Counterplans General Stuff

Disease

No Impact

Diseases burn out – no spread

Morse, 04 (Stephen, PhD, director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness, at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, May 2004, “Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: A Global Problem,” http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/morse.html, Hensel)

Morse: A pandemic is a very big epidemic. It requires a number of things. There are many infections that get introduced from time to time in the human population and, like Ebola, burn themselves out because they kill too quickly orthey don’t have a way to get from person to person. They are a terrible tragedy, but also, in a sense, it is a lucky thing that they don’t have an efficient means of transmission. In some cases, we may inadvertently create pathways to allow transmission of infections that may be poorly transmissible, for example, spreading HIV through needle sharing, the blood supply, and, of course, initially through the commercial sex trade. The disease is not easily transmitted, but we provided, without realizing it, means for it to spread. It is now pandemic in spite of its relatively inefficient transmission. We also get complacent and do not take steps to prevent its spread.

No risk of big impact – Quarantines check.

Pharma Investments, Ventures & Law Weekly 05 “SARS; Quarantine is cost saving and effective in containing emerging infections” Lexis

Quarantine is cost saving and effective in containing emerging infections. "Over time,quarantine has become a classic public health intervention and has been used repeatedly when newly emerging infectious diseases have threatened to spread throughout a population. "Here, we weigh the economic costs and benefits associated with implementing widespread quarantine in Toronto during the SARS outbreaks of 2003," scientists writing in the Journal of Infection report. "We compared the costs of two outbreak scenarios: in Scenario A, SARS is able to transmit itself throughout a population without any significant public health interventions. In Scenario B, quarantine is implemented early on in an attempt to contain the virus. "By evaluating these situations, we can investigate whether or not the use of quarantine is justified by being either cost-saving, life saving, or both," wrote A.G. Gupta and colleagues at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Our results indicate that quarantine is effective in containing newly emerging infectious diseases, and also cost saving when compared to not implementing a widespread containment mechanism," the authors said. Gupta concluded, "This paper illustrates that it is not only in our humanitarian interest for public health and healthcare officials to remain aggressive in their response to newly emerging infections, but also in our collective economic interest. Despite somewhat daunting initial costs, quarantine saves both lives and money." Gupta and colleagues published their study in the Journal of Infection (The economic impact of quarantine: SARS in Toronto as a case study. J Infect, 2005;50(5):386-393).

AT: Antibiotic Resistant

New antibiotics solve resistance

Michael Fumento 05, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, 2005, Scripps Howard News Service, June 23, 2005, lexis

On June 17 the FDA approved New Jersey-based Wyeth Pharmaceutical's Tygacil, primarily intended for skin infections and abdominal wounds. It's especially useful against the common and drug-resistant bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, better known as "staph." But it's a true broad-spectrum drug, applicable against a host of different bacteria - so much so that doctors can feel confident in administering it as a first-line treatment even if they have no idea what germ - or germs - they're up against. Tygacil is the first antibiotic approved in a new class called glycylcyclines, expressly developed to bypass the mechanisms that made bacteria resistant to the tetracycline family of drugs. The major drawback of Tygacil is that it must be administered intravenously, yet that's also a plus. Perhaps the main reason bugs develop resistance to antibiotics is that doctors overprescribe the drugs. They hand out pills like Pez candy because patients demand it. But patients don't demand IVs; therefore limiting usage of Tygacil and probably greatly forestalling the day when it too leads to resistant strains. ButTygacil is not alone in new and forthcoming antibiotics designed to tell germs: "Resistance is futile!" The injectable Cidecin from Cubist of Lexington, Mass., also targeted at nasty hospital infections, may soon receive FDA approval. Just four days before the approval of Tygacil, the FDA also gave the green light to Pfizer's Zmax, an important new formulation of an older antibiotic.Zmax is administered with merely one dose rather than given over a period of seven to 10 days - an all guns blazing assault on bacteria that cause sinusitis and pneumonia. "An antibiotic taken just once can address compliance issues and may minimize the emergence of antibiotic resistance," Dr. Michael Niederman, Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York notes in a Pfizer press release. New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson has two different broad-spectrum drugs in late-stage testing that are designed to overcome antibiotic resistance, ceftobiprole and doripenem. The Holy Grail of anti-bacterial drugs is one to which bugs cannot become resistant. One step in that direction may be further development of bacteriophages (Greek for "bacteria eaters".) These are viruses that attach to the bacterial surface and inject their DNA, which replicates until the bacterium explodes. These phages evolve just as bacteria do. The same forces that select for resistant bacteria also select for viruses that overcome that resistance.

No complete resistance is possible, and it’s unlikely that antibiotics will become completely useless.

Abigail Salyers &Dixie Whitt 05, Microbiology Profs – U of Illinois, 2005, Revenge of the Microbes: how bacterial resistance is undermining the antibiotic miracle, p 38

If we lose antibiotics, will we return to a truly pre-antibiotic era? Before considering this question, let’s define what we mean by lose. Although there are now some strains of bacteria that are pan-resistant or resistant to virtually all available antibiotics, these strains are still in the minority. Most disease-causing bacteria remain susceptible to at least a few antibiotics. There even seem to be some bacteria, such as Streptoccus pyogenes (the cause of strep throat and a common cause of wound and bloodstream infections), Chlamydia trachomatis (the cause of a gonorrhea-like infection that can cause infertility and ectopic pregnancy), and Treponema pallidum (the cause of syphilis), that have remained steadfastly susceptible to most antibiotics. Scientists do not know why this is, and we may be in for some unpleasant surprises in cases like these if these bacterial slow learners finally catch up with the rest of the class, butfor now it appears that some serious diseases would still be treatable. Even in the case of bacterial species that are noted for resistance to antibiotics, there are some strains that have remained susceptible to most antibiotics. There may be an important lesson in this. Why would the incidence of resistant strains within a species rise to, say 60% and then level off, leaving 40% of strains persistently susceptible? This is a phenomenon scientists don’t understand, but such trends have been observed. Instead of focusing exclusively on strains that are becoming resistant to antibiotics, perhaps scientists ought to be paying some attention to those strains that seem not to have gotten onto the resistance bandwagon. In any event, there will probably not be a total loss of antibiotics. This is not to say that the situation will not be grim, butit may not become completely hopeless.