> Other countries have experienced recent outbreaks. In late 2022 at least five European nations reported to the World Health Organization an increase in cases of invasive group A streptococcus (iGAS) disease, which includes STSS. The WHO said the rise in cases followed the end of Covid restrictions.
What is the point of bringing up a unique point in time where confining everyone in their houses reduced interaction with this particular bacteria?
The article paints those measures as if they were a good thing and now things have regressed.
The article does nothing of the sort. It just states what the WHO said. Whether you choose to infer that the author thought covid restrictions were good/bad is your own projection
Not sure if you’re aware but there’s been strong arguments made that Covid impairs the immune system. One hypothesis was that it could tip things that wouldn’t spread over the line from defeated by most humans to defeated by less humans than necessary to avoid spread. Something like R>1 from 0.9
Or it could be to indicate that a rise is expected since people are being less careful about spreading disease? Or it could be to say that the restrictions caused immune systems to not be exercised enough so now they are weaker?
>The article paints those measures as if they were a good thing and now things have regressed.
I got a totally different vibe: Japan is notoriously xenophobic and maintained extremely strict regulations on visitors that were far more stringent than western countries.
So the framing here sounds like a Japanese perspective: "we didn't want you to come, and we started to let you back in, and look what happened to us" which is probably a popular sentiment there.
their “point” does not stand. they don’t even have a point. they cherry-picked an ideological hot button to be mad about for no legitimate reason.
it is absurd to suggest those measures were not a good thing, and factually inaccurate to say that the article expresses or implies any opinion about them whatsoever. it doesn’t.
it’s an article about a rise in cases. it mentions when the cases started rising.
please don’t mistake me for some kind of anti-vaccine anti-mask zealot. Having diligently participated in all the responsible social and personal anti-covid measures, my take on the article remains that it was a bizarre choice for the author to so directly entangle the two things together. CDC comments not withstanding, the flesh eating bacteria is enough of an eye catching story on its own, it doesn’t need to be attached to another horrible disease to be an interesting article.
There’s nothing bizarre at all about mentioning the recent prominent contagious disease crisis in an article about another rising contagion. It would be kind of weird not to.
I think I’m being misinterpreted, which is on me for being unclear.
To address a sibling commenter first: no, I don’t think any mention of covid is a political statement, that’d be absurd. We all experienced the mayhem, fear, and uncertainty together, and most of us, though sadly not all of us, made it out alive. It itself is not political.
But it is often made to be. I find the articles opening sentence is phrased in a way as to be invoking a boogeyman, not least to which is because covid restrictions in japan were relaxed two years ago. The phrasing implies a strongly direct correlation, rather than a more nebulous one where all diseases would increase by the same reduction in measures. The overt entanglement in the opening sentence feels like baiting a response by disingenuous or superfluous association. The article would have stood stronger on its own legs, I feel.
Kikuchi urged people to maintain hand hygiene and to treat any open wounds.
People washed and disinfected their hands a lot more often and thoroughly during the pandemic. At least here in Germany. They stopped shaking hands, washed them thoroughly (at least twenty seconds, using soap) and disinfected them when entering or leaving stores. Now they shake hands again and the disinfectant is gone. Who knows how everyone is washing their hands today. It’s not far fetched to suspect that this behavior might have helped.
Notice they said "followed" not "caused." But maybe it did cause it. Reducing human contact will slow transmission of all diseases. It's sort of weird to bring it up in an article like this because if this is the explanation it's really not "an increase in outbreaks" it's just getting back to the normal rate.
> Reducing human contact will slow transmission of all diseases
I find it difficult to disabuse myself of the notion that there are people who see this simple statement as justification to return to enforcing certain pandemic era countermeasures permanently as part of a "new normal"
Downvotes with no commentary and which merely reinforce institutional narratives add no value to these sorts of discussions IMO. I think that HN would be much improved by a “you must submit a thoughtful comment or counter-argument when downvoting” guideline.
Good analysis; more focus should also be put on asymptomatic reinfections:
"Even a mild or asymptomatic infection can harm the immune system. It can make you susceptible to new diseases that might not have bothered you before, but now, with your weakened immune system, these new diseases can find a foothold and attack you. Also, conditions that may have been dormant or held in check in your body by your immune system could resurface now that it’s weakened – things like shingles, HIV, or a resurgence of herpes. We’re seeing resurgences of all those things in the general population. We’re also seeing a resurgence in measles, whooping cough, and polio — all these things that we thought we’d gotten rid of. Whooping cough cases have been exploding in the UK. Our mass herd immunity is weakened and those diseases are all coming up again.
Beyond that, getting a COVID infection can double your risk of heart attack, increase the risk of stroke by three times, and double the risk of diabetes. All these things happen as a result of your COVID infection, and they persist for as much as two years, even if you had a mild or even an asymptomatic infection."
It could be tied to sars-cov2 and its detrimental longtime effects on general immune system function amongst other things related to the pandemic. To be checked on a case by case basis of course, don't know about these specific bacteria..
Don't look up the latest science on asymptomatic reinfections unless you really want to find out more.
> I wonder why they opted for a political framing of the article
What an interesting turn of phrase. In my mind, reducing interpersonal contact will obviously reduce interpersonal transmission of all infectious diseases. The policies surrounding covid reduced not just covid but also colds, flus, etc. That's a matter of obvious, well-understood cause&effect and strongly supported by the data.
But your reaction here is clearly and overtly political. Is the framing of the article "political framing" or is your kneejerk response "political framing?" Is it possible to mention covid policy without that being perceived as a political act, or is it merely taboo?
Kikuchi urged people to maintain hand hygiene and to treat any open wounds. He said patients may carry GAS in their intestines, which could contaminate hands through faeces.
Not really surprised, in Japan I often find toilets have a single tap with cold water and no soap. It’s quite disgusting. Lots of train stations are like this.
… I have to think there’s also probably some manner of aerisolization when you spray with water too.
I’m actually really confused by why people like bidets so much. Maybe I just don’t get how they work? On paper, it just seems more prone to the aforementioned issue and also getting the rest of your groinal region as dirty as your anus.
As a fairly hirsute gentleman, a bidet has been life changing for me. I am so much cleaner— the only way to be even cleaner would be to get in the shower! Now maybe that is all in my head?
But honestly if you’ve ever tried to clean, say, peanut butter out of a shag carpet using only dry paper… well you have some ideas of what my struggle has been. With apologies for the graphic image; hopefully it elicits a chuckle from someone :)
I've posted below about squat toilets, but you might want to try them if they are an option. Honestly, I'd glad I practiced a bit and learned to balance in a squat than have to sit on the (usually filthy) seats in most public toilets. But one of the most interesting things is that when you squat, your posterior is in a much more suitable position for the activity and there's a lot less cleanup required. Not always, but fairly often, the first wipe already results in such a clean tissue that you don't even need to bother with a second wipe. YMMV of course, and it also depends what you've been eating!
Some of the best, minimal-cleanup shits I've had were in Japan on a squat toilet. Also in the woods, over a cat hole; the ergonomics of squatting to poop work in our favor.
I mean, normally I wouldn’t share, but you asked… my wife and I had terrible hemorrhoids to the point I was considering going to the doctor from using toilet paper. I bought a bidet and I’ve never had issues again. I’m happy to say my anus is the least inflamed it’s been in my life, and the hemorrhoids have completely gone away for us both.
If you had shit on your hands, would you consider them clean after wiping them with a paper towel a few times, or would you want to wash them with water? The same applies for your butt.
Different regions of the body, and different uses. Around the anus there's bacteria in a nice warm moist environment to go to town. I don't open doors with my asshole, so I'm happy with enough wipes to get any excess poop off, followed by a spray from a cheap cold-water bidet (or diaper sprayer, left over from when our child was in cloth diapers), followed by a wipe for drying.
I honestly much prefer the traditional Asian toilets compared to the western ones with seats when I'm using public facilities. Usually the door doesn't go all the way to the bottom so you can open and close it with your shoe, you can use a pre-prepared piece of tissue to lock the toilet door, go about your business clean up and use another small piece of toilet paper to unlock the door and your shoe to open it, and do all that without physically touching anything apart from your own body or your own clothes. Usually the flush is on a handle that just needs to be pressed and conveniently at foot height too. Unless it's an automatic tap, I'll usually operate the washbasin tap with tissue paper between me and the tap too.
Of course most Westerners have difficulty with the squat itself at first, but it doesn't take too long until you learn to balance properly. While I'd also suggest practicing the squat in the safety of your home first if you think this is going to be a skill you might need, in some ways it's easier to succeed in a public toilet when you're really strongly motivated against falling over! D:
Yeah, I use a tissue barrier for that too. When I'm in Asia I usually carry around those little packs that have 10 folded tissues per pack. I normally tear one into quarters before I leave the street and go into the toilet, and use one quarter to deal with the lock shutting the door, one to open the toilet door (and after opening the door, operate the flush if hand operated), one to turn the tap off and one to open any doors on the way out. I also avoid the hand dryers, if present, as I think they just spread germs around. Hands usually dry pretty quickly anyway.
Where I work we had some asian or middle-eastern folks who would try to use the standard American-style toilet as a squat toilet. I'm not sure of if they stood on the seat and squatted down or if they straddled the bowl and squatted but either way there was frequently shit on and around the seat. The janitorial staff became quite frustrated with it and someone posted a sign explaining that you had to sit on the toilet and not squat over it.
It must be a big issue in Japan, because every public toilet around here has a big sign telling you not to do that, and explaining how to use the toilet properly.
Are you making things up? The norm, if there's a bidet, is for it to be button controlled. Even a lot of public toilets have button controlled bidets at this point.
Some really old public parks will have squatters, and in the past these bathrooms would also not have had toilet paper (because the assumption is that you'd bring your own tissue paper with you - this is one of the reasons they hand out tissue papers with advertising). But nowadays basically all toilets have paper, and most have nice new bidets.
> And parent wrote: "Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape."
>
> Not that they don't have buttons.
They implied toilets with button controlled bidets are "luxury" toilets, and that most toilets they came across were in bad shape.
I'm saying that the norm in a lot of Japan now, for public toilets, is what they called out as being "luxury" toilets.
Their experience is so outside of the norm that it's either extremely outdated, or exaggerated to make a point (and the point is related to how things are unsanitary, so it has a tinge of painting Japan as a whole as being unsanitary).
and the extremely difficult to access mechanism for moving anywhere from one to three small, perpetually damp pipes into position inside the bowl, themselves accessorized with numerous little hinges, cavities, crevices to collect and accumulate offal in effectively unclean-able (but mostly out-of-sight) recesses.
Although initially intrigued, after staying in Japan for a few weeks I came to despise those overcomplicated, ironically un-hygenic toilet systems - especially in public facilities, and tried to avoid using them as much as possible.
On the other hand I greatly preferred the old fashioned squat style setup, I would seem to be a lot more practical of a solution on a number of leven.
You'll still be using your hand on the vicinity, not just some paper, plus water spraying microjets of shit everywhere, and several other factors besides.
The bidet is leaving your ass cleaner, not your hand.
The washlet I have has a dryer function but it doesn't work all that well. I'm told this is pretty common and most people still need to use some paper to dry themselves. There's far less risk of fecal contamination of your hands while drying yourself after having your backside washed but it's still a possibility that when multiplied over an entire population means there are many people walking around with contaminated hands, especially if hand washing isn't the cultural standard.
I have found that using toilet paper to remove the initial debris, then using the bidet, then drying with a new piece of toilet paper is the only way to consistently feel more clean.
This was a while ago but I found India to be the absolute worst for this. I was working in a modern office in Bangalore at the time, and the building's other tenants were companies like Microsoft and some other well-known big tech companies I'm forgetting at the moment, and not a single bathroom had any soap. I was totally grossed out.
i wouldn't call it "quite disgusting" considering how there are not more transmission of illness than other nations even in the densest parts of the country. people wear masks when they are ill and restrooms in food establishments typically have soap.
air dryers like dyson in western countries are breeding grounds for germs and pathogens anyway
Do we really need to argue or split hairs that not having soap in a restroom is disgusting? Nobody is saying anything about masks or the pros/cons of air dryers. But not washing your hands after using the bathroom is disgusting.
Japan has a really old population which makes this a major concern for them (median age >50 a decade more than the US). It makes it also harder extrapolating this to other countries. Density of susceptible persons makes a difference when it vomes to spreading (herd immunity, hospital transmissions).
It's less likely, but bacteria do cause pandemics. Yersinia pestis, the most well-known example. Or Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is still a major cause of death today.
I feel like we get these "flesh-eating bacteria" scares in the media every couple years, and then all of the sudden you just don't hear about it anymore for another couple years. Just has led me to conclude it's something that's always "there" in the background but not really something to worry about except for specific sub-populations that basically always have to worry about it.
Appearing in the media is a bad indicator. Look up antibiotic resistant infection clusters. There might be one near you, but it won't make the news because they've been there for many years.
106 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] thread> Other countries have experienced recent outbreaks. In late 2022 at least five European nations reported to the World Health Organization an increase in cases of invasive group A streptococcus (iGAS) disease, which includes STSS. The WHO said the rise in cases followed the end of Covid restrictions.
What is the point of bringing up a unique point in time where confining everyone in their houses reduced interaction with this particular bacteria? The article paints those measures as if they were a good thing and now things have regressed.
It’s possible people wash their hands less since COVID restrictions were lifted, or some other knock-on effect.
> … as if they were a good thing and now things have regressed.
Less “flesh-eating bacteria” in the world is probably always a good thing, independent of anything else.
I got a totally different vibe: Japan is notoriously xenophobic and maintained extremely strict regulations on visitors that were far more stringent than western countries.
So the framing here sounds like a Japanese perspective: "we didn't want you to come, and we started to let you back in, and look what happened to us" which is probably a popular sentiment there.
it is absurd to suggest those measures were not a good thing, and factually inaccurate to say that the article expresses or implies any opinion about them whatsoever. it doesn’t.
it’s an article about a rise in cases. it mentions when the cases started rising.
To address a sibling commenter first: no, I don’t think any mention of covid is a political statement, that’d be absurd. We all experienced the mayhem, fear, and uncertainty together, and most of us, though sadly not all of us, made it out alive. It itself is not political.
But it is often made to be. I find the articles opening sentence is phrased in a way as to be invoking a boogeyman, not least to which is because covid restrictions in japan were relaxed two years ago. The phrasing implies a strongly direct correlation, rather than a more nebulous one where all diseases would increase by the same reduction in measures. The overt entanglement in the opening sentence feels like baiting a response by disingenuous or superfluous association. The article would have stood stronger on its own legs, I feel.
People washed and disinfected their hands a lot more often and thoroughly during the pandemic. At least here in Germany. They stopped shaking hands, washed them thoroughly (at least twenty seconds, using soap) and disinfected them when entering or leaving stores. Now they shake hands again and the disinfectant is gone. Who knows how everyone is washing their hands today. It’s not far fetched to suspect that this behavior might have helped.
I find it difficult to disabuse myself of the notion that there are people who see this simple statement as justification to return to enforcing certain pandemic era countermeasures permanently as part of a "new normal"
[1] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tora-bora-tunnel-kin...
> This is in the context of increased population mixing following a period of reduced circulation of GAS during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The article is merely restating the WHO report and not adding any new political takes. The downvotes are because the comment is incorrect.
Downvotes with no commentary and which merely reinforce institutional narratives add no value to these sorts of discussions IMO. I think that HN would be much improved by a “you must submit a thoughtful comment or counter-argument when downvoting” guideline.
"Even a mild or asymptomatic infection can harm the immune system. It can make you susceptible to new diseases that might not have bothered you before, but now, with your weakened immune system, these new diseases can find a foothold and attack you. Also, conditions that may have been dormant or held in check in your body by your immune system could resurface now that it’s weakened – things like shingles, HIV, or a resurgence of herpes. We’re seeing resurgences of all those things in the general population. We’re also seeing a resurgence in measles, whooping cough, and polio — all these things that we thought we’d gotten rid of. Whooping cough cases have been exploding in the UK. Our mass herd immunity is weakened and those diseases are all coming up again.
Beyond that, getting a COVID infection can double your risk of heart attack, increase the risk of stroke by three times, and double the risk of diabetes. All these things happen as a result of your COVID infection, and they persist for as much as two years, even if you had a mild or even an asymptomatic infection."
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/from-long-co...
Don't look up the latest science on asymptomatic reinfections unless you really want to find out more.
You just making up things in your head.
What an interesting turn of phrase. In my mind, reducing interpersonal contact will obviously reduce interpersonal transmission of all infectious diseases. The policies surrounding covid reduced not just covid but also colds, flus, etc. That's a matter of obvious, well-understood cause&effect and strongly supported by the data.
But your reaction here is clearly and overtly political. Is the framing of the article "political framing" or is your kneejerk response "political framing?" Is it possible to mention covid policy without that being perceived as a political act, or is it merely taboo?
There's nothing political about public health measures (even if some try to argue as such).
Not really surprised, in Japan I often find toilets have a single tap with cold water and no soap. It’s quite disgusting. Lots of train stations are like this.
I’m actually really confused by why people like bidets so much. Maybe I just don’t get how they work? On paper, it just seems more prone to the aforementioned issue and also getting the rest of your groinal region as dirty as your anus.
But honestly if you’ve ever tried to clean, say, peanut butter out of a shag carpet using only dry paper… well you have some ideas of what my struggle has been. With apologies for the graphic image; hopefully it elicits a chuckle from someone :)
I'll happily accept my downvotes for this meta commentary.
Paired with hair removal, my quality of life has increased greatly.
but honestly, it shouldn’t be a difficult concept for people to grasp. if a bird shit on your arm, would you wipe it off with a dry paper towel?
Of course most Westerners have difficulty with the squat itself at first, but it doesn't take too long until you learn to balance properly. While I'd also suggest practicing the squat in the safety of your home first if you think this is going to be a skill you might need, in some ways it's easier to succeed in a public toilet when you're really strongly motivated against falling over! D:
The bigger problem is then opening the door to leave the room after washing hands
Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape.
Some really old public parks will have squatters, and in the past these bathrooms would also not have had toilet paper (because the assumption is that you'd bring your own tissue paper with you - this is one of the reasons they hand out tissue papers with advertising). But nowadays basically all toilets have paper, and most have nice new bidets.
Are you rude?
>The norm, if there's a bidet, is for it to be button controlled. Even a lot of public toilets have button controlled bidets at this point
Did they say otherwise?
Grandparent said "When I was i Japan the toilet in my hotel room had a remote control with 18 buttons."
And parent wrote: "Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape."
Not that they don't have buttons.
Are you?
> And parent wrote: "Lots of Japan may have a bidet but most I’ve come across are in much worse shape." > > Not that they don't have buttons.
They implied toilets with button controlled bidets are "luxury" toilets, and that most toilets they came across were in bad shape.
I'm saying that the norm in a lot of Japan now, for public toilets, is what they called out as being "luxury" toilets.
Their experience is so outside of the norm that it's either extremely outdated, or exaggerated to make a point (and the point is related to how things are unsanitary, so it has a tinge of painting Japan as a whole as being unsanitary).
Then before that I was in Japan in October.
In the past few years I’ve been to Tokyo, Kanazawa, Awaji, Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka, Hakone, and a bunch of smaller cities. All took my time.
So no, my knowledge is neither outdated nor am I exaggerating anything. Maybe I’m going to all the wrong establishments.
Although initially intrigued, after staying in Japan for a few weeks I came to despise those overcomplicated, ironically un-hygenic toilet systems - especially in public facilities, and tried to avoid using them as much as possible.
On the other hand I greatly preferred the old fashioned squat style setup, I would seem to be a lot more practical of a solution on a number of leven.
The bidet is leaving your ass cleaner, not your hand.
There's a lot of juxtapositioning of {future}{past}, oftentimes within inches of each other.
air dryers like dyson in western countries are breeding grounds for germs and pathogens anyway
Or even parasites, such as plasmodium.
Never a symptom you want to read.
> Many people with STSS also need surgery to remove infected tissue
(From the CDC "Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome" page, link in other comments here.)
Then what impacts for ten years?
Did you just make this up?