Before getting to the main event, I'd like to recount my grocery store experience today.Always an eye opener. I was determined to observe people who were wearing face masks and see for myself how often they touched there mask/face rendering the mask useless. It still looks to be about 60-40 split (60 not wearing and 40 wearing) Thank goodness. So gross, to observe people repeatedly touching their mask, sticking their hands under the mask and then touching their phones. Disgusting. Some people are clearly wearing masks for multiple days without washing them. These fabric masks are obviously filthy. It's visually observable. I chatted with the cashier as I made my purchase. She was talking about the people who walk around with their mouths covered but not their nose. She recounted how she'd explained to another customer, who'd asked her why she didn't wear a mask, that it was because she knew that she'd repeatedly touch her face!That truism was borne out today by my own observations. I'll not address the fact that viruses can enter through your eyes... Oh wait I just did! And the filthy face touching mask wearers were not wearing goggles.As I exited, there was another woman, my age, we smiled at one another and I said "It's so nice to see a smiling face" She understood, it was communicated via her facial expression and she replied with an even bigger smile.
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Main Event:
CTV: OTTAWA -- Copious use of hand sanitizer and disinfectant is crucial in the fight against COVID-19, but it could be setting Canada back in the battle against superbugs. (CTV can't resist spreading disinfo)
You all know that hand sanitizer is anti bacterial right and not anti viral, right?Just more of that false sense of security- same as face masks.
Doubt what I'm writing?FDA to Purell: Stop claiming your hand sanitizers eliminate Ebola and the flu (virus)
The US Food and Drug Administration is giving the maker of Purell products a stern warning: Stop making unproven claims that over-the-counter hand sanitizers help eliminate Ebola, MRSA or the flu.
Among the claims: Purell "Kills more than 99.99% of most common germs that may cause illness in a healthcare setting, including MRSA & VRE"; and "Purell Advanced Gel, Foam, and Ultra-Nourishing Foam Hand Sanitizer products demonstrated effectiveness against a drug resistant clinical strain of Candida auris in lab testing."
The company said it has responded to the FDA's warning, which it noted was about its marketing and not related to the safety or quality of its Purell products or their manufacturing processes.
Federal regulators also took issue with the company saying that Purell products are proven to "reduce student absenteeism by up to 51%."
The FDA doesn't allow hand sanitizer brands to make claims about efficacy against contracting viruses, such as any stating that Purell hand sanitizers are effective against the flu.
Purell's marketing is the issue- They're making unproven claims- giving users a false sense of security as they slather themselves in copious amounts of hand sanitizer! Getting back to the problem of anti microbial resistance in Canada- Undoubtedly the issues are the same in the US and elsewhere.
"Microbiologists say antimicrobial resistant organisms, or superbugs, are a pandemic on the same scale as COVID-19, though it will play out on a much longer timeline.Antimicrobial resistance was directly responsible for 5,400 deaths in 2018, according to a recent report by the Council of Canadian Academies."
5,400 deaths in 2018 alone. But don’t worry the tell- a- vision won’t cover that yearly “pandemic”
" If nothing is done, by 2050 there could be as many as 140,000 preventable deaths, and Canada's health-care costs associated with antimicrobial resistance could grow to $8 billion per year.That's why some of the images of the COVID-19 pandemic have been so disturbing for Dr. Lori Burrows, a professor of biochemical science at McMaster University."I was a little freaked out by watching tanker trucks full of disinfectant being sprayed all over the street in some countries," she said. "It seems a little excessive to me."Some experts worry even strictly necessary efforts to destroy the novel coronavirus linked to COVID-19 could actually drive some bacteria to become more resistant. Health Minister Patty Hajdu was questioned about the plan at the House of Commons health committee in early March, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck Canada full force.
"We've been committing to using antimicrobials responsibly," she told the committee. "As you know, though, right now there is a surge on hand sanitizer, which is not helpful in terms of the work that we're doing to reduce the use of things that contribute to the growth of antimicrobials."
The use of drugs during the pandemic could also have an effect, said Dr. Gerry Wright, director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University.
"Any time that we're facing a rise in infections of the kind that we're seeing with COVID-19 ... we run the risk of bacterial infections at the same time," Wright said.
Secondary bacterial infections are common in patients with severe upper respiratory symptoms, ( pneumonia and the like) he said, which lead doctors to prescribe antibiotics. And increased use of antibiotics leads to an increase in antimicrobial resistance."
“Antibiotic resistance is one of the most serious global threats to the treatment of infectious diseases.2–8In addition to resulting in significant increases in costs and toxicity of newer drugs, antibiotic resistance is eroding our thera-peutic armamentarium. Countries and hospitals with the fewest controls on antibi-otic prescribing have the greatest frequency of resistant organisms,9,10which sug-gests a causal relationship.Microorganisms with increasing rates of resistance to commonly used antimi-crobials include methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), Shigellaand Salmonellaspecies resistant to multiple an-tibiotics, enteric gram-negative bacilli (Klebsiella andEnterobacter species) resistantto extended-spectrum β-lactams and penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae(PRSP). PRSP and multidrug-resistant Shigellaand Salmonellaare more commonin the community, whereas MRSA, VRE and β-lactam-resistant enteric gram-negative bacilli are more common in health care facilities. A 2001 article in CMAJ11demonstrated the evolution of MRSA in Canadian hospitals, with the mean pro-portion of isolates that were resistant increasing from about 1% to 6% between 1995 and 1999."
Back to the CTV article:
"It's not clear if antibiotic use in the general public has gone up or down during the pandemic because Canada doesn't gather real-time data. Superbugs know no borders and can travel the globe at incredible speed, leaving Canada vulnerable to the actions of people elsewhere in the world.To make matters worse, few pharmaceutical companies are investing in new antibiotics because they're not as profitable as drugs people are prescribed on an ongoing basis."
The CTV article is skewed towards blaming China. The hand sanitizer mania is alive and well here in Canada. Interesting too that the 'saintly' pharmaceutical companies aren't investing in new antibiotics to fight superbugs because IT'S MORE PROFITABLE, to invest in LIFESTYLE DRUGS. And vaccines. From earlier: