8 ms·

A Nasty Tropical Skin Disease Is Now Endemic in the U.S.

74 points by Anon84 3y ago

migf 3y ago
daaaaag those lesions are terrible
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Though oddly absent from the article?
NikkiA 3y ago
Reaping the rewards of climate change that we've been warning about for decades, but no 'I'll just turn the AC up, lol' continues to be the standard american refrain.
- codexb 3y ago
  [flagged]
- adventured 3y ago
  Can you elaborate on how climate change caused this as opposed to it having very obviously been inevitably sourced from typical travel and immigration across decades?
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Places are getting warmer and can support diseases that couldn’t survive there before.
    - NikkiA 3y ago
      It's more about the disease vectors' ranges changing, the UK now has tiger mosquitos living here for a large portion of the year, bringing the possibility of dengue, zika, west nile, and other diseases that it carries, which would have been scoffed at as ridiculous 50 years ago.
  - derstander 3y ago
    > Can you elaborate on how climate change caused this as opposed to it having very obviously been inevitably sourced from typical travel and immigration across decades? This quote is directly from the article: “ One factor driving the disease’s northward creep may be climate change. “It’s increasing the likelihood sand flies can move further north,” Molyneux says. “They thrive in warm conditions.” Climate modeling suggests this trend will continue.”
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      "One factor ... may be" - when the article doesn't even have good data on a "northward creep" existing - sounds like "rule of cool" speculation to me.
    - derstander 3y ago
      I found a related journal article about sandfly distribution but I am in no position to evaluate it (I’m neither a climatologist nor an entomologist — and I have no desire to play one on the internet). https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0002421 https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journa...
  - sp332 3y ago
    Human bodies are normally at temperatures higher than fungi like to grow in. But as climate warms, more fungi are developing tolerance for these temperatures. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/how-climate-change-could-make-fungal-diseases-worse/2/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/how-climate-change-co...
- 3seashells 3y ago
  "Those sinners get punished for there indulgence, which is mostly hard work and finally get what's coming to them for not bowing to my benevolent dictatorship, sentencing the Bringers of truth to a marginal existence." we do not listen to those who bring no solutions and ignore hard problems for a reason. Human society is unstable under economic stresses and humans are deterministic irrational actors. Oppenheimer conceived a world without war, due to nukes, but here we are. The problem with the carbon energy sources always was that they are" free" aka without gestation cost. But now that changes. Drone warfare makes long distance infra (pipes and ships) unmaintain and unprotectable. Solar will take its place. Oil is finished. So now great prophet, riddle me this. Who to feed to the angry mob in the rust belts of the world? For he died for our sins, a insufferable grumpy grandpa, contributing little to a peaceful transfer into a new state. PS: Other countries had the eczema forever, before it traveled northward. Poor people problems I guess?
lainga 3y ago
Not quite on-topic, but... > One factor driving the disease’s northward creep may be climate change... Climate modeling suggests this trend will continue. Either their circulation models include an epidemiology module, or they are suggesting the (extraordinary and worthy of separate publication) finding that climate change may continue to occur in the future...?
- krisoft 3y ago
  > or they are suggesting the (extraordinary and worthy of separate publication) finding that climate change may continue to occur in the future...? What is extraordinary about that? The predictions obviously have large error bars, but almost all of them predicts that yes the climate will continue to change in the future.
  - lainga 3y ago
    In the spirit of Timothy Dexter I provide the audience with some markers that they may pepper and salt as they please /s /s /s
    - krisoft 3y ago
      Try to be less cryptic and write what you mean?
- sophacles 3y ago
  It's really not a big stretch. We know that: * this disease is born by insects * the insects don't live in places that get too cold for them * we witness the insects spreading into places that used to be too cold for them as the average temperature changes. I don't see how "if the models are right and it gets warmer then the facts above will continue to apply in those areas" is somehow shocking or even dubious. Over the summer we saw new cases of malaria contracted in the US too, for the same reasons: it got warm enough in parts of the south to support the right type of mosquito.
  - lainga 3y ago
applied_heat 3y ago
Sandflies bite southern plains rats and pick up the parasite and then bite people thereby infecting them. There are records of the genetic sequence of the Texas strand of the parasite going back 18 years ago so it has been here a while, but it was assumed it was picked up in Mexico.
sct202 3y ago
I lived in multiple places in Texas had mysterious small skin lesions that took years to heal and left scars on my arm and neck and am now wondering if I actually had this and not a form of eczema. When I was googling the symptoms at the time, I would only find things saying eczema (which I have had forever but never had caused lesions before) or some psychological disease. All the GPs I showed them to blamed the eczema... but the lesions are now healed and I still have eczema.
- clumsysmurf 3y ago
  I had a similar experience, but in AZ. I was staying at an ESA (Extended Stay America) for a few weeks around the time of Covid lockdowns. I didn't have contact with many people at all, but did need to borrow the vacuum one day. Almost immediately, I developed "eczema" like skin problems all over my body ... back, chest, arms, legs, especially the legs. I still have two patches, after 3 years, that always itch. We have not gotten to the bottom of it yet (like you said, GPs blame eczema). I currently manage it with immune suppressing medications. I wonder if somehow I "caught it" from something emitted from the vacuum exhaust.
  - tanseydavid 3y ago
    I am surprised that your physician is not giving you a topical steroid cream? I have trouble once every few years and the steroid cream always clears it up rather quickly.
jtbayly 3y ago
> Over the past decade or so, reports started cropping up of cases in people with no history of travel outside the U.S., suggesting that they may have caught the illness locally. May have caught it locally? I mean, what are the other options, that they were kidnapped while unconscious and caught it while traveling in a different dimension?
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >what are the other options person-to-person transmission. there's cases of Leishmaniasis spreading through sexual contact, transfusion or contaminated materials.
  - jtbayly 3y ago
    Which, if they didn’t travel outside of the country, would still be “locally.” ;-) But thanks, that does actually answer my question!
mitchbob 3y ago
https://archive.ph/JsAQV https://archive.ph/JsAQV

74 points by Anon84 3y ago

migf 3y ago

daaaaag those lesions are terrible

mock-possum 3y ago
Though oddly absent from the article?

NikkiA 3y ago

Reaping the rewards of climate change that we've been warning about for decades, but no 'I'll just turn the AC up, lol' continues to be the standard american refrain.

codexb 3y ago
[flagged]
adventured 3y ago
Can you elaborate on how climate change caused this as opposed to it having very obviously been inevitably sourced from typical travel and immigration across decades?
- huytersd 3y ago
  Places are getting warmer and can support diseases that couldn’t survive there before.
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    It's more about the disease vectors' ranges changing, the UK now has tiger mosquitos living here for a large portion of the year, bringing the possibility of dengue, zika, west nile, and other diseases that it carries, which would have been scoffed at as ridiculous 50 years ago.
- derstander 3y ago
  > Can you elaborate on how climate change caused this as opposed to it having very obviously been inevitably sourced from typical travel and immigration across decades? This quote is directly from the article: “ One factor driving the disease’s northward creep may be climate change. “It’s increasing the likelihood sand flies can move further north,” Molyneux says. “They thrive in warm conditions.” Climate modeling suggests this trend will continue.”
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    "One factor ... may be" - when the article doesn't even have good data on a "northward creep" existing - sounds like "rule of cool" speculation to me.
  - derstander 3y ago
    I found a related journal article about sandfly distribution but I am in no position to evaluate it (I’m neither a climatologist nor an entomologist — and I have no desire to play one on the internet). https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0002421 https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journa...
- sp332 3y ago
  Human bodies are normally at temperatures higher than fungi like to grow in. But as climate warms, more fungi are developing tolerance for these temperatures. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/how-climate-change-could-make-fungal-diseases-worse/2/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/how-climate-change-co...
3seashells 3y ago
"Those sinners get punished for there indulgence, which is mostly hard work and finally get what's coming to them for not bowing to my benevolent dictatorship, sentencing the Bringers of truth to a marginal existence." we do not listen to those who bring no solutions and ignore hard problems for a reason. Human society is unstable under economic stresses and humans are deterministic irrational actors. Oppenheimer conceived a world without war, due to nukes, but here we are. The problem with the carbon energy sources always was that they are" free" aka without gestation cost. But now that changes. Drone warfare makes long distance infra (pipes and ships) unmaintain and unprotectable. Solar will take its place. Oil is finished. So now great prophet, riddle me this. Who to feed to the angry mob in the rust belts of the world? For he died for our sins, a insufferable grumpy grandpa, contributing little to a peaceful transfer into a new state. PS: Other countries had the eczema forever, before it traveled northward. Poor people problems I guess?

lainga 3y ago

Not quite on-topic, but... > One factor driving the disease’s northward creep may be climate change... Climate modeling suggests this trend will continue. Either their circulation models include an epidemiology module, or they are suggesting the (extraordinary and worthy of separate publication) finding that climate change may continue to occur in the future...?

krisoft 3y ago
> or they are suggesting the (extraordinary and worthy of separate publication) finding that climate change may continue to occur in the future...? What is extraordinary about that? The predictions obviously have large error bars, but almost all of them predicts that yes the climate will continue to change in the future.
- lainga 3y ago
  In the spirit of Timothy Dexter I provide the audience with some markers that they may pepper and salt as they please /s /s /s
  - krisoft 3y ago
    Try to be less cryptic and write what you mean?
sophacles 3y ago
It's really not a big stretch. We know that: * this disease is born by insects * the insects don't live in places that get too cold for them * we witness the insects spreading into places that used to be too cold for them as the average temperature changes. I don't see how "if the models are right and it gets warmer then the facts above will continue to apply in those areas" is somehow shocking or even dubious. Over the summer we saw new cases of malaria contracted in the US too, for the same reasons: it got warm enough in parts of the south to support the right type of mosquito.
- lainga 3y ago

applied_heat 3y ago

Sandflies bite southern plains rats and pick up the parasite and then bite people thereby infecting them. There are records of the genetic sequence of the Texas strand of the parasite going back 18 years ago so it has been here a while, but it was assumed it was picked up in Mexico.

sct202 3y ago

I lived in multiple places in Texas had mysterious small skin lesions that took years to heal and left scars on my arm and neck and am now wondering if I actually had this and not a form of eczema. When I was googling the symptoms at the time, I would only find things saying eczema (which I have had forever but never had caused lesions before) or some psychological disease. All the GPs I showed them to blamed the eczema... but the lesions are now healed and I still have eczema.

clumsysmurf 3y ago
I had a similar experience, but in AZ. I was staying at an ESA (Extended Stay America) for a few weeks around the time of Covid lockdowns. I didn't have contact with many people at all, but did need to borrow the vacuum one day. Almost immediately, I developed "eczema" like skin problems all over my body ... back, chest, arms, legs, especially the legs. I still have two patches, after 3 years, that always itch. We have not gotten to the bottom of it yet (like you said, GPs blame eczema). I currently manage it with immune suppressing medications. I wonder if somehow I "caught it" from something emitted from the vacuum exhaust.
- tanseydavid 3y ago
  I am surprised that your physician is not giving you a topical steroid cream? I have trouble once every few years and the steroid cream always clears it up rather quickly.

jtbayly 3y ago

> Over the past decade or so, reports started cropping up of cases in people with no history of travel outside the U.S., suggesting that they may have caught the illness locally. May have caught it locally? I mean, what are the other options, that they were kidnapped while unconscious and caught it while traveling in a different dimension?

Barrin92 3y ago
>what are the other options person-to-person transmission. there's cases of Leishmaniasis spreading through sexual contact, transfusion or contaminated materials.
- jtbayly 3y ago
  Which, if they didn’t travel outside of the country, would still be “locally.” ;-) But thanks, that does actually answer my question!

mitchbob 3y ago

https://archive.ph/JsAQV https://archive.ph/JsAQV