Deadly Fungal Infections Causing a 'Silent Pandemic', Scientists Warn | Hacker News Reader

Deadly Fungal Infections Causing a 'Silent Pandemic', Scientists Warn

sciencealert.com

17 pointsBrajeshwar7 comments

Skip the sensational rewrite and read the original statement by van Rhijn et al., published in The Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The authors lament the lack of research (and action) on treatment of fungal diseases, despite the introduction of a WHO focus group (WHO FPPL).

The paragraph in question which mentions a "silent pandemic" (AMR = antimicrobial resistance):

"The primary purpose of the WHO FPPL was to guide research, development, and public health action. Unfortunately, the desired effect has not yet been fully achieved as judged by the scope of the articles in The Lancet Series on AMR. Despite the clear need to prominently highlight fungal AMR, we express our disappointment that, even after many years of calling for action for this silent pandemic, only five sentences in one of the four Series papers are devoted to a few fungal pathogens."

maybe if "we" (coloquial we in developed nations) didn't treat certain parts of the population like cattle and just "throw anti-viral/funcal/flu" treatments at them we would have a better situation....

then again anti-X treatments are so great that India et al produce them like candy so gonna have to find a new way of fixing those problems once that chicken comes home to roost.

maybe if we had just had a once in several lifetimes chance to EDUCATE on basic hygeine rather than getting bogged down in bad politics we could actually have make a difference... nah lets go back to live animal markets and demanding a fantasy cure-all from our local-GP for what ails us...

If you don't expect this level of discourse, be very careful to decide to bring up the 'pandemic' in future please, it's just for click-bait and funding councils...

> maybe if we had just had a once in several lifetimes chance to EDUCATE on basic hygeine [...] nah lets go back to live animal markets

A phrase comes to mind which I think is a useful axiom: "They're poor, not stupid."

For example, it's much easier to "educate" someone about regular hand-washing with soap and hot water when they can just twist the "H" knob... However adhering to it is much harder when someone has to make extra trips with buckets to/from the local river and then use enough time and firewood to bring that water to a full boil in a pot.

> just "throw anti-viral/funcal/flu" treatments

I'm hopeful that eventually we'll develop a much richer (micro-)ecological approach to disease prevention, where we take steps to fill niches with benign bacteria so that harmful ones cannot establish a foothold, and sometimes introduce "natural predators" such as anti-bacterial phages.

It won't entirely supplant things like autoclaves or isopropyl-alcohol or antibiotics, but it make reduce how often we need to resort to more-indiscriminate means.

If you have 8 billion million sided dice and throw them high enough again and again, one is going to come down to break the game table and put an end to dice throwing.

Let’s get some games going on new tables.

Say, a biodome in Nevada

I think we need to go back to the Ellis island system of inspection and quarantine for immigration. At the expense of the visitor.

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