• ColeSloth
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    2 months ago

    Getting ahold of mrsa bacteria from a person who currently has an infection would be a trivial matter. The stuff is more hardy than most virus’ and can survive on things like towels for upwards of a week without even trying to keep it alive.

    • roguetrick@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You can’t just wave MRSA in someone’s direction and give them a stroke from septic coagulopathy.

      • ColeSloth
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        2 months ago

        First of all; I was only answering the question about if you could weaponize mrsa. Not anything about if this guy could have had it done to him. MRSA survives on surfaces for extended periods of time and is very contagious, so yes, it would be easy to do.

        As to the rest of your comment: MRSA can cause sepsis, and coagulopathy is a common symptom of sepsis. So really you’re just asking the wrong question. The guy died of complications from a MRSA infection.

        • roguetrick@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It’s not nearly as contagious as you’re making it out to be. I’m a nurse who directly cares for patients with MRSA. Nosocomal infections are a major issue and require contact isolation to prevent but MRSA in general is not a particularly scary pathogen. If you wanted to deliberately infect someone, you’d have to straight up inject them with it.

          Staph aureus is already everywhere and even community aquired MRSA is becoming common.

          There was a time when we screened everybody, but now we don’t even do that. It ended up being considered a waste of contact isolation gear and carer time to gown up before you entered 1 in 5 rooms that just happened to have a positive MRSA skin swab.