The City Where People Are Afraid To Breathe

HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "BBC reports that cases of an incurable illness called valley fever are multiplying at an alarming and mystifying rate in the American south-west. Few places have been hit as hard as Avenal, a remote city of 14,000 people, nestling in a dip in the floor of the San Joaquin Valley in what experts refer to as a 'hot zone' for coccidioidomycosis — an illness caused by the inhalation of tiny fungal spores that usually reside in the soil. 'On windy days you are more conscious of it,' says Enrique Jimenez. 'You breathe in through your nose, and try not to breathe in as much dust. I worked in the fields for a long time, my father managed a few crops out here, and we took precautions, wearing bandanas.' Valley Fever is not easy to treat. Anti-fungal drugs are available for serious cases but some patients don't respond and it can take years to clear up. It never leaves the body and symptoms can be triggered again. Some patients are on the drugs for life, at a crippling financial cost. During World War II, German prisoners held at a camp in Arizona fell ill. Germany reportedly invoked the Geneva Convention to try to get them moved. Longstanding concerns about valley fever were heightened recently when a federal health official ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 exceptionally vulnerable inmates from two San Joaquin Valley prisons where several dozen have died of the disease in recent years. Dale Pulde, a motorcycle mechanic in Los Angeles County, said he contracted the disease three years ago after traveling to Bakersfield in Kern County and was coughing so hard he was blacking out; he spit blood and couldn't catch his breath. For two months, doctors tested him for everything from tuberculosis to cancer until blood tests confirmed he had the fever. 'When I found out that health officials knew about (this disease) and how common it is, I was beside myself,' said Pulde. 'Why don't they tell people?'"

Comments

Moderators asleep at the job

[Sparticus789]

From the summary:

It never leaves the body and symptoms can be triggered again.

From the linked article

The infection ordinarily resolves leaving the patient with a specific immunity to re-infection.

Both cannot be true.

Re:Moderators asleep at the job

[Anonymous Coward]

As an infected person, I can tell you the wikipedia article is incorrect. For more information visit valleyfeversurvivor.org.

Re:Moderators asleep at the job

[Qzukk]

Both cannot be true.

The Shingles says they can.

Re:Moderators asleep at the job

[asdfman2000]

There are multiple forms of infection. I recently got taken out by this for about a week and had to go on intense anti-fungal meds. Most people just get a minor rash and flu-like symptoms and it goes away on its own. Few even realize they had it.

There is a form that basically remains dormant in your system for the rest of your life, however it's rare and mostly only affects immunocompromised people.

Some people treat Valley Fever like some doomsday infection, and some sites like valleyfeversurvivor.org have communities of people acting like it's the source of all their health problems regardless of whether or not it's actually true.

Re:Moderators asleep at the job

[Anonymous Coward]

They can certainly be true.

The infection is growing fungus in your lungs. The symptoms are caused by the fungus physically being there.

Specific Immunity means immunity to only that specific strain, and not any mutations of it, which happen regularly, and in parallel. It's even possible to be immediately re-infected with a different strain if exposed to the same conditions.

It also doesn't remove the crap that has built up in your lungs - which at a later date can cause irritation, and a resurgence of symptoms without requiring re-infection. Fungus can be a major problem - when it grows, it sends roots all through the infected tissue, and those roots, even if they're killed, are still there. You can't scrape them off, since they're embedded in the tissue itself.

Re:Moderators asleep at the job

[Khashishi]

I have a chronic form of Valley Fever, and I can attest that it is no joke. It might be true that on average it is less dangerous than the flu, but for some people it is much, much worse than the flu. If you restrict your domain to people who "actually suffer" from Valley Fever, then within that population, it is a very serious disease. So I guess you can play around with words and call Valley Fever a very common, mild disease, or a very rare, serious disease. If you call just the disseminated form of the disease Valley Fever, then it's usually fatal. Your statements are just not fair to people who suffer serious complications from the disease.

I think it's fairer to consider Valley Fever to be a rare, serious disease than a common benign disease because the difference between an asymptomatic infection and a chronic sufferer is so great.

Re:Valley fever

[CanHasDIY]

I, for one, would be pleased to see a reversal in the trend in the United States to imprison instead of rehabilitate those who are eminently rehabilitatable.

Not going to happen, so long as we have people making money from an industrial prison complex.

Potheads and repeat offenders are their bread-and-butter.

This thing is very common.

[Entropius]

I lived for a while in Tucson. Pretty much anyone who's outdoors in the desert much is likely to get it; in most people there are either no symptoms or flu-like symptoms. My PhD advisor had to have major surgery, and in the pre-surgery physical they found some characteristic scar tissue in his lungs and commented that he'd had valley fever at some point; he had no idea.

I'm pretty sure I had it; I got an unexplained very high fever and "flu-like" muscle pains along with a cough, but no sinus congestion at the end of my first year there.

Re:I expected China, but here in the US?

[gandhi_2]

Most of the medical professionals and vetrinarians in my area of southwest Utah know about it.

It's no secret.

People gotta live somewhere. Fires, floods, earthquakes, malaria, congressmen, natural radiation, natural heavy metals in ground water... every place has some problem.

It isn't like we are talking about bubonic plague running rampant. What should the government do? Spray bleach over everything? Kick people off their own property?

npr shots

[westlake]

BBC is the closest news network to cover it?

Cases Of Mysterious Valley Fever Rise In American Southwest [May 13]

Valley Fever Outbreaks Lead California to Move Inmates [July 5]

Re:hmm..

[Your.Master]

It was 40 out of 8000 people that died. That's a 0.5% death toll in 7 years, which annualizes to 0.07%. That's way higher than most Flus (2009 was relatively deadly at 0.03%). And those Flus are worldwide averages, not localized to prisons in developed countries.

Re:hmm..

[Prune]

Many of the homeless in San Francisco are war veterans. I suggest one does some fact checking before making glib comments on slashdot.

Re:hmm..

[AK Marc]

Yeah, 80 hours a week at minimum wage will net you about $2000 a month (fed min, I don't know CA min). Panhandling, that's about $1 every 10 minutes. The problem isn't panhandling, but the minimum wage. And maybe the way taxes are held for those making minimum wage.

My brother got a kidney in CA

[coyote_oww]

The list does not work the way you think it does. My brother had not been employed for several years, not a problem. Kidney transplants are money saving operations, so money is not really an obstacle. All kidney patients are eligible for Medicare, and the break-even of cost of transplanted patients vs dialysis is 2 years or less. So, generally the government is eager for you to get a kidney transplant because they are covering all or the bulk of your costs regardless of socio-economic status or voluntariness of your residence.

So... everyone goes on the list, and it's pretty much do first come, first serve, with exceptions for people who have some particular difficulty that might make a long wait impossible. Generally, loss of kidney function will not kill you directly, you can live a very long time on dialysis. My brother lived for several years with no kidneys at all (removed for extreme size).

Bad (medical) behavior can get you off the list (excessive drugs, alcohol, or obesity, for example), but money can be worked around.

Other organs do not have the same cost-benefit structure, and there are not alternative therapies, so the rules work differently.

I don't know what the rules are for sex changes, so I'm no help there.

Re:The City Where People Are Afraid To Breathe

[amorsen]

Most wind turbines actually do not use neodymium magnets. They use plain old electromagnetic generators. However, to electromagnetic generators get inefficient at low speeds, so using electromagnetic generators also means using gears, possibly multi-stage. Coal, gas, and nuclear plants generally work with very hot steam. You can design your steam turbine for pretty much any rotational speed you want. No gears necessary.

So why not just increase the rotational speed of wind turbines? You lose aerodynamic efficiency when the tip speed gets to a reasonable fraction of the speed of sound. To avoid gears and use electromagnetic generators on a typical 3MW wind turbine, you would need the tips to go faster than the speed of sound. Extracting power from the wind while going at supersonic speeds is a yet unsolved problem.

If the use of permanent magnets was banned entirely from wind turbines, the market would not really change much. Some manufacturers would temporarily lose market share while they redesigned, but overall turbine price would not change dramatically.