Monday, February 20, 2012

Fired Greeks

This is a week old. Nevertheless:
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Greek doctors are fighting a new invisible foe every day at their hospitals: a pneumonia-causing superbug that most existing antibiotics can’t kill.

The culprit is spreading through health centers already weighed down by a shortage of nurses. The hospital-acquired germ killed as many as half of people with blood cancers infected at Laiko General Hospital, a 500-bed facility in central Athens.
There's more to the story than the excerpt: don't play with antibiotics if you don't have to, kids! Still, sure would be nice if there was money for nurses. So people don't die and stuff.

AND YET:

This may provide momentary misery-relief.

11 comments:

El Manquécito said...

I sure wish I had money for nurses.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

The Greeks should do what Iceland did: default and tell the E.U. to go eff itself.
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Those greedy hospital patients are sucking up the EU's funds. Why do the Randian Overlords put up with this sort of abuse?

Substance McGravitas said...

The rich can't foot the bill. They just don't have the money after paying the butler and the repair bills on the Rolls.

wiley said...

They could also spend more money on cleaning staff and teach them to clean properly. It's not enough to spray surfaces down with cides, eventually they need to be washed. If you've ever looked closely at hospital beds, you've probably seen carbon datable layers of dirt.

Substance McGravitas said...

Here it's not quite a one-in-a-million thing but close.

wiley said...

Necrotizing Fasciitis. Once, I had been reading a lot of comments about a new drug that was supposed to help people with PTSD to not have night terrors. I asked my good-shrink about it. He told me that in trials it had caused Necrotizing Fasciitis and so it wouldn't be going to market. I had a pretty good idea what Necrotizing Fasciitis was, but while I stood there with my mouth hanging open he said "it made their skin fall off and they died."

Perhaps drug companies have put a stop to this, they were virally marketing drugs that hadn't completed testing yet.

If anyone is thinking about making some money as a pharmaco casualty, please don't.

mikey said...

I knew I guy who could make your skin fall off and you die, but that wasn't his name.

Seriously, what kind of a name is "Necrotizing whatis?"

This dood was Belgian. His name was Jacques, or Francoise or some damn thing.

Whatever. He carried like three knives and was faster than anybody I've ever seen. I would never get closer than like twelve feet in the forlorn hope that I could draw and shoot before he killed me.

wiley said...

I would never get closer than like twelve feet in the forlorn hope that I could draw and shoot before he killed me.

And then you decided to go for a pedicure?

Substance McGravitas said...

Seriously, what kind of a name is "Necrotizing whatis?"

Do I need to search for a metal band called "Necrotizer"? I think we know it's out there because it is COOL.

mikey said...

I've actually never had a pedicure. My loss, certainly.

I DO have one of those white rocks you buy in Walgreens to scrape down the callouses on the soles of your feet.

I don't spend a lot of time wearing shoes, and never have, so I've got this armor plating. When I first brought home the rock I went to town on my feet and left a big pile of, um, DNA on the carpet. It was nasty. Now I take it down by the pool. Keeps the neighbors indoors, and I have the pool and grille more to myself.

My feet aren't as soft as a baby's bottom, but as CinC GW Bush used to say repeatedly because he was a deeply retarded idiot boy, "We're makin' progress on the ground"...