TLDR .... an update on my exploding diarrhea....
I spent the last four days on Bactrim. To be clear, we caught this very early. For me, this started with heavy fatigue, then a fever. I knew I was sick when I heard my stomach rumbling. What followed was Dreamcatcher Diarrhea. Watch the movie if you don't get the picture. My dog has been literally standing next to me, fearfully growling.
For the past four days, I've had this pattern of trying to sleep, waking up starving, forcing myself to eat something, going to the bathroom immediately, feeling immense thirst, drinking as much as I could, and then knocking out from exhaustion. I'm writing this at 4 am and at the point where I'm starving and will have to muster the will to eat here shortly.
For three days, I could only eat a Hawaiian Roll, every 12 hours or so. The pattern is slowing down - I was been able to sit up in bed, then watch Big Boy drive by my house. But, that's really the only sign of progress.
I'm realizing my post got pretty widespread as I'm coming out of this. That is sheer accident. I shared it with friends, then thought I should change my page into a content creator account, hoping locals would see it. I didn't boost it or aim for this audience. It's absolutely insane to me that my random post about diarrhea was spread as if I'm authoritative. This speaks to the sheer inadequacy of the federal government.
Last year, changes were made to the federal government's pathogen surveillance mechanism. The way cyclospora is traced changed. The CDC said that the active monitoring of the pathogen would instead be passively collected by the federal government based on health department reporting in, instead of active monitoring by FoodNet.
Just as there have been cuts to the federal agencies, federal funding to county health departments has been slashed. So now, we are experiencing what experts warned about: 1) inadequate comparison of state-by-state trends creating a rise in illnesses; and 2) slowed identification of illness slowing the response to an outbreak. That's where we are folks.
Ding, ding, ding! The experts were right.
Now, I am no expert on any of this. I see people sharing my post, I guess because the information tracks. The only expertise I have is how to research unknown topics. My career depends on my ability to do this. I'm an expert in no particular field, but I am especially qualified to pull information from different sources and communicate that in simple terms.
People have reached out to me to challenge parts of my first post. Honestly, most had really weird ideas. So, I asked them about the process by which they've drawn their conclusions, because arguments should be based on premise and reasoning. When you start to argue against conclusions, you're arguing against a logical fallacy called "bare assertion," where conclusions exist on their own with no real premise.
The person who explained their process and premises taught me something. I erred in considering some things, because I was focused on letting my friends know what I understand to be true. That's not the same as being true. I am in no way, shape, or form privy to information that isn't out there and available, and I'm not 100% sure it's coming from Taylor Farms, but if there was a betting line in Vegas, I'd cash out my savings, take mortgages out, and borrow against my 401k to place a bet.
It's also not good for me to encourage people to skirt the step of getting your stool sampled. Doing so could make the government underestimate the severity of the spread. I sure would not want a government that reduced the oversight of cyclospora and defunded our local health departments to be surprised by or underestimate the severity of this because of something I said. It would be awful for our government to underestimate this.
I was thinking about the risk of dehydration to my friends, especially after America just came off of a year long IV bag shortage. There was one major supplier and a factory got hit by a storm. 80% of healthcare providers saw rationing of basic fluid bags. There's going to be a lot of people who think their bodies can fight this, but there's a pretty strong likelihood that dehydration will come quicker than your body will naturally recover. Let's keep our fingers cross that there's no issues with the supply and demand of fluid bags during a diarrhea outbreak!
I collect information because I'm curious. If you're curious, go to local reddit pages: every area where there's an outbreak has a list of commenters naming the same items and restaurant chains. Plus, there's a company called Biofire that collects data from labs about what respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses is tracked with a lot of information posted online. Someone went as far as to make a self-reporting website for the public. Crowdsourcing that amounts to the equivalent of facebook check-ins is yielding more information than you're seeing government agencies put out.
There's also a lot of information readily available about food distribution networks. As best I can tell, with the early outbreaks around New York and the boom around Detroit/Toledo, that points to something upstream going wrong, meaning two different processing plants (ie: one for bagged lettuce for supermarkets, the other for restaurant chains) receiving the lettuce with the parasite on it. If that turns out to be the case, conversations will be warranted about the food chain and how having different regulations state to state is a part of the problem.
Now, like I said, I'm getting DMed with weird ideas, from:
"IVERMECTIN WILL WORK, HAHA YOU MUST BE SLOW."
"Patriot Front- psy op paid for by your own tax dollars."
Like... am I really getting veiled threats from white supremacists about my hot take on diarrhea right now? Yes, I am.
We don't give enough credit to how far away left-field is, sometimes. I'm not engaging in that back and forth. If you don't like what I'm saying, ignore me and move on or share my post and tell all your facebook friends about why you disagree. I don't care.
The bottom line is this parasite is hard to catch up to, even with a functioning federal government. Onset of viral food poisoning comes quickly and people know what they ate, while this takes a week or two. Compounding that is the unfortunate state of the federal government.
So, be safe. Washing your lettuce is not enough: cook your produce. If you know your farmer, you know where your food came from. Generational farmers take pride in their produce and aren't using reclaimed water as much, and the government's lackadaisical approach is going to hurt them too, as people just stop buying produce all together because no clear messaging is coming out about this. If your local farmer isn't supplying fast food chains, you might be alright without altering your eating habits at all.
And once again, for the people in the back - Ivermectin is not effective. Ivermectin targets some parasitic worms. Cyclospora isn't a worm. It's a single-celled protozoan, so it doesn't work the same way. This protozoan needs Bactrim. Bactrim interferes with folate metabolism that the cyclospora need to survive.
I am so sorry, folks, that this government has screwed this up so bad that people are looking at me like I know something.
And, thank you for coming to my Fireside Chat. Toiletside Chat.
I'm sorry I couldn't make this shorter, but damn, the soap box got left on my doorstep. I did not wake up on Friday morning, hear "explosive diarrhea" and think "that bell, that's the bell that tolls for me!"
Now, like 2 million people have seen my first post, and the only thing they know about me is that I have explosive diarrhea.
My mom would be so proud of me! See less
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