Supergerms Are Super Creepy

By Jocelyn Geboy in News on Sep 23, 2005 6:05PM

Chicagoist is not normally one for panic and the idea of apocalyptic end-time hysterics, but we’re beginning to look around and think that things are getting pretty wack. Two category five hurricanes in as many months. Planes falling out of the sky on a semi-regular basis. And we won’t even begin to detail all the passport chips, biometrics advances, and other ways to figure out what you’re up to.

Now, three children have died in Chicago from some sort of "superbug" that normally isn't seen outside of hospitals. Huh? First of all, shouldn't the super scary germs be kept OUT of hospitals? Well, it seems that in some weird Robin Cook/Michael Crichton plot twist of reality, the most antibiotic badasses actually thrive there. Weird, strange, scary and true. In a story reported by the Associated Press, Chicagoist finds it extremely alarming at the relatively nonchalant way the article says, "Until recently, drug-resistant staph infections were limited to hospitals and other health care settings where they can spread to patients with open wounds and cause serious complications. "

The germ in question, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA , is a fast mover. The complications resulting from acquiring it took down one kid in little as eight hours. The deaths in question occurred in a span from 2000 to 2004, and are now the focus of a study recently released in the New England Journal of Medicine. The concern seems to be that the bacteria, has in fact, made its way to communities, where it is being caught in the general population, rather than keeping its bad self to the weak and already afflicted. This "mersa" is also responsible for giving peeps the the flesh-eating bacteria that took some people down in L.A. in recent years. As if it weren't enough with all the SARS, the West Nile and the bird flu to worry about.

And despite all this germ-y tragedy, a study shows that most people don't wash their hands as much as they say they do. Well, here's Chicagoist's dirty little secret. We're coming clean, if you willl. We're not big handwashers ourselves. In fact, we're sort of sick (no, that one wasn't a pun) of all the freakout about germs. We're of the opinion that our moms were right, and "a little dirt never hurt anyone."

As the level-headed Brits are quick to point out, we often create monsters by loading up on antibiotics when we have viruses, not bacterial infections. Some experts believe that the widespread use of antibacterial everything has caused people's immune systems to not have to build up antibodies to regular old germs or infections. Part of getting sick is that our bodies build up resistance to things; the germs might mutate, but our cells have some idea of how they'll come back fighting.

The problem with attacking everything with an antibiotic rather than our own natural defenses is that the germs learn to mutate against the medicine, rather than our armies, and then when we try to pull out the big guns, we've got nothing left. They know all the moves. And we're left with some freaky "superbug" that's taking down kids and old people just because we demanded a Z-pak from our doc.

Reality check: Most of us walk around with this staph stuff on us and in our throats every day. Grown, healthy adults won't die from influenza. They won't die from a good round of coughing, sneezing, headache and fever. That's what NyQuil is for. Hell, there wasn't all this antibacterial freakout 20 years ago. Things got clean with a can of Lysol and some Scrubbing Bubbles, and we hardly ever got sick.

Let's stand tall and be the diehard Chicagoans we are. Let's not wuss out to some Germy McSupergerms. Let's swill our Quil and not run willy-nilly for some crazy flu shot that's probably expired anyway. Let's do it for the kids.