Flesh Eating Bugs in your backyard?

[ichy]

Still the worst thing you can contract is rabies. Only virus with a 99.999999% mortality rate in humans once symptoms start. Depending upon where the virus enters your system you have 1 to 30 days to get treatment. If you don't, you are pretty much dead. I remember reading that the reason it's not 100% is that there is only 6 people to ever survive rabies after the onset of symptoms and that is it. And those survivalists were with the Wisconsin protocol method which has an 8% effectiveness.

My "favorite" horrific disease is fatal familial insomnia. It's an incredibly rare prion disease that destroys the part of your brain which allows you to sleep. People who have it suffer from increasingly worse insomnia until they go crazy and eventually die.

 

[HumblePie]

Several diseases have 100% mortality rate.

uh rabies was the only one I knew of until 2004 once symptoms were onset. There are even cases of people who have beaten full blown AIDS already. So that's not 100% either. Ebola, zaire kind, has a 90%+ but not 100%. Bacterial Meningitis has a high mortality rate but not 100% either. Jokingly, as sixone said, only LIFE has a 100% mortality rate but still out of diseases rabies has the highest mortality rate after symptoms start for it.

 

[IGemini]

I could be wrong about this, but I think it's unusual for NF to come from a large wound. Lots of cases seem to come from small stuff like spider bites or even paper cuts. Fortunately it's very rare and not worth staying up at night worrying about, but I bet this highly publicized case will lead to lots of unneeded panicky ER visits.

There's a chapter in Atul Gawande's book Complications about a patient with NF. Very interesting but scary as hell. It sounds like one of the biggest problems with it is that it initially looks like cellulitis which is a much more common and much less dangerous infection. By the time it's clearly NF the patient is often fucked.

All true. I didn't remark about the size of the wound as a factor in her infection, merely to answer if she went to the hospital after the fall.

 

[HumblePie]

My "favorite" horrific disease is fatal familial insomnia. It's an incredibly rare prion disease that destroys the part of your brain which allows you to sleep. People who have it suffer from increasingly worse insomnia until they go crazy and eventually die.

The lack of sleep though is not what causes the death. There is a case of a man who has not slept more than 4 hours in almost 40 years do to a spinal problem where his spine is pushing into his brain or something like that. Story I read long ago. He just doesn't sleep. Hasn't died from it either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Herpin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Ngoc

And there were others.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

uh rabies was the only one I knew of until 2004 once symptoms were onset. There are even cases of people who have beaten full blown AIDS already. So that's not 100% either. Ebola, zaire kind, has a 90%+ but not 100%. Bacterial Meningitis has a high mortality rate but not 100% either. Jokingly, as sixone said, only LIFE has a 100% mortality rate but still out of diseases rabies has the highest mortality rate after symptoms start for it.

Cite a single example of a patient recovering from Alzheimers or ALS.

 

[ichy]

The lack of sleep though is not what causes the death. There is a case of a man who has not slept more than 4 hours in almost 40 years do to a spinal problem where his spine is pushing into his brain or something like that. Story I read long ago. He just doesn't sleep. Hasn't died from it either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Herpin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Ngoc

And there were others.

Both of those cases sound somewhat suspect. Maybe they're true, but a lack of sleep will seriously screw people up. Look at how bad sleep apnea is for you.

 

[ichy]

Cite a single example of a patient recovering from Alzheimers or ALS.

I'm pretty sure that Creutzfeldt–Jakob (mad cow disease) is also 100% fatal.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

I'm pretty sure that Creutzfeldt–Jakob (mad cow disease) is also 100% fatal.

Also true.

 

[Gibsons]

I'm pretty sure that Creutzfeldt–Jakob (mad cow disease) is also 100% fatal.

True for all prion diseases, iirc.

There are a large number of diseases that approach or reach 100% if left untreated. Maybe that's sort of a gray area.

 

[ichy]

For bad types of cancer (stage IV lung or pancreatic cancer for example) the death rate is pretty close to 100% as well.

 

[randomrogue]

So basically the world is a fucked up place.

The one that scares me is Chagas Disease and you have a much higher chance of getting it than some of the rare ones posted above: http://www.ivdresearch.com/chagas.php