I’ve blogged about this paradox before, but I’ve never read all of these resolutions to it, nor have it seen it explained in such a simple infographic.
I know it’s illegal but whenever I get antibiotics from the doctor I save a few and give them to friends or coworkers who don’t have insurance so that when cold season comes they might be able to shorten their illness
That is not good- that’s not quite how antibiotics work.
Antibiotics kill some bacteria, but don’t manage to kill other bacteria. Just like when you get a particular sickness (or a vaccination), your body can protect you from future infections, any bacteria that came into contact with the antibiotic is protected from future doses of that antibiotic. Bacteria are very virulent breeders, so they spawn more resistant bacteria.
If you take the full dose of antibiotics, your natural antibodies can deal with the cells that are resistant while the medicine kills off the bacteria that isn’t resistant. If you don’t take the full course of antibiotics, then your body has to deal with both the resistant and the non-resistant strains of bacteria, and it can become overwhelming. Also, most bacteria are able to pass on genes between still-living cells, so that previously non-resistant strains become resistant, and you have inadvertently cultivated a stronger strain of bacteria.
Furthermore, colds and the flu are viral infections, so antibiotics don’t work against them anyway. The best protection against viral infections are vaccinations, as there are not many viruses that we have developed anti-viral medication against, once you already have the disease. If there are anti-viral medications, it is even more important that you take the full dose of the medication, because anti-viral medication is even harsher against the body than antibacterial medication is.
To put it shortly: antibiotics don’t do shit for the cold. You need to take the entire bottle that is prescribed to you. People not doing that is how antibiotic resistant infections crop up. People like OP are literally why diseases like MRSA exist.
OP shouldn’t feel bad about good intentions but this is really dangerous. There’s also the risk that your friends are allergic to the specific type of antibiotics you give them.
things that a better-off person can do for their sick less-well-off friends that don’t involve breeding superbacteria through misue of antibiotics:
Buy them cold medicine
Buy them cough drops
Buy them fancy tissues with lotion
Make them too much soup to eat in one go and freeze half for later
Find them a low-cost clinic and accompany them there
Tell them you are giving them their day’s wages and they are staying home Friday/Monday and then do.
Go to their house. Wash the dishes, take out the garbage, walk the dog, scoop the cat or just plain change the whole litter box, clean the bathtub and mom voice them until they take a hot shower or steam their head.
if they have asthma or bronchitis and are out of inhaler but you have a half-full one, that is a thing you can sanitize and share.
ditto palliative prescription medication like “I have half a bottle of lidocaine gargle, you want it?” “I am bringing you the rest of my Robitussin with codeine” “here harvest some ibuprofen from my giant bottle of 1,000 ibuprofen”
I am probably going to reblog this about a dozen times. DON’T DO WHAT THE OP DOES.
It’s not illegal because Big Pharma is out to get you or whatever. It’s illegal because what you are doing is fucking dangerous to you, the friends you give your meds to, and to everyone else who could now get drug-resistant strains from incomplete antibiotic use. It is a matter of community safety.
Don’t be a biohazard.
there is a reason doctors and the packaging for the medicine stress that you must take ALL of the pills! antibiotics are not a thing that function via “take what you need”. the full dose is ALL of the pills. if you are not taking them through the full dose of medication you make things worse for yourself and the community at large in the future!
the reason you have to take antibiotics for so long is because it kills off the easy bacteria first and then the less easy until finally near the end it kills off the really tough bacteria. if you stop early, you allow the hardiest bacteria to live and re-multiply. you can get sicker and if lots of people do this, it slowly eliminates the weak bacteria and leaves only strong ones floating around (such as MRSA)
please please take ALL of your antibiotics if they are prescribed to you!
it’s also important to discuss with your doctor if you NEED antibiotics or if they’re just giving them to you as a precaution. over-prescription of antibiotics is equally problematic, but if you get them and start taking them YOU MUST TAKE ALL OF THEM.
View Mars right now, and prepare for 2016, the best Mars viewing year since 2005! Last month early risers watched small, reddish Mars dance with brighter Jupiter and Venus just before sunrise.
This month Mars rises earlier-by about 2 a.m. local time. Its reddish color is unmistakable, even without a telescope. It’s easy to see below the Moon and Jupiter on December 4. You won’t see many features this month, because the planet is almost 10 times smaller than nearby Jupiter appears and 350 times smaller than the Moon appears to us on Earth.
You should also be able to see Mars’ north polar region this month, because it’s currently tilted towards Earth.
You’ll be amazed at the changes you’ll see during 2016. January through December are all prime Mars observing months. Between January and May next year, Mars triples in apparent diameter as its orbit around the sun brings it closer to Earth. You’ll even be able to see the areas on Mars where NASA’s Mars landers are located.
By October, Mars shrinks in apparent size to less than half its May diameter as it speeds away from Earth. Mars shrinks even further from October through December, returning to the same size we saw in January 2016 by year’s end.
So put Mars viewing on your calendar for 2016. You won’t see Mars this size again until 2018, when Mars will put on an even better show.
Scientists have sequenced the entire genome of the tardigrade, AKA the water bear, for the first time. And it turns out that this weird little creature has the most foreign genes of any animal studied so far – or to put it another way, roughly one-sixth of the tardigrade’s genome was stolen from other species. We have to admit, we’re kinda not surprised.
A little background here for those who aren’t familiar with the strangeness that is the tardigrade – the microscopic water creature grows to just over 1 mm on average, and is the only animal that can survive in the harsh environment of space. It can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and can live for more than 10 years without food or water. Basically, it’s nearly impossible to kill, and now scientists have shown that its DNA is just as bizarre as it is.
So what’s foreign DNA and why does it matter that tardigrades have so much of it? The term refers to genes that have come from another organism via a process known as horizontal gene transfer, as opposed to being passed down through traditional reproduction.
Horizontal gene transfer occurs in humans and other animals occasionally, usually as a result of gene swapping with viruses, but to put it into perspective, most animals have less than 1 percent of their genome made up of foreign DNA. Before this, the rotifer – another microscopic water creature – was believed to have the most foreign genes of any animal, with 8 or 9 percent.
But the new research has shown that approximately 6,000 of the tardigrade’s genes come from foreign species, which equates to around 17.5 percent.
“We had no idea that an animal genome could be composed of so much foreign DNA,” said study co-author Bob Goldstein, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We knew many animals acquire foreign genes, but we had no idea that it happens to this degree.”
I’m fucking pissing myself.
You know how all of Jupiter’s moons are named after his lovers and affairs?
Yeah. NASA is sending a craft to check up on Jupiter.
You know what the craft is called?
JUNO.
Who’s Juno?
JUPITER’S WIFE.
NASA IS SENDING JUPITER’S WIFE TO CHECK ON JUPITER AND HIS AFFAIRS AND LOVERS.
a good chunk of the mars press conference this morning was scientists discussing how not to contaminate the martian waters with terrestrial microbes from the rovers and permanently alter the development of life on mars. in other words we already have to obey the prime directive and I’m delighted with that
That One Unnamed Extinction Event That Happened When Blue-Green Algae Discovered Photosynthesis and Started Pumping the Environment Full of Oxygen, Which Was Toxic to All Other Life on Earth at That Point in Time
This extinction event did result in the extinction of more living organisms than any other, whether you rank by number of individuals, number of orders/genera/species, % of life, or amount of biomass, but they were all single-celled organisms, so they don’t even register on the metal scale.
The Current Slow Slide Due to Anthropogenic Environmental Modification
Habitat destruction isn’t very metal.
Late Devonian
Some super-weird shit died out, which is totally metal, but we have no idea why, which isn’t. It might not even have been an extinction event, just a decrease in the speciation rate. Jawed vertebrates totally unaffected.
End Ordovician
Second-largest extinction event after the End Permian (not counting those blue-green algae fuckers). Caused by tectonic plate shifting (kinda metal) and resulting glaciation (mildly metal).
Deep Impact
Pros: Giant asteroid hitting the earth.
Cons: Fictional.
End Triassic
Probably caused by massive volcanic eruptions, which is pretty metal, but mostly just wiped out some weird looking amphibians, which is only mildly metal.
End Permian
Greatest extinction event of all time (with the exception of that blue-green algae fiasco mentioned above), wiping out ~95% of all species: metal. Only known mass extinction of insects: metal. Probably caused by the biggest volcanic eruptions since life began (metal) which ignited massive coal beds (metal) and caused the release of methane from the ocean floor (metal) resulting in a runaway greenhouse effect that raised the average ocean temperature to 40C for several million years, essentially boiling the earth alive (super metal). Paved the way for dinosaurs to take over the earth: metal. Known as the ‘Great Dying’: totally metal.
However, most of the extinctions occurred in sessile marine organisms, which are way too boring to be metal, and for the first ~20 million years after the extinction event, land was dominated by Lystrosaurus, which is the most un-metal looking reptile you can think of.
End Cretaceous, aka the K-T Event
A GIANT FLAMING BALL OF ROCK HIT THE EARTH AND KILLED ALL THE (non-avian) DINOSAURS. ENOUGH SAID.
I agree with most of this post (I’d swap Permian/Cretaceous because the Permian was freakin’ metal, yo, but no biggie) but you don’t get more metal than the GREAT OXYGEN CATASTROPHE
The entire surface of the earth was POISONED by a GAS that SHOULD NOT EXIST according to the basic LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS
It’s so metal that even billions of years later Earth has had to evolve entire ecosystems that METABOLIZE DEADLY POISON GAS. And survive by EATING EACH OTHER (which was probably not a thing pre-OXYGEN HOLOCAUST, you don’t need to bother eating each other if you aren’t trying to survive in a world full of IMPOSSIBLE DEADLY GAS.) Earth’s original inhabitants now have to eke out an existence in sealed-off channels in SOLID ROCK and similar places.
THAT IS AS METAL AS IT GETS.
(also there’s the nuclear fission reactions and stuff, that part’s fun. Did the dinosaurs have nuclear fission? NO.)
Fun story: One of the first things I was taught as an astronomy student is that, if you want to be a dick to someone giving a presentation, ask them “and how do the magnetic fields play into this?” and they will invariably say “fuck you I don’t know” because no one understands magnetic fields they are black magic.
If you don’t know how catastrophic hurricane Patricia is, this is a comparison picture between hurricane Katrina (left) and hurricane Patricia (right) that is hitting Mexico right now, please keep the Mexican people in your good thoughts
Zynn's Exodus 