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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?'"
BBC is the closest news network to cover it?
As if the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation doesn't have enough problems on its hands being forced to downsize the population of its myriad gulags, they have two prisons near Ground Zero of this disease and several more in the general vicinity. It would not be surprising if they are forced by a court eventually to close these prisons because of valley fever. 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.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
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.
sudo make me a sandwich
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.
Then you would have to close off the southwest United States. While the San Joaquin Valley has the most cases, I live in much farther south in CA and know two people who had valley fever serious enough to end up in the hospital. So it is not uncommon elsewhere in the southwest as well.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
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?
THL phish sticks
Organic and natural things are good for you, right?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Your pets can get this too, especially if they eat dirt. It's something to be aware of, since the vets took a couple of months figuring it out. It's the sort of thing if you want an expedited diagnosis you probably have to bring up yourself, so it's good to see it getting a little publicity so maybe doctors will become more aware in other parts of the country/world.
Why don't they tell people that the southwest is full of sharp plants???
Why don't they tell people that the southwest if HOT???
Why don't they tell people that "it's a dry heat"???
Because most southwesterners already KNOW, that's why. Few people have problems from valley fever(1 in 1000, or 1 in 5000 depending on source). And all the medical people will test for it first when a patient comes in experiencing a bad "fever". Even the people that have it (or have noticeable symptoms) usually can overcome it themselves without any medical treatment.
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
Desert fever was/is just another name for Valley Fever. I had it too and lived in Phoenix in the late 70's early 80's. It always freaked out my Doctors when they would see my lung x-rays. Loved having to explain that no I wasn't a smoker that was from valley fever and then having to teach them what coccidioidomycosis was to a MD.
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]
On a windy day you can pick up a hantavirus infection as well if you're near any varmint feces in a Western state. HPS fatality rate is 50%. Doctors know about it and they're not telling anybody. We need to close off New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, California, Washington, Texas, Utah and Montana.
Or not. Life is risky and temporary. Your wish to invoke power to assuage a brand new fear or outrage you were given sometime during the last 10 minutes is a result of training. You're behaving exactly as intended.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
>Surprising. It's a "new low" in the US as far as I'm concerned. If an area is not safe for human habitation, it needs to be closed off. "Why don't they tell people?!"
It's no big secret. People who live there know about it. God alone knows why they live there. If you go to Avenal and look around, you can see 20+ really good reasons not to live there before you even think about Valley Fever.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
In undeveloped countries, don't drink the water. In developed countries, don't breathe the air.
I am officially gone from
Stories like that always make me wonder why the turbines in coal, gas, and nuclear plants don't use neodymium magnets. Why is it that only renewable energy sources have to use materials that cause environmental damage to extract, but the physical equipment for non-renewables are made out of 110% non-polluting unicorn giggles?
According to the linked story, Germany did not invoke the Geneva convention, the US preemptively decided to remove the prisoners because they thought it might be a violation to subject them to the conditions. It would have been rather odd for Nazi Germany to complain about treatment of people in camps, from what I understand about history ( primarily through a tv channel with history in the name of it ).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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.
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.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?