Here is Dr. Klotman’s Week 233 video update. The highlights include some COVID news but also some commentary on foodborne illness caused by Listeria Monocytogenes.
- COVID cases continue to surge toward a summer peak probably like that we saw last year with the JN.1 strain
- ER COVID cases show a large number of kids under the age of 1-year (0-11 months)
- There is also a spike among teenagers likely due to spread in schools – get your kids/grands vaccinated
- The resurgence of COVID is nation-wide
- There are new strains of COVID from Europe – no surprise here
- The new strains may soon become widespread; for now our dominant strain is KP.3.1.1
- Influenza numbers are low right now; it would be reasonable to wait 2-4 weeks before getting vaccinated, if you are inclined to wait
- The latest nation-wide outbreak of Listeriosis is related to Boar’s Head deli meats; the company has issued recalls for contaminated lots of its products
I don’t eat a lot of deli meats, but I do indulge now and then – charcuterie boards, as it were. My singular brush with Listeriosis, systemic infection with Listeria, occurred when I was a first-year medical resident. One of the teams, not mine, admitted a farmer from a nearby rural community with fever, headache, and confusion. The fellow had the physical signs of meningitis, and a spinal tap revealed purulent spinal fluid with gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria. The team treated him for presumptive Listeria meningitis, and he got better. Spinal fluid cultures confirmed the diagnosis. Yea team! When the fellow recovered, he told the team that he raised goats and made his own cheese using unpasteurized goat’s milk. Sigh!
Industrial scale contamination of foods is invariably the result of unhygienic production environments – unattended blood spills, rotting protein on the production floor, rodent droppings, and the like that favor bacterial growth. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder about the kitchen clean-up at your favorite eatery (or mine).
It all reminds me of one of my musings from before FB or my blog posts. Everything in this world seems hellbent on killing us. We’re just a food source or a means of reproduction for other species – don’t get me started on how we are being farmed by corn. The process of being fruitful and multiplying requires the sacrifice of other living things. It isn’t pretty, but there it is. All we can do is to make it as difficult as we can for everything in this world that wants to kill us to succeed.
We’ll lose in the end, of course, but let’s prolong our survival as long as possible. To quote Daniel Craig’s James Bond in the movie Skyfall, “Some men are coming to kill us. We’re going to kill them first.”