[tymejumper]

Here, as a medical worker is what I know about Staph and MRSA.

Every human being is colonized with Staph. When a baby is born, they are actually free of the Staph bacterium, but become collonized to theri families particular strain of Staph with feeding, touching, etc.

Staph in itself, is not harmful, as I have stated, we all are colonized with it and in fact it helps keep balance with all the other organisims on your skin, such a yeast. The balance of bacteria and fungus keep each other in check.

The problem comes in when you get exposed to someone elses Staph. Especially a cut or on your finger and you pick your nose, you get Staph infection form it. IF your imune system is down, you could become infected with your own Staph, if it got into cut or something, that is how cuts get infected and you get pimples, boils and such.

Generally, antibiotics were used to treat this problem, simple skin infections quite effectively. A few people, usually immune compromised and very young or old would not be able to fight the infection off or it got into their bloodstream and spread throughout their bodies, this is called Septis. Septic Shock Syndrome or blood poisioning are also the same thing, different names.

Treatable with general antibiotics right? Now you have people not taking a full course of drugs, or even just through nature, have resistant bacterium and they die or have to get many different antibiotics to use to kill it. Unfortunately, some types, MRSA is one, are resistant to a lot of antibiotics. THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT IS UNTREATABLE! It means that you have to use something other than Methampicillian. There are many types of drugs that kill it. Unfortunately, it does pray on the weak and the very young or elderly are two classes of people that get it and have a harder time treating it. As for the young lady that died, its probably due to the fact Mom or Dad just 'blew' it off as an infection that would go away with Neosporin and it went Septic on her.

Of course the news loves a big story so they didnt get the facts and blew it out of porportion. Did you know that MRSA is not even clasified by the CDC as a Superbug? Many do not know this, but it is true last I was told by them.

We all pretty much all colonized with the MRSA type Staph anyhow, we fight it off and stay healthy. We dont get infected. I work Geriatrics and I have had 2nd degree burns and 2 tattoos that have never gotten infected from my work and I am around it ALL the time.

This, too is media hype and the way they gathered info is speculative at best. Common sense should tell us that their will be better bugs as we create better drugs for treatment. It's natures way.

They probably noted it in gay men because that is one arena for HIV and what does that do? It destroys your immune system and makes you a host monkey for opportunic diseases(like Staph) Its more likely that HIV patients will go in for treatment if they notice something, or even gay men will go and get checked out as they are more in tuned with education about HIV and may think these skin infections are the beginnig of HIV.

I would like to see the statisitcs of heteros that go in and get treated for this infection. I bet no doctor would say "it's a hetero disease" they would say "it's just a skin infection" and not run tests on it. Bigotry causes doctors to test on gay people because they too can be ignorant and think that gay people are disease carriers, so they run more tests.


Best advice, wash, wash, wash your hands and sores. Go in immediately if it gets infected, dont wait and 'see if it will go away'. Dont touch open wounds on another(no brainer here) and also, MRSA is NOT flesh eating anything! Necrotizing Facitis is a type if Staph, but not all Staph are this.