Asklemmy

Microbial pathogenesis here. This one's a fun one for me, especially since COVID revealed just how illiterate the average person is about diseases. Here's a couple that I think should be common sense

• Not all bacteria cause disease. In fact, very few bacteria cause disease. Many bacteria are even helpful to us, so you should really weigh the pros and cons of taking antibiotics if you're considering using antibiotics.

• Antibiotics don't work against viral infections. You're getting all the downsides of killing helpful bacteria and getting none of the benefits

• Do not blindly trust your immune system. Your immune system works 100% of 50% of the time. Many white blood cells take the philosophy of murdering everything in sight just to be safe. This can and often does include killing important cells in your body that just happen to be nearby the site of infection. Even if you survive the infection, you will be weakened as a result. If you can avoid getting sick in the first place, avoid getting sick.

• Vaccines work. I don't really know what else to say about this one.

• Viruses and bacteria aren't hard to kill. There's many compounds that can kill viruses and bacteria. But humans aren't hard to kill either. The tricky part is figuring out how to kill viruses and bacteria while also keeping the human alive. Basically: don't drink bleach. It will kill your bacteria or virus but it'll kill you too

• E. coli isn't a usually bad bacteria. Actually, it's a very important bacteria that helps us digest food. The reason it gets such a bad reputation is because it's relatively hard to kill, which makes them a very good way to quickly check if there's a possible food/water contamination. In other words, the presence of E. coli itself isn't bad, but finding E. coli does suggest that there might be other, more dangerous bacteria.

• DO NOT EAT MOLDY FOOD. The fuzzy part that you see is just the fruiting body of the mold, analogous to a flower on a plant. The real body of the mold is an invisible network of roots that tunnel through the core of the food. Even if you cut off the fuzzy portion, you're still eating most of the mold.