guess what: you're going to die.

i've recently decided to become kind-of-obsessed with the latest threat to all of our lives: CRE. you might've heard that this week the CDC announced that this was a very scary threat and we should all begin making our final arrangements. i also asked nscience how scared we should be on a scale of 1-10. he said (and i quote) "11 biscuits".

wondering what it is?

Here’s some back-story: CRE stands for “carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae.” Enterobacteriaceae are a family of more than 70 bacteria which share the characteristic of being gut-dwelling (“entero”); they include Klebsiella, Salmonella, Shigella and E. coli. Carbapenems are a “last-resort” family of antibiotics — imipenem, meropenem, doripenem and ertapenem — which are used against these bacteria when they have become resistant to other drugs.
...
CRE tends to attack in ICUs and other critical care, and also in rehab units and nursing homes. That is for several reasons. First, because patients in those settings are uniquely vulnerable to infection, not just because of their illness but because the protective barrier of their skin has been breached by ports and catheters, and also because they are visited and touched by a lot of people. Second, because they are likely to be receiving heavy-duty antibiotics which put the bacteria in their bodies under evolutionary pressure. Third, because those drugs plus others cause diarrhea, which spreads gut-dwelling bacteria into the air and area. And fourth, because those bacteria are particularly good at surviving on the kind of surfaces — plastic, glass and metal — that you find in health care. (via)

so get scared. don't go to the hospital. keep your diarrhea to yourself (thomas wilhelm). read the rest of this scary article. this is happening. and you need to deal with it.