California woman loses limbs after battling bacterial infection from tilapia

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-jose-woman-loses-limbs-battling-bacterial-infection-from-tilapia/

by Bender • 3 years ago

39 94 3 years ago

labrador9• 3 years ago

Damn, I live in San Jose and eat a lot of tilapia cooked various ways since I had Covid and can't stand the taste of animal meat anymore. I think I'll try salmon.

footy4• 3 years ago

This is a very interesting sentence, because fish are animals.

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

Denis Leary - Animal Auditions, Cute vs. Food

https://youtu.be/gq0tHt3qf-s

labrador9• 3 years ago

You are right. I first wrote mammal but change it to animal, because I've never thought of fish as animals. I've never heard anyone refer to them as animals. I have never read anything that refered to them as animals.

Edit: The Surprising Answer: Are Fish Truly Animals? Exploring the Debate Around Fish as Animals

https://jerrysfishingblog.com/the-surprising-answer-are-fish...

mongol2• 3 years ago

Yes and is not meat animal flesh? So it is double interesting.

maxbond13• 3 years ago

I agree fish are animals, but it's perfectly ordinary to use lay definitions rather than scientific definitions. Most people don't call fish animals, and that's fine.

firecall• 3 years ago

It's idiomatic American and International English, and a perfectly reasonable distinction in conversation. :-)

PrimeMcFly8• 3 years ago

It's not the first time I've seen people claim to be vegetarians while eating fish.

What's even weirder is the amount of people that don't know insects are animals.

Some people have a really limited idea of what animal means.

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

The issues are manyfold.

Farmed fish, including salmon, and other seafood can contain nematodes that aren't killed by freezing in residential freezers. Your best bet is to source seafood from a reputable market, know where it comes from, and that it's sustainable. Wild caught is usually best, with lower parasite levels.

https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/anisakiasis

https://scdhec.gov/food-safety-freezing-parasite-destruction

https://www.seafoodwatch.org

labrador9• 3 years ago

I get mine frozen from Trader Joe's, Costco or Walmart

olivermuty• 3 years ago

Got a source for the wild has less parasites claim? I have heard the opposite a lot and have seen studies backing it. Curious to know if thats changed.

laurencerowe• 3 years ago

The article quotes an infectious disease expert saying, "If you are someone immunocompromised keeping an eye on these things and avoiding those high-risk activities and foods."

It would be interesting to know whether the patient involved was immunocompromised.

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

Wikipedia says men are more often seriously impacted because estrogen is protective against the infectionthry think she had, so I would bet she's probably immunocompromised or has one of the other medical issues which increase the risk.

hxii• 3 years ago

What is it with geolocking content? Here’s a link through 12ft for anyone getting the “not available in your region” message: https://12ft.io/proxy?&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kron4.com%2Fnews%...

bombcar• 3 years ago

News sites in the USA are terrified of the GDPR for unknown reasons.

uoaei2• 3 years ago

I tried signing in to CoveredCA.com from an EU IP and was met with a plain-HTML "too much traffic or configuration error" page. Makes me wonder what kind of tracking they're doing (and what data they're selling)...

PrimeMcFly8• 3 years ago

The EU wants to claim worldwide jurisdiction so it just isn't worth the hassle for many companies.

mongol2• 3 years ago

This sounds like one of the worst things that can happen to you. It is the worst nightmare. And it can also destroy your face, like your nose, lips, ears... How can you preserve the will to live under these conditions?

uoaei2• 3 years ago

Look on the bright side, you could become an IRC celebrity (with speech input or other means) and no one ever has to know what you look like.

hdjjhhvvhga2• 3 years ago

How can you preserve the will to live under these conditions?

You probably don't. I cannnot speculate about someone else and I don't know what's in her head but if it happened to me, I would hope I quickly die and my family can move on with their lives rather than watch me suffer for God knows how long.

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

She has children. For some people, that will keep them going.

In her case, as a quadruple amputee, it would be difficult to arrange an unassisted suicide. So she may keep going simply because checking out is not really an option, especially during the immediate aftermath when people are more likely to feel incapable of living with this.

zingababba• 3 years ago

Unfortunately the will to death has also become quite difficult.

nvy2• 3 years ago

Honestly the most distressing part about this is that in the world's most advanced economy, this freak accident which has already cost her all four limbs is probably also going to bankrupt her, and if her kids' educations aren't already paid for probably impact those too.

It's like a literal game of Russian roulette. Completely baffling.

hdjjhhvvhga2• 3 years ago

If she lived in Europe, the impact on her kids would be much lower. I.e. she wouldn't go bankrupt and her kids would still have access to free higher education.

PrimeMcFly8• 3 years ago

That's true for the commonwealth countries also.

In many ways the US is the least developed of developed countries.

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

Increasing seasonal ocean temperatures and low-salt marine environments like estuaries favor a greater concentration of Vibrio within filter-feeding shellfish; V. vulnificus infections in the Eastern United States have increased eightfold from 1988–2018.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrio_vulnificus

So this (likely) is another consequence of climate change.

blumomo• 3 years ago

Seasonal temperature changes != global warming

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

Increased ocean temps have been in the news a lot in recent weeks, so I don't grok this reply.

Edit:

Later in the Wikipedia page:

Increasing seasonal temperatures and decreasing salinity levels seem to favor a greater concentration of Vibrio within filter-feeding shellfish of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico...

According to the CDC, V. vulnificus infections in the Eastern United States increased eightfold from 1988–2018 and the border of where these infections occur has migrated 48 km Northward each year.

bagels2• 3 years ago

I think what that phrase means is that the temperature in one or more of the seasons has been increasing over the years.

dendrite9• 3 years ago

Vibrio worries me, probably more than it should.

There's also Amnesic shellfish poisoning from Domoic acid that can cause amnesia, brain damage and death.

And Ciguatera poisoning.

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

Ciguatera:

These are eaten by herbivorous fish which in turn are eaten by larger carnivorous fish. The toxins become more concentrated as they move up the food chain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera_fish_poisoning

In a toxic world, it's generally safer to eat lower on the food chain and handle stuff higher up the food chain with more care than you do other foods.

It's not a guarantee of being safe, but it helps lower my blood pressure about such things.

dvh• 3 years ago

Is this specific to tilapia or is the species of fish incidental in this particular case?

userbinator3• 3 years ago

According to the Wikipedia link to the bacteria posted in another comment:

"Vibrio vulnificus is the most common cause of death due to seafood in the United States, causing over 95% of deaths that are known to have occurred due to ingested seafood."

No, this seems to affect raw or undercooked seafood in general.

shmde• 3 years ago

I had no idea Talapia posed the risk of carrying infections this severe. Me and my dad used to catch a lot of Tilapia in a nearby pond because they were dumb as rocks. Put in the same atta/wheat dough bait and they would come to the exact same place their fish friends got hooked. The fish tastes like absolute ass though, I dont understand why its so popular in the US.

maxbond13• 3 years ago

It's like tofu, it tastes like what you season it with (though maybe there was gross-tasting algae in the pond which they were snacking on?).

Tilapia will survive in water that's nearly mud, at high population densities. Their natural habitat is lakes that recede dramatically, concentrating them and making the water quality poor. That makes them very easy to farm. If you manage the pH and nitrate/nitrite concentrations to ensure the water isn't toxic, they'll put up with very high densities and abysmal water quality (read: recirculating water that a thousand fish are pooping in, with an aerobic digester and perhaps brine shrimp to break it down but not a filter that needs replacing). They also grow very quickly.

Tl;Dr they're cheap and can be flavored any way you please.

(To be clear, I've looked into that chocolate milk water, and I ate a fillet of tilapia earlier today; personally I'm comfortable with it, if we're going to farm animals, we should probably do so efficiently. My feelings on whether that's humane are much more mixed. I'm 99% a vegetarian, this was a bit of a cheat day.)

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

My first memory of tilapia was a tour guide pointing to a fish farm at the confluence of 2 extraordinarily polluted rivers.

To the best of my recollection, I've never eaten it.

I have the same picture in my head for most farm raised fish.

verisimi2• 3 years ago

“The ways you can get infected with this bacteria are one-you can eat something that’s contaminated with it the other way is by having a cut or tattoo exposed to water in which this bug lives,” said UCSF Infectious Disease Expert Dr. Natasha Spottiswoode.

I understand exposing a cut presents a potential risk, but why does a tattoo? Is this person am expert or not?

maxbond13• 3 years ago

Guessing they meant a fresh tattoo? Which basically is a cut.

verisimi2• 3 years ago

Why mention tattoos at all? Someone who has had one knows they are a cut. It's just wierd thing for the expert to say.

dancao• 3 years ago

She miss spoke. It is only for new tattoo and the skin is healing. A case like this happened to a man in Texas.

California woman loses limbs after battling bacterial infection from tilapia

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