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Super gonorrhea has infected people in the United States for the first known time. This week, Massachusetts public health officials announced the discovery of two gonorrhea cases appearing to display increased resistance to all known antibiotic classes that can be used against it. These cases were thankfully still curable, but it's the latest reminder that this common sexually transmitted infection is becoming a more serious threat.
Gonorrhea, caused by the namesake bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is the second most commonly reported STI in the U.S., with 677,769 cases documented in 2020. Many infected people don't experience illness, but initial symptoms can include a discolored discharge from the genitals, painful or burning urination, and rectal bleeding if caught from anal sex. When gonorrhea is left untreated, it raises the risk of more serious complications, like damage to the reproductive tract in women and swollen testicles in men, both of which can lead to infertility. And when it's passed down from mother to child, the infection can be fatal or cause blindness in newborns.
[...] These cases are likely only a warning of what's to come. Some of the important genetic markers seen in this novel strain have been spotted in pan-resistant cases from Europe and Asia, which shows that these mutations are continuing to spread around the world. Gonorrhea rates in general have increased year after year in the U.S. And perhaps most worryingly, no clear connection between the two Massachusetts cases has been found, indicating that these strains may already be circulating past the point where they could be easily contained.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @12:40AM (1 child)
It needs to be done carefully, if at all. Nevada's organized brothels are a problematic model--women are shunned in the community at large, basically confined to compounds, and still exploited.
IMHO, they should only make it legal if all the prostitutes are independent contractors, with nobody skimming their pay. They should also make sure that any loophole in that is closed tightly--a motel could ban sex workers, but it couldn't charge them more if it allowed them because that would be tantamount to a brothel and then we're back to square-1. Also, harsh penalties for anybody inducing somebody in to prostitution for any reason. Really, it's the pimps and traffickers that make it so much more awful than it already is. I'm quite certain that some of this is happening in in my neighborhood, because some Johns came up here looking for a house one time. They were every bit as unsavory as you'd expect a guy who has to pay for sex to be.
BTW, in our case it seems to tie in to the whole Indian casino thing. I don't know what the best way is to right the wrongs there, but casinos bring a vice mentality to the vicinity. The tramps are generally not obvious in the casino itself too often, but I really have to wonder how things would be if we had come up with some better alternative, like, I dunno... eco tourism, a community college, light manufacturing incentives, or all of the above.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Wednesday January 25 2023, @03:01AM
Come on - cops and politicians aren't the only people who frequent prostitutes.