Do NOT use anything except distilled or previously boiled water

Was imagining this:

I would GUESS in theory that's OK as long as the salt content is high enough to knock off the amoeba but I have no idea what the % needed would be. I'd think it would be much safer to shell out a couple of bucks for a jug of distilled water. Interestingly enough, the critter in question is Balamuthia mandrillaris - every other case of amoebic encephalitis I'd heard of (and was taught about) was Naegleria sp. - nature has an abundance of ways to kill us.Naegleria tends to kill you pretty quickly - the Neti pot lady died months after her exposure.

MM MD

Ok. I'll tell my daughter to boil or get distilled if she does it and the same for me. I still would expect the risk is low, like orders of magnitude lower than riding in a car.

Can we really expect distilled water to be sterile? Boil that too, imo.

Wait until it cools off.

On the one hand, we're all gonna die of something. OTOH, having your brain turned to jelly by a parasite seems.....bad.

MM MD

In theory, distilled water should be sterile (or reasonably so - there are some odd forms of life that can tolerate boiling water, but AFAIK they're not pathogenic). You always have the concern about contamination after the distilling/bottling process, tho. If you're a belt and suspenders type, yeah, boiling before use would do the trick - but if you boil tap water you'd be good anyway.....

MM MD

Yeah. I'm sure it's good at some point but maybe not by the time I pick up a gallon container at the Walmart down the street. But then I played in the irrigation water as a kid; brain eating amoeba's probably not going to be the way I go.

But, and here’s the key, aren’t unnecessary antibiotics not a good thing for you? In general they **** up your system. Again, as a biillionaire, I get instantly tested and all the results get analyzed stat, what am I looking at, a few hours turnaround to culture everything? I’m not arguing with the treatment I received, I’m instead pointing out that with unlimited resources I’d probably be treated differently.

The risk is low, but as I understand it that is one of the most terrible ways to die imaginable... I’d rather go out in a car accident quickly any day.

To be clear (semantics) cultures generally take 48 hours or longer to result - you're seeing if anything grows out of a specimen you have take, whether blood, urine, throat etc.

Screening tests generally come back in 30 minutes to an hour or so, assuming you're running the test in an onsite lab - and some come back almost immediately, such as urine dip tests. In that case you are looking for a chemical reaction that indicates nitrites are in the urine - since bacteria make them but people can't, a positive reaction is generally an indication that the patient has a UTI. Other tests (strep, RSV, HIV) look for a particular antigen that the bug has on it's surface.

So even if Bezos demands his strep culture results right now, he ain't getting them....

MM MD

( twitter | raw text )

( twitter | raw text )

you know nothing about what it means to do the right thing

Bold move, Cotton. Let’s see if this play pays off with African Americans.

( twitter | raw text )

Trump has devolved into an adolescent girl who derives all of her self-worth from attention-seeking social media. Can you imagine what would happen if Twitter banned him? God that’d be incredible. He’d literally deploy the military to get his account turned back on.

if he's that rustled by a pretty tame passing mention in spike lee's speech, imagine president big boy actually watching blackkklansman and getting to the end

( twitter | raw text )

Thank you for the bot that reminds people that this guy is still in charge.
The attention span of americans is about 2mins from any tweet or news, then amazing derails go on for pages about everyone childhood anecdotes and cooking advices.
You deserve this.

( twitter | raw text )

Adderall dealer dropped off his new batch this am before Vietnam.

( twitter | raw text )

I'm sure he'll denuclearize if you just ask nicely. Nobody's ever done that before!