[Coco] Lab South is Fine

[Ward Griffiths]

On 08/31/2005 04:25 pm, Tony Schountz wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2005, at 1:37 PM, Ward Griffiths wrote:
> > On 08/31/2005 01:33 pm, jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
> >> The real problem that New Orleans has over the  next week is
> >> outbreaks of Cholora, Typhoid and other tropical diseases.
> >
> > Neither of those are tropical diseases.  Both were major killers in
> > northern
> > temperate climates until the invention of decent plumbing and sewage
> > disposal.  You may have been thinking of malaria (which would be as
> > extinct
> > as smallpox if the Greens hadn't gotten DDT banned) or Yellow
> > Fever, which
> > used to be endemic in the District of Columbia.
>
> Anytime you have a natural disaster with the volume of water seen
> with Katrina you're at risk of cholera and typhoid fever outbreaks.
> Most sewage treatment facilities are exposed to such flooding, and
> since cholera is endemic in just about every ecosystem with aquatic
> organisms you're going to get some contamination of water. The best
> solution is to boil water before drinking it. However, at onset it's
> imperative to get patients hydrated quickly; cholera kills in hours.
> If you get patients IV fluids and electrolytes within a couple of
> hours mortality rates will be low  (such as hurricane Mitch in
> Central America in 1998). Typhoid fever has to be treated with
> antibiotics, but at least you have a few weeks them to get the patients.

Yes, I know.  I was merely responding to Jim's description of cholera and 
typhoid as tropical diseases.  While I'm not a medical professional myself, 
I'm married to one and blood related to a bunch of others, and when I get 
bored I'll read anything, including nursing textbooks (and magazines) and 
source code.

Give me a case of beer and cholera is no threat.  Don't know if I'm immune to 
typhoid, but several ancestors survived epidemics.  Won't risk it anyway.

Decent plumbing is the most important medical advance in human history.  When 
the sewer backs up, so does progress.
--  
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

Let's get real. According to the CBO's report, in the current fiscal 
year the U.S. government is gorging on some $2,142 billion of revenues, 
consisting of taxes, fees, charges, fines, and other species of 
extractions from the people's purses. This sum works out to 
approximately $7,500 for every man, woman, and child resident in this 
country, or $30,000 for a family of four average persons. Perhaps some 
of those people feel they are getting benefits worth at least this much. 
I myself don't have that feeling.   --  Robert Higgs