I’m married and not looking for anything like that.
I like smart women, long walks on the beach (with Ted the Wonder Dog — that’s him about 5:30 a.m. on Yaroomba Beach with me — and Amy and Sorenne, which I’ve been doing the last four days), and have never been on a cruise.
All the passengers will be offered a refund as a result of the outbreak, Royal Caribbean has said.
This is an unusual move on the part of Royal Caribbean. Costs for the seven-night Western Caribbean voyage on the Oasis of the Seas start at $626 (£487) per person before taxes and fees for an interior stateroom.
Cruise companies are not under obligation to provide a refund in such situations as this.
“Cruise lines look at this sort of thing on a case by case basis and how disruptive this was to passengers,” Colleen McDaniel, executive editor at Cruise Critic, told Market Watch.
CBS News reports one of the world’s biggest cruise ships, Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, is returning to a Florida port a day early and giving passengers full refunds of their fare after 277 guests and crew members were hit with an outbreak of norovirus as it sailed to Jamaica.
Cruise line spokesman Owen Torres told The Associated Press, “We think the right thing to do is get everyone home early rather than have guests worry about their health.”
He says the ship will return to Port Canaveral on Saturday. It sailed from there Sunday on a seven-day Caribbean cruise.
Passengers took to social media on Wednesday, tweeting they were forced to stay onboard after docking in Falmouth, Jamaica, for what was supposed to be a day of excursions.
Torres said returning a day early gives the cruise line “more time to completely clean and sanitize the ship” before it sails again.
Sunderarajan Padmanabhan of Biotech Times writes that E. coli and Salmonella bacteria are the most common causes of food poisoning. Although most Salmonella outbreaks are linked to contamination during handling and transportation of the vegetables, there are also cases where the infectious bacterium had entered the plant when it was still in the farmland.
A new study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bengaluru, has solved the mystery.
They have found that unlike other disease-causing bacteria that enter the root, fruit or leaf by producing enzymes to break down the plant’s cell wall, Salmonella sneaks in through a tiny gap created when a lateral root branches out from the plant’s primary root.
The researchers were studying how different types of bacteria colonize the roots of tomato plants. While other bacteria were spread across the root, Salmonella clustered almost exclusively around areas where lateral roots emerge. When a lateral root pierces open the wall of the primary root to spread across the soil, it leaves behind a tiny opening. They figured out that it was entering through the gap with the help of fluorescent tagging and imaging.
They also noticed that under same conditions a plant with a greater number of lateral roots harbored a greater concentration of Salmonella than one with fewer lateral roots. Similarly, when plants were artificially induced to produce more lateral roots, Salmonella concentration increased.
Tomatoes plucked from these plants also tested positive for Salmonella infection, revealing its ability to travel all the way up to the fruit. “It is just like a systemic infection in humans,” said senior author Dipshikha Chakravortty, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, IISc. The researchers have published a paper on their work in the journal, BMC Plant Biology.
Kapudeep Karmakar, Ph.D. student in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, IISc, and first author of the paper, noted that there are several possible sources from where Salmonella can reach the soil, such as manure containing animal faeces or contaminated irrigation water.
“Various studies show that irrigation water gets contaminated by sewage water. When that irrigation water is applied in the field, the soil becomes the portal for Salmonella to enter,” he said.
News Beezer reports that shortly before Christmas, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health announced that there had been six reports of a new outbreak of Listeriosis. Today it was known that this number has increased significantly and that the affected area is also larger than previously known
Typically, 1-2 patients with listeriosis are reported monthly. Four of the six patients reported in December come from Hedmark and Oppland. Now the infection has spread further and is increasing more and more.
A total of thirteen people have been reported with listeriosis. Most are located in the above circles, and Buskerud is now included in the list. It is common that they are older than 70 years and affect their general condition. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority works with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the Municipal Health Service and the Norwegian Veterinary Institute to determine if patients can share a common source of infection. So far, five patients have detected bacteria with a similar DNA profile.
Temperature control prevents the rapid growth of foodborne pathogens during food storage and assures adequate heating to destroy pathogens prior to consumption. The use of thermometers is a recognized best practice among consumer and food worker guidelines; however, compliance with this recommendation is quite low.
Eighty-five studies from the past 21 years were reviewed and an analyzed for the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors associated with thermometer use and the motivators and barriers to cooking and refrigerator thermometer use among consumers and food workers. Barriers to thermometer were categorized into two major groups: ‘‘the belief that a thermometer is not necessary’’ and ‘‘the difficulty of selecting and using a thermometer.’’ Each group has its unique aspects. Four barriers were recognized in the ‘‘not necessary’’ group: (i) preference for alternative techniques, (ii) mainstream media and food professionals seldom serve as role models and often negate the need for food thermometers, (iii) limited awareness of potential health issues associated with current practices, and (iv) limited knowledge and awareness related to thermometer usage for specific food groups.
Six barriers were recognized in the ‘‘difficult to select and use’’ group: (i) difficulties in selecting the type of food thermometers, (ii) availability of food thermometers, (iii) lack of skills related to the usage of food thermometers, (iv) limited knowledge related to endpoint temperatures, (v) inability to calibrate food thermometers, and (vi) lack of knowledge about food thermometer cleaning and sanitation. These findings will facilitate the development and adoption of effective strategies to increase thermometer use and increase food safety education efficacy with a positive impact on public health.
Motivators and barriers to cooking and refrigerator thermometer use among consumers and food workers: A review.
Journal of Food Protection vol. 82 noi. 1 pg. 128-150
That’s the headline in the N.Y. Times, but as I try to tell my 10-year-old (seen here with one of her older sisters as a 4-years-old after the skating coach told her she had to wear figure skates and not hockey skates, and I said, I’m Canadian, your wrong, and when was the last time Russian women successfully competed in ice hockey) there are microbes all around us, we just have to try and understand them.
I’m still convinced we are all hosts on a viral planet.
And I figure Schaffner should review this book, but he’s a busy dude, so I’ll do it.
From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live by Rob Dunn is a collection of the myriad microbial life-forms that take up residence in a typical American showerhead, I’m starting to think maybe that young man was onto something.
With an army of collaborators, Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, took samples of the gunk inside hundreds of showerheads, and found a profusion of microbial fauna. Tap water itself, he writes in the chatty, informative “Never Home Alone,” teems with amoebas, bacteria, nematodes and crustaceans. As the water passes through the showerhead, these microbes lay down a kind of scaffolding known as biofilm to protect themselves from getting washed away with every ablution. They make the biofilm “out of their own excretions,” Dunn writes bluntly. “In essence, by working together, the bacteria poop a little indestructible condominium in your pipes.”
It gets worse. Filtered through that poop-biofilm, the water that washes over you, as you supposedly scrub yourself clean, might contain not only all those harmless amoebas and nematodes but a few bacteria that can be dangerous — in particular some species of Mycobacterium, cousins of the Mycobacterium that causes tuberculosis. And the pathogens are there because we provided the perfect breeding ground for them, when we tried to purify our tap water in the first place. Municipal water treatment plants use chlorine and other chemicals that kill off the bacterium’s natural predators, allowing Mycobacterium to thrive. Tap water that comes from a well, in contrast, has never gone through a treatment plant and has a rich microbial life. It might look more dangerous, but it’s actually safer, Dunn explains. All those organisms in well water are themselves harmless, and they tend to fight off the potentially dangerous ones like Mycobacterium — that’s how biodiversity works.
News from the showerhead biome is just one part of this fact-filled, occasionally disgusting, slightly alarming book. Dunn has been involved in an obsessive quest to document the tiny inhabitants of indoor environments, a project that involves teams of professional and amateur bug-watchers to take samples not only from showerheads but from door frames, refrigerators, hot water heaters, cellars, toilets, pillowcases, all sorts of surfaces from the places we call home. These workers swab and seal, swab and seal, and send their thousands of samples to Dunn’s lab in Raleigh, or to his other lab at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, for an ongoing microbial census.
The Yorkshire Post reports parents of two boys who became seriously ill after contracting E.coli 0157 suspected to be from beef burgers are still waiting for answers from supermarket giant Sainsbury’s more than a year later.
Alfie and Oliver Maude, then seven and three, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, came down with upset stomachs two days after eating the Taste the Difference Aberdeen Angus burgers in October 2017. Alfie was admitted to Darlington hospital two days later with excruciating stomach pain and severe dehydration.
He was then rushed to Newcastle hospital for dialysis because his kidneys were failing. Both boys had developed a serious condition, haemolytic uremic syndrome, although Oliver did not require dialysis.
Both will have to undergo regular check-ups well into adulthood to keep an eye on their kidneys.
Mother Vicci Maude said she and husband Steve were besides themselves with worry as their boys “puffed up and turned yellow”. She said: “When the consultant came in she said some children don’t survive this – obviously it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to hear. They still find it very stressful having to go back to hospital and having blood tests. I just feel they (Sainsbury’s) need to take some responsibiity.”
That Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas cruise has now sickened about 500 with Norovirus, up from 277 last week.
Cruise companies are not under obligation to provide a refund in such situations as this.
