And for our next Pandemic:Anti biotic resistant superbacteria

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As you pass through our words, gentle reader, the more successful candidates for a Covid-19 vaccine will be moving to stage three trials. It’s likely that one of them should be in production by spring next year. Even problems like reinfection and declining immune response can be dealt with by booster programmes. However, if you think that after that “everything’s gonna be alright“, to quote the words of numerous songwriters, think again.

Because the potential plague caused by an antibiotic resistant superbacteria just haven’t gone away, as Daniel Mediavilla makes clear in his latest piece for El Pais.* You can read Daniel’s article below, we won’t over- reprise it here. How quickly the problem spreads in a globalised world can be seen from one gloomy fact. In 2008 doctors in New Delhi discovered that a protein which conveys antibiotic resistance had evolved in their hospitals. By 2013 it had spread to 100 countries, even as far as the remote Svalbad archipelago. It’s that quick.

We at LSS still marvel in awe at the pettiness of current concerns, parochialisms, and the downright denial of evidence and the scientific method. The erection of financial systems which fetishise short-term profit above all else, so of course we won’t develop new antibiotics, because there’s no money in it. The pay off for this mindset is out there, waiting.

English readers will need their translators at the ready:

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-08-29/las-bacterias-superresistentes-el-otro-gran-problema-de-salud-global-frente-al-que-tambien-fuimos-advertidos.html

if you want to join a charity which is trying to parry the threat, try

Homepage with ASK

#antibiotic resistance #superbug #danielmediavilla