The City Where People Are Afraid To Breathe 243
HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "BBC reports that cases of an incurable illness called valley fever are multiplying at an alarming and mystifying rate in the American south-west. Few places have been hit as hard as Avenal, a remote city of 14,000 people, nestling in a dip in the floor of the San Joaquin Valley in what experts refer to as a 'hot zone' for coccidioidomycosis — an illness caused by the inhalation of tiny fungal spores that usually reside in the soil. 'On windy days you are more conscious of it,' says Enrique Jimenez. 'You breathe in through your nose, and try not to breathe in as much dust. I worked in the fields for a long time, my father managed a few crops out here, and we took precautions, wearing bandanas.' Valley Fever is not easy to treat. Anti-fungal drugs are available for serious cases but some patients don't respond and it can take years to clear up. It never leaves the body and symptoms can be triggered again. Some patients are on the drugs for life, at a crippling financial cost. During World War II, German prisoners held at a camp in Arizona fell ill. Germany reportedly invoked the Geneva Convention to try to get them moved. Longstanding concerns about valley fever were heightened recently when a federal health official ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 exceptionally vulnerable inmates from two San Joaquin Valley prisons where several dozen have died of the disease in recent years. Dale Pulde, a motorcycle mechanic in Los Angeles County, said he contracted the disease three years ago after traveling to Bakersfield in Kern County and was coughing so hard he was blacking out; he spit blood and couldn't catch his breath. For two months, doctors tested him for everything from tuberculosis to cancer until blood tests confirmed he had the fever. 'When I found out that health officials knew about (this disease) and how common it is, I was beside myself,' said Pulde. 'Why don't they tell people?'"
hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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BBC is the closest news network to cover it?
I live in California and the first broadcaster I heard of the Asiana aircraft crash at SFO was the BBC World Service.
On topic - I drive through Avenel a number of times each year. All the better reason to keep the windows rolled up, the sunroof closed and be glad my car has an air filter on the ventilation intake.
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Hopefully you'll remember to replace that filter after driving through that place. All while following proper PPE precautions as said filter has a high concentration of pathogens on it. Right? Yeah, right :/
npr shots (Score:5, Informative)
BBC is the closest news network to cover it?
Cases Of Mysterious Valley Fever Rise In American Southwest [npr.org] [May 13]
Valley Fever Outbreaks Lead California to Move Inmates [go.com] [July 5]
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It's common knowledge in the SW, but likely generates lots of clicks for the BBC.
Re:hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
American media are busy trying to inform you of the NSA being the good guys on their five-hour long morning show. Later, they want you to know about the upcoming season of Honey Boo Boo. After they tell you all this they want to show you some Commercials so you can buy a Laptop with Windows 8. After the break they want to have a sit-down with some self-proclaimed former attorney that will explain to you why the Jury was wrong about the Zimmerman verdict, they'll be sure to spend two whole hours with limited Commercial breaks on that fiasco.
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BBC is the closest news network to cover it?
You must be new to the United States media, where the local TV devotes far more airtime to crucial stories such as fucking Zippy the Wonder Dog which does backflips and where the local Pravda newspaper devotes front 5 pages to a local recycling effort. If you're lucky, I mean really really lucky, the local Prava may, just may, have an article buried in page A15 of a 30 page section to 2 paragraphs on something which may affect you.
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That's because no one reads newspapers any more, and TV news has always been more like infotainment than facts.
Not that the Internet is much better, but there are enough sources that you at least can piece together something useful with enough effort.
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Re:hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the citizens are left to fend for themselves but the prisoners are evacuated in air conditioned buses.
The prisoners are the direct responsibility of the State and therefore the State is liable for their health and well being.
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Dozens dying over "several years" puts this disease on a much much lower scale than the cold or the flu.
This isnt the bubonic plague.
Re:hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
It was 40 out of 8000 people that died. That's a 0.5% death toll in 7 years, which annualizes to 0.07%. That's way higher than most Flus (2009 was relatively deadly at 0.03%). And those Flus are worldwide averages, not localized to prisons in developed countries.
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It's very localized, and is not normally fatal. Nonetheless, it can be very debilitating. Years ago, when I worked in the oilpatch, one of my crew got a bad case. A big strong guy -- when I saw him six or so months later, he looked like a skeleton. Years later you will still feel some of the effects. Expect respiratory weakness for the rest of your life.
If you have lived in this area for any length of time, chances are very good that you've had it. It may hit you like a bad cold, or like a bad case of
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My brother got a kidney in CA (Score:5, Informative)
The list does not work the way you think it does. My brother had not been employed for several years, not a problem. Kidney transplants are money saving operations, so money is not really an obstacle. All kidney patients are eligible for Medicare, and the break-even of cost of transplanted patients vs dialysis is 2 years or less. So, generally the government is eager for you to get a kidney transplant because they are covering all or the bulk of your costs regardless of socio-economic status or voluntariness of your residence.
So... everyone goes on the list, and it's pretty much do first come, first serve, with exceptions for people who have some particular difficulty that might make a long wait impossible. Generally, loss of kidney function will not kill you directly, you can live a very long time on dialysis. My brother lived for several years with no kidneys at all (removed for extreme size).
Bad (medical) behavior can get you off the list (excessive drugs, alcohol, or obesity, for example), but money can be worked around.
Other organs do not have the same cost-benefit structure, and there are not alternative therapies, so the rules work differently.
I don't know what the rules are for sex changes, so I'm no help there.
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I'm fairly sure that the prisoners will gladly be left to fend for themselves if the state cares to take that option.
Re:hmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The prisoners may be free men again some day, and have the same right to health that everyone else does. Free men are able to leave the dangerous areas as they please. Prisoners don't have that choice.
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Of course the citizens are left to fend for themselves but the prisoners are evacuated in air conditioned buses.
Are you suggesting that the state should force the citizens to leave? Or are you suggesting that the citizens are too poor to afford bus fare for an air-conditioned greyhound bus ride?
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Of course the citizens are left to fend for themselves but the prisoners are evacuated in air conditioned buses.
California probably isn't the state to play that particular card in: their prison standards are so... exemplary... that they've been judged a violation of 8th-amendment prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment. The not-notoriously-soft-on-crime feds have had them under oversight for a bit over 15 years trying to get the reckless negligence and massive overcrowding down to constitutionally-viable levels...
(Plus, of course, incarcerating somebody makes them your responsibility to a degree that you'd be ac
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If you hold someone prisoner, you are responsible for his wellbeing. So either lobby for your government to hold less prisoners, or lobby for a welfare state where it has a responsibility to everyone, or accept that you'll be paying for buses - air-conditioned where appropriate - to haul felons out of danger's way while you're left to fend for yourself.
Vengeance is not cheap.
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The vast majority of the homeless who encamp in GGP are not war veterans; that's asinine. Go to the end of Haight and look in the park, and what do you see? Dozens, if not hundreds of young adults and 20-30 somethings who just want to smoke weed all day and live in squalor. Those aren't veterans. Those are kids who don't want to make a living like the rest of us. They just wanna be carefree. I know; I live here.
Re:hmm.. (Score:4, Informative)
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Because vaccine research is often difficult. Especially for things like fungi.
They've been working on Valley Fever for many years. They already had at least one candidate vaccine that failed in humans.
Add to that, vaccines are usually not very profitable.
Valley fever (Score:3, Insightful)
As if the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation doesn't have enough problems on its hands being forced to downsize the population of its myriad gulags, they have two prisons near Ground Zero of this disease and several more in the general vicinity. It would not be surprising if they are forced by a court eventually to close these prisons because of valley fever. I, for one, would be pleased to see a reversal in the trend in the United States to imprison instead of rehabilitate those who are eminently rehabilitatable.
Re:Valley fever (Score:5, Informative)
I, for one, would be pleased to see a reversal in the trend in the United States to imprison instead of rehabilitate those who are eminently rehabilitatable.
Not going to happen, so long as we have people making money from an industrial prison complex.
Potheads and repeat offenders are their bread-and-butter.
Re:Valley fever (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is not prison population. The real problem is that urban areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco ship their prisoners to the Central Valley (more recently Arizona, Mississippi, and Oklahoma) because they do not want to pay for a prison in their own urban centers. Lower land costs, lower utility costs, and lower cost of living/labor makes the Central Valley a better place to house prisoners.
My father-in-law works at one of these Central Valley prisons, and I can tell you that his entire prison (3,000) does not fall within the category of rehabilitation. The entire prison is for people who were transferred from other prisons for murdering another prisoner or who were convicted of murder prior to being jailed. Not exactly the type of people that respond well to counseling and talk therapy. More like the kind of people that would stab you with a metal pen.
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The entire prison is for people who were transferred from other prisons for murdering another prisoner...
Murder before entering prison is one thing, I take "murders" committed after being imprisoned with a grain of salt since there are quite a few jurisdictions where the courts have upheld that prisoners have no right of self-defense.
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It's not a prison problem. It just happens that there are a couple prisons near where there is a current outbreak. This disease is also endemic in Arizona. So what happens when you move the prisoners to Phoenix and a big outbreak happens there? Or move them to LA and an outbreak happens there? It's called San Joaquin Velly Fever but only because that's where it first became widely known to the general public, but it is endemic to huge swaths of the south west.
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I, for one, would be pleased to see a reversal in the trend in the United States to imprison instead of rehabilitate those who are eminently rehabilitatable.
What is your plan for rehabilition? Serious question.
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I, for one, would be pleased to see a reversal in the trend in the United States to imprison instead of rehabilitate those who are eminently rehabilitatable.
What is your plan for rehabilition? Serious question.
Detox, a focus on education while in the system, and removal of post-release punishments (like not being able to vote) are a good place to start.
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Add mental health care and therapy to that. Fix the economic incentives and personal problems that can lead back to crime and you could very well create responsible citizens.
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It would not be surprising if they are forced by a court eventually to close these prisons because of valley fever.
It would not be surprising, because it's already happened [kqed.org].
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Vallely Fever comes and goes. It is not "common" so a lot of doctors don't know about it or know to test for it. There isn't a ground zero for it, it's endemic all over the southwest and into Mexico. This includes the entire state of Arizona and the southern half of California. No one knows why there's a current spike in King's County. This is not a disease restricted to dumb people in rural areas, it can strike in cities as well, even places where hipsters live. The problem is exacerbated due to igno
Moderators asleep at the job (Score:5, Informative)
From the summary:
It never leaves the body and symptoms can be triggered again.
From the linked article [wikipedia.org]
The infection ordinarily resolves leaving the patient with a specific immunity to re-infection.
Both cannot be true.
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As an infected person, I can tell you the wikipedia article is incorrect. For more information visit valleyfeversurvivor.org.
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I really dig that scrolling menu bar at the top of your website.
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Thanks, I've always wondered what it would be like to time travel back to the late 90's.
Re:Moderators asleep at the job (Score:5, Interesting)
Valley fever is no more dangerous than the flu. Most people who get it recover on their own with no complications and sometimes without even realizing they had it. Rare cases result in long term problems or death, but again, those are extremely rare.
Talk to your doctor if you have questions.
Re:Moderators asleep at the job (Score:4, Informative)
I have a chronic form of Valley Fever, and I can attest that it is no joke. It might be true that on average it is less dangerous than the flu, but for some people it is much, much worse than the flu. If you restrict your domain to people who "actually suffer" from Valley Fever, then within that population, it is a very serious disease. So I guess you can play around with words and call Valley Fever a very common, mild disease, or a very rare, serious disease. If you call just the disseminated form of the disease Valley Fever, then it's usually fatal. Your statements are just not fair to people who suffer serious complications from the disease.
I think it's fairer to consider Valley Fever to be a rare, serious disease than a common benign disease because the difference between an asymptomatic infection and a chronic sufferer is so great.
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From the summary:
It never leaves the body and symptoms can be triggered again.
From the linked article [wikipedia.org]
The infection ordinarily resolves leaving the patient with a specific immunity to re-infection.
Both cannot be true.
Yes they can. The body can obtain an immunity to it but not completely leave. Think HIV or the various herpes viruses.
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The Shingles [wikipedia.org] says they can.
Re:Moderators asleep at the job (Score:5, Insightful)
Shingles is a virus, Valley Fever is a fungus that gets inhaled. They are not the same.
So what? Both are obviously true despite your claim that they can't be. Virus vs. fungus has no bearing on it.
0) You can be infected with something.
1) You can fight it off and become immune to it.
2) You can later be reinfected by the remnants that still remain in your body - because the infectious agent has changed, because your immune system has failed/been overwhelmed, because your specific immunity has gone away, or because the mechanism of infection (or location in your body) is different (even if the infectious agent is unchanged).
Re:Moderators asleep at the job (Score:5, Informative)
There is a form that basically remains dormant in your system for the rest of your life, however it's rare and mostly only affects immunocompromised people.
Some people treat Valley Fever like some doomsday infection, and some sites like valleyfeversurvivor.org have communities of people acting like it's the source of all their health problems regardless of whether or not it's actually true.
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Exactly. Not all coccidioidomycosis is created equally. But "rare and immune-compromised" doesn't make for flashy headlines.
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They can certainly be true.
The infection is growing fungus in your lungs. The symptoms are caused by the fungus physically being there.
Specific Immunity means immunity to only that specific strain, and not any mutations of it, which happen regularly, and in parallel. It's even possible to be immediately re-infected with a different strain if exposed to the same conditions.
It also doesn't remove the crap that has built up in your lungs - which at a later date can cause irritation, and a resurgence of sympt
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From the summary:
It never leaves the body and symptoms can be triggered again.
From the linked article [wikipedia.org]
The infection ordinarily resolves leaving the patient with a specific immunity to re-infection.
Both cannot be true.
isn't this the case with chicken pox? I had it as a kid. I'm now immune. As i understand it, the virus is still lurking within me and can make a comeback at some point, if i am severely weakened, as shingles.
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yes, they can be and are both true.
SOME infected people never develop symptoms at all. Others develop severe flu-like symptoms and then clear the infection. less fortunate individuals develop a chronic infection which may never be cleared. Still less fortunate people develop the chronic disseminated form of the disease.
Perhaps you should try reading more than the introduction to the linked article. All of this is in there.
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And "less fortunate" individuals can develop a chronic infection from the common cold and have a lasting impact. Where are the Doomsday articles about the dangers of the common cold?
The important facts of the story are simple, millions of people live and travel through this area (lived in the central valley for the first 10 years of my life) and never develop symptoms. A small percentage, small enough that people still live and travel here, develop symptoms that have a small chance of death, a href=http:/
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The problem is that you claimed that it was IMPOSSIBLE for both to be true, not that the mild course is by far the more common (it is). You are as guilty as TFA in the other direction.
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The common cold.
Your body becomes immune to the virus after infection. However, there are so many variants of the virus that manifest as 'the common cold' that people average true virus induced 'colds' once per year.
Why don't they tell people? (Score:2)
Because of the San Joaquin Valley Chamber of Commerce?
Beware of property owners' rights trumping everything else.
I wonder (Score:2)
Doubtful (Score:2)
[I wonder] If Doc Holiday had this instead of his diagnosed tuberculosis.
Doubtful since he was living in Atlanta when he contracted TB and moved out West in the hopes it would improve his symptoms.
Templar, AZ? (Score:2)
First thing I thought of, really.
The Last of Us (Score:2)
This thing is very common. (Score:5, Informative)
I lived for a while in Tucson. Pretty much anyone who's outdoors in the desert much is likely to get it; in most people there are either no symptoms or flu-like symptoms. My PhD advisor had to have major surgery, and in the pre-surgery physical they found some characteristic scar tissue in his lungs and commented that he'd had valley fever at some point; he had no idea.
I'm pretty sure I had it; I got an unexplained very high fever and "flu-like" muscle pains along with a cough, but no sinus congestion at the end of my first year there.
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Won't the desert being the exact opposite environment that fungus would exist in?
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Won't the desert being the exact opposite environment that fungus would exist in?
When it's in the dry desert soil, these fungi (Coccidioides immitis) are dormant. When it rains, it grows into mold and then yields spores. Then when it's dry again after a rainy spell, the spores detach and blow in the wind. The spores want an environment just like your lungs so if they happen to end up there, it's party time for them.
How did this fungus get to located in the desert in the first place? Who knows, but it's there in the soil, probably longer that humans were around.
Of course there are also
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There are tests for it, and presumably a common antifungal drug could treat it.
Don't panic, though. It's not really that dangerous in very many people.
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one of those things where msot folks get it, and get over it, and thats the end of the story, with only a minor population developing an adverse or chronic condition. the article is essentially FUD
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Don't worry, it's organic (Score:5, Funny)
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The deadliest poisons are organic products.
Botulitim
Ricin
Dart Frog Venom
Beaked Sea Snake Venom
Strychnine
Amatoxin
Fiddleback Spider Venom
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When organic means food produced in accordance with USDA organic guidelines, yes. Absolutely.
I guarantee that you are creative enough to come up with some products produced in accordance with the USDA organic guidelines that aren't good for you.
Our dog got valley fever and died last year in AZ (Score:2, Interesting)
Your pets can get this too, especially if they eat dirt. It's something to be aware of, since the vets took a couple of months figuring it out. It's the sort of thing if you want an expedited diagnosis you probably have to bring up yourself, so it's good to see it getting a little publicity so maybe doctors will become more aware in other parts of the country/world.
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Desert fever was/is just another name for Valley Fever. I had it too and lived in Phoenix in the late 70's early 80's. It always freaked out my Doctors when they would see my lung x-rays. Loved having to explain that no I wasn't a smoker that was from valley fever and then having to teach them what coccidioidomycosis was to a MD.
Why don't they tell?????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they tell people that the southwest is full of sharp plants???
Why don't they tell people that the southwest if HOT???
Why don't they tell people that "it's a dry heat"???
Because most southwesterners already KNOW, that's why. Few people have problems from valley fever(1 in 1000, or 1 in 5000 depending on source). And all the medical people will test for it first when a patient comes in experiencing a bad "fever". Even the people that have it (or have noticeable symptoms) usually can overcome it themselves without any medical treatment.
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Agreed. Every region has its quirks, and what's considered common in one place can be utterly foreign in another. In the US alone, we have a number of regional ailments or conditions, ranging from serious stuff like Lyme disease and West Nile virus to relatively benign stuff like hay fever or fire ants (which are apparently being displaced by crazy ants). Obviously there are concerns that are even more localized than those, but a capable doctor should be aware of most and should be asking if you've visited
'Why don't they tell people?'" (Score:2)
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Old saw still applies (Score:5, Insightful)
In undeveloped countries, don't drink the water. In developed countries, don't breathe the air.
Today I learned... (Score:2)
We had a prisoner of war camp in Arizona during WWII.
Common in Arizona (Score:2)
When I read the headline I thought it was something new and sinister to worry about, but valley fever? This is nothing new - at least here in Arizona. As a kid growing up here in the 70s and 80s there was a public service announcement on TV about it played pretty often (Channel 5 maybe?). (Imagine a scene in a small farming town, near a cotton or alfalfa field, on a hot, dry summer day. A tractor is discing a field in the background, kicking up a wall of dust behind it, in the warped light of the baking sum
Road trip to Vegas! (Score:2)
Who's up for that???
Good grief - The BBC as Sensatonalist as Fox News! (Score:2)
Coccidiomycosis is all over the southwest, it's not incurable, and it's no flipping mystery why the incidence is increasing ... A couple of wet winters, some dry dusty summers and an influx of new residents with the attendant construction kicking up the dirt where the spores are ... and probably an easier diagnostic test. Instant epidemic. We had a surge of cases every fall in Phoenix if the dust storms had been severe.
2/3 of the people who have antibodies against it thought they had a slight cold or had no
Bad summary (Score:3)
According to the linked story, Germany did not invoke the Geneva convention, the US preemptively decided to remove the prisoners because they thought it might be a violation to subject them to the conditions. It would have been rather odd for Nazi Germany to complain about treatment of people in camps, from what I understand about history ( primarily through a tv channel with history in the name of it ).
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Re:I expected China, but here in the US? (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the medical professionals and vetrinarians in my area of southwest Utah know about it.
It's no secret.
People gotta live somewhere. Fires, floods, earthquakes, malaria, congressmen, natural radiation, natural heavy metals in ground water... every place has some problem.
It isn't like we are talking about bubonic plague running rampant. What should the government do? Spray bleach over everything? Kick people off their own property?
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Most of the medical professionals and vetrinarians in my area of southwest Utah know about it.
It's no secret.
People gotta live somewhere. Fires, floods, earthquakes, malaria, congressmen, natural radiation, natural heavy metals in ground water... every place has some problem.
It isn't like we are talking about bubonic plague running rampant. What should the government do? Spray bleach over everything? Kick people off their own property?
Funny you mention that: the bubonic plague is endemic throughout the American southwest [cdc.gov] and there are reported cases in people every year. Prairie dogs, among other rodents, carry it. (Most common cause of infection is outdoor cats getting plague-infected fleas that have left dead prairie dogs, then bringing the disease home to their owners.)
And as for the where-should-we-live, I made a map of natural disasters in the US a while ago when people were on about how anyone would be dumb enough to live in Norm
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He did say "fairly safe" so I think he was tracking things that happen more than once every 600,000 years. And also things that won't simply bury half the US in ash and cause a global "nuclear winter" equivalent.
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On a windy day you can pick up a hantavirus infection as well if you're near any varmint feces in a Western state. HPS fatality rate is 50%. Doctors know about it and they're not telling anybody. We need to close off New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, California, Washington, Texas, Utah and Montana.
Or not. Life is risky and temporary. Your wish to invoke power to assuage a brand new fear or outrage you were given sometime during the last 10 minutes is a result of training. You're behaving exactly as inten
Re:I expected China, but here in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
>Surprising. It's a "new low" in the US as far as I'm concerned. If an area is not safe for human habitation, it needs to be closed off. "Why don't they tell people?!"
It's no big secret. People who live there know about it. God alone knows why they live there. If you go to Avenal and look around, you can see 20+ really good reasons not to live there before you even think about Valley Fever.
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And yet people live there. The vast majority of people in the world did not make a decision about where to live, they live where they are because they have little opportunity to move somewhere else.
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Or "Valley of the Wind."
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Isn't that an city in China that is mining rare earth metals for wind turbines [dailymail.co.uk]?
The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.
For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.
The price of 10% economic growth, quarter on quarter, year on year, for a decade has been widely documented in terms of human and environmental health. You can poison the land, river or an entire lake, but if you pour white paint into milk you meet the firing squad.
Re:The City Where People Are Afraid To Breathe (Score:4, Insightful)
Stories like that always make me wonder why the turbines in coal, gas, and nuclear plants don't use neodymium magnets. Why is it that only renewable energy sources have to use materials that cause environmental damage to extract, but the physical equipment for non-renewables are made out of 110% non-polluting unicorn giggles?
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Re:The City Where People Are Afraid To Breathe (Score:5, Informative)
Most wind turbines actually do not use neodymium magnets. They use plain old electromagnetic generators. However, to electromagnetic generators get inefficient at low speeds, so using electromagnetic generators also means using gears, possibly multi-stage. Coal, gas, and nuclear plants generally work with very hot steam. You can design your steam turbine for pretty much any rotational speed you want. No gears necessary.
So why not just increase the rotational speed of wind turbines? You lose aerodynamic efficiency when the tip speed gets to a reasonable fraction of the speed of sound. To avoid gears and use electromagnetic generators on a typical 3MW wind turbine, you would need the tips to go faster than the speed of sound. Extracting power from the wind while going at supersonic speeds is a yet unsolved problem.
If the use of permanent magnets was banned entirely from wind turbines, the market would not really change much. Some manufacturers would temporarily lose market share while they redesigned, but overall turbine price would not change dramatically.
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In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
They're being ridiculous. Nobody's forcing anyone in the UK to use rare-earth-based generators in wind turbines.
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In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
They're being ridiculous. Nobody's forcing anyone in the UK to use rare-earth-based generators in wind turbines.
Neodymium magnets are the most powerful currently known. If each turbine uses 4400 pounds as the article suggests, just how many times more weight of ceramic magnets would have to be used to reach the same T?
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I wish Americans would realize that the dailymail is the UK's equivilent to the National Enquirer before posting links to it.
I do believe you're talking about the Guardian aren't you? After all, I've seen more complete news stories on the Dailymail about events within the US, than I've seen on US networks about the same events.
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The trouble is that the damn snowbirds show up and then hide in air conditioned houses. It was either the fungus or come up with sneakier snakes.
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Congress cut off a large amount of water in this state how? Did they use the GWB weather machine to make it stop raining?
I think your question is rhetorical; but they diverted water from agricultural use into the Delta. This had two purposes. 1. Fish habitat restoration. 2. Prevention of salt-water intrusion into the Delta, which is part of the water supply for East Bay counties.
Or do you mean that the Central Valley used to be green due to public engineering creating a non-native abundance of wate