Dysentery is no joke: the defining symptom, blood in your stool, comes from your intestinal lining sloughing off. A good friend of mine got it in India and said
the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics.
The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.
Oh you sweet, sweet summer child... While it's possible that you're right, I don't think that's as clear as you make it out to be. A quick google didn't give me any concrete numbers, but at least for Urine, according to Wikpedia, " watersports (meaning urolagnia) was ranked ninth in popularity among sexual fetishes in the United Kingdom"[0], and " 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia"[1] (of course, this number is for a sub-population that is more likely to try out kinks).
I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].
Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth.
So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life.
That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years.
On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years.
Articles like this are a nice reminder of just how wonderful life is in America, and just how far civilization has to fall if shit REALLY hits the fan someday. If you need a reason to be grateful in spite of mundane crap like housing costs and white collar jobs, the developing world offers some lessons in humility and gratitude.
This article hit different for me.. It had a weird font so at the beginning I thought it said...
"I spent the days just prior to my 80th birthday sick with shigellosis"
The idea that the phage could help before, during, and after is pretty interesting. Because although sometimes there are Prophylactic antibiotics, they aren't generally given to an entire population to my knowledge. And since diseases like this tend to be endemic to specific areas rather than a case here and there worldwide, so having something that's almost the equivalent of vaccine (although presumably short lived?) could really be effective for locals and travelers. Reducing the load ending back up in the water supply would then further reduce cases (ideally, although the extremely low load for this one may make it difficult).
> It spreads via the fecal-oral route. It requires an astonishingly low number of pathogens to make a person sick
And that is why you should avoid dogs and other animals. They lick their anus, eat excrements and rotten corpses. Animals have exposed dirty anus and contaminate everything they touch or sit, most importantly in grocery stores and shopping carts!
When such animal poops on street, it needs to be desinfected, not just smeared all over the place. Dryed poop releases particles contaminated with bacteria. Every time you smell poop, there is a risk of getting an infection!
Do you have any source for this statement? If you get stomach infection (like ulcer), there is no investigation of source of bacteria. Every municipality just accepts dog poop as "part of nature". And nations that do not tolerate dogs are healthier.
Toxoplasma can be actually traced to cats, and like 60% of population are infected!
Huge part of population have stomach ulcers and other poop hygiene related diseases with "unknown sources"!
Dysentery is no joke: the defining symptom, blood in your stool, comes from your intestinal lining sloughing off. A good friend of mine got it in India and said the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics.
The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.
>A good friend of mine got it in India and said the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics.
Did she give birth without anesthesia or how does she know?
I suspect that it may be a figure of speech, like "that tastes like piss" (or "ass" or "sh#t").
I always wondered how people knew about that
I think giving birth without anesthesia is far more common that tasting piss or shit. But what do I know...
Oh you sweet, sweet summer child... While it's possible that you're right, I don't think that's as clear as you make it out to be. A quick google didn't give me any concrete numbers, but at least for Urine, according to Wikpedia, " watersports (meaning urolagnia) was ranked ninth in popularity among sexual fetishes in the United Kingdom"[0], and " 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia"[1] (of course, this number is for a sub-population that is more likely to try out kinks).
I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].
Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth.
So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life. That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years.
On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years.
I don't think that what you're saying adds up.
Sources:
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia
[2] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mo...
Pretty common. I did.
You might wish to clarify. The board guidelines do encourage to assume the best in any comment, but many do not.
I think the smell gives you a good idea
Well, most of our sense of taste is actually smell. And many people have smelled these things before.
Articles like this are a nice reminder of just how wonderful life is in America, and just how far civilization has to fall if shit REALLY hits the fan someday. If you need a reason to be grateful in spite of mundane crap like housing costs and white collar jobs, the developing world offers some lessons in humility and gratitude.
> if shit REALLY hits the fan someday
or the fecal-oral route
“Drink the Phage” will be the name of my retro death metal album
I was left wondering if anyone has ever finished “Infinite Jest.”
The author did, ctrl-f "brick". :)
Title-typo: I got dysentery so you don’t have to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41911099
This article hit different for me.. It had a weird font so at the beginning I thought it said... "I spent the days just prior to my 80th birthday sick with shigellosis"
The idea that the phage could help before, during, and after is pretty interesting. Because although sometimes there are Prophylactic antibiotics, they aren't generally given to an entire population to my knowledge. And since diseases like this tend to be endemic to specific areas rather than a case here and there worldwide, so having something that's almost the equivalent of vaccine (although presumably short lived?) could really be effective for locals and travelers. Reducing the load ending back up in the water supply would then further reduce cases (ideally, although the extremely low load for this one may make it difficult).
Way more to learn here. The Soviets were really big on phage research also, wonder if they still have any interesting learnings: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7653335/
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/05/03/...
> It spreads via the fecal-oral route. It requires an astonishingly low number of pathogens to make a person sick
And that is why you should avoid dogs and other animals. They lick their anus, eat excrements and rotten corpses. Animals have exposed dirty anus and contaminate everything they touch or sit, most importantly in grocery stores and shopping carts!
When such animal poops on street, it needs to be desinfected, not just smeared all over the place. Dryed poop releases particles contaminated with bacteria. Every time you smell poop, there is a risk of getting an infection!
Since dogs are everywhere and very few people get sick from them, the risks seem to be quite low.
> very few people get sick from them,
Do you have any source for this statement? If you get stomach infection (like ulcer), there is no investigation of source of bacteria. Every municipality just accepts dog poop as "part of nature". And nations that do not tolerate dogs are healthier.
Toxoplasma can be actually traced to cats, and like 60% of population are infected!
Huge part of population have stomach ulcers and other poop hygiene related diseases with "unknown sources"!