Why is ReDS so intractable?

When Annie first came down with the disease now known as ReDS, I read everything I could get my hands on about the topic. There wasn't much, mind you, and it was all rampant speculation, but I tracked every bit of it. Scientific papers, blogs, message boards, quack cure adverts. Since Annie's death, I haven't had the will to read very much at all. Anything remotely useful is inevitably meta-tagged and commented on with horrible, horrible slurs against ReDS victims. It's hard to filter out.

But I've heard they've been making progress lately, and what with the GEAS report, I'm feeling more obliged to dip my toes back into the information stream. Maybe I'm just adding to the rampant speculation, but I'm wondering if ReDS has biologicals similarities to other diseases.

A friend of mine once came down with a case of chronic Lyme's disease, and an article she sent me a long while ago made me wonder if ReDS works by a similar mechanism. Chronic Lyme's disease, is different than regular Lyme's disease, by the way. It doesn't always show up on normal tests for Lyme's because the bug hides so well. And the symptoms can be like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a controversial beast itself).

Anyway, so what happens is the Lyme's bug hides out in places where the immune system doesn't think to look. Also it is able to shift itself into different forms to avoid antibiotics.

Article excerpt:

Once disseminated throughout the body, B. burgdorferi secludes itself and becomes difficult to detect through laboratory testing—and by the host’s immune system. The bacterium may hide in its host’s WBCs or cloak itself with host proteins. Furthermore, it tends to hide in areas not usually underimmune surveillance, such as scar tissue, the central nervous system, theeyes, and deep in joints and other tissues.

Phase and antigenic variations allow B. burgdorferi to change into pleomorphic forms to evade the immune system and antibiotics. The three known forms are the spiral shape that has a cell wall, the cell-wall-deficient form known as the “L-form” (named not for its shape but for Joseph Lister, the scientist who first identified these types ofcells), and the dormant or latent cyst form.

Encapsulating itself into the inactive cyst form enables the spirochete to hide undetected in the host for months, years, or decades until some form of immune suppression initiates a signal that it is safe for the cysts to open and the spirochetes to come forth and multiply. Each of these forms is affected by different types of antibiotics. If an antibiotic targets the bacterium’s cell wall, the spirochete will quickly morph into a cell-wall-deficient form or cyst form to evade the chemical enemy.

Yikes. Is this why ReDS is so intractable? Has it learned to be a superbug? In that case, developing a simple vaccine or antibiotic regimine probably isn't in the cards.

This will take some serious nanoengineering and machine learning to crack.

Poetry for the Apocalypse

Sometimes I need to remind myself that despite Annie, despite GEAS, despite everything, I am incredibly lucky. I still have X. We still have each other. We will get through this.

A poem by Simone Beaubien:

The Last Man on Earth

"Seeing as the world is coming to an end," he asks, 
"I was wondering if you’d be willing to go to dinner
with me?"  This close to the Apocalypse, cell phone
reception is terrible and I have to ask him to
repeat himself twice.

I tell him yes, but, so as not to appear too eager, 
we schedule for two weeks ahead, on a Tuesday.  
By the time the date rolls around, the Four Horsemen
have already ridden and the tapas bar is a cantilevered
pile of rubble. 

We squat over the steaming bricks and talk about
Barcelona: how the tiny, pale tentacles of the squid
curl in their exquisite
  vermillion oils;
the sweet, smoky egg of the crème Catalan;
and the Parc Guell, its lovely curves made of delicate,
shattered things. Probably
no one has a key to it anymore. 

We decide to go out again, this time on a Friday. 
It’s hard to tell when Friday is, so we agree it
will be the next time the Widower Murphy
serves fish at the new common kitchen. 
The Widower Murphy dies of the shaking fever
two days later, but we go out anyway. I didn’t intend
to dress up, but I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the last
blue jeans in the world.

At the end of the night, he says,
"Seeing as all the condoms in the world will expire
in two to four years, I was wondering if you’d go to bed
with me tonight."  There isn’t a bed. I make him lie down
first on the burning sands and, afterwards, I pick the
white, bubbled crust from his buttocks and shoulder blades. 

We can’t make up our minds to go out again,
so he just never leaves. It’s okay.
There’s no place left to go. 

Superstructive Horoscope

Could my horoscope for the week be any more appropriate to Superstructing?

For the next week, Capricorn, be an expanded and intensified version of yourself. In other words, do what's most unique about you, but do it even more and better and clearer than you normally do. If, for example, your specialty is being an emotionally intelligent organizer who artfully creates order, do that with even more flair than usual. If you have an exceptional knack for building structures that bring out the best in people, go crazy with that skill. It's a perfect moment for you to be bigger than life. Why? Because you have more power than usual to change the world around you.

I know, I know: I don't literally believe in horoscopes, but sometimes... well, there's a lot to be gained from the psychological mirror. There is a call to action that I know I need to answer. As much as I chatter about the small panics that X and I face, I haven't ignored the implications of the GEAS report. I haven't processed the reality of it, yet, but I haven't ignored it either. My subconscious clearly knows I need to get crackin'-- in fact we all do.

Getting Outta Here-- We Hope.

Shit. I just heard there will be more restrictions on transportation due to the spread of ReDS. It sounds like most restrictions center around Louisiana, but who knows?

X and I have finally settled on a plan of action to get out of here, but we still need to scrape up the funds to do it. I will definitely have to dip into my 401k, despite the massive penalties. But the rest? We're still working on that.

As for the destination: Oregon. It's a place that's been in the back of my mind for a long time-- before any of the current crises-- and it's where perhaps the most kickass survivalist I know lives with her boyfriend. S is a woman who once converted a strip of land from driveway blacktop to fully functioning permaculture garden in less than two years. Kickass. Seriously, check them out. Everything home-made or community-traded, like so many people these days. But they were always way ahead of the curve. I mean, selling cat milk? Who'da thought.

It's going to be such a tremendous improvement over our current situation, even if a part of us can never truly leave here.

We need to get crackin' if we're gonna duck any transportation bans.