It's only "being safe" up to a point before it's more "weakening our immune system and forcing bacteria to evolve in new and exciting ways."

But why question your own actions, when you can blame teh geighs, right?

I think the use of the term "general population" was meant to include everyone, but I could be wrong?

I totally agree. I was actually discussing this with my brother over Christmas. He has hardly been sick a day in his life...he blames all the super-colds and super-flus on the fact that we've trained our immune systems to be "wussies". There have actually been studies done (google it, I'm lazy) on how all the antibacterial products are probably WORSE for us then the occassional germ.

Kind of makes you hope that this superbug does spread to "the general population," doesn't it?

Where did the first quote come from? I didn't see it in the attached article.

Sorry, that's my bad. It was a hypothetical quote Fatality wrote in the article. I put it in the quote box to make it stand out. I can see how it'd be confusing.

-TM

Well, there goes my fucking dudes with boils fetish.

The gay population and drug users are a subgroup of the general population, so the quote should not actually be taken as offensive.

And I really hope the new bug doesn't make me gay. Am I right, or am I right?

I've got to ask...why is it always a gay thing...I'm certainly not gay...but it is damn hard for me to see what the physical difference between a man and a women having anal sex from a man and another man doing it (other than the latter would kind of not be fun to watch, or even really picture)
We can all catch AIDS, we can all catch whatever this damn thing is, we could all catch TB or Smallpox for that matter...
Now the super clean houses with the germ free environment- now that is a problem...how are people ever going to build up an immune system if they are kept in a damn near sterile environment from birth...and then antibiotics are thrown in anytime there is a severe case of the sniffles....

i read a great op-ed piece about this in Salon the other day - the author, knowing that the religious and conservative whack jobs out there will use this as another reason to raise the "gay people are evil and bad and must be stopped" banners, uses the description of the communities that the bug spreads in and transposes it to football players.

yeah, well... my description doesn't quite do it justice, so check it out here...

the issue here is not that "gay people are bad". it's that having anonymous, unprotected sex carries with it the potential to spread this disease, and that this potential is being realized.

there is a subset of the homosexual population that does indeed engage in behavior that is more risky than most. there is also a subset of the heterosexual population that does this. both are taking a serious chance on their health.

At the risk of sounding like an insensitive prick, I'm a little more concerned by the fact that this strain is only affected by 4 to 5 types of antibiotics when it used to be around 8.

That doesn't make you insensitive, that shows priority. Whether or not this will be used against the gay community, in terms of the huge PR battle being fought over homosexuality, is not as pressing as an infection becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics. I wish there was a way to stop all those who abuse the use of antibiotic lotions, overprotective mothers, neurotic germophobes, etc., from using said antibiotic lotions, creams and sprays. Maybe the rate of super-viruses might be checked a little then. There really should be more media attention about this side of the story.