If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, call 988 or message the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
Most stomach bugs are characterized by vomiting and diarrhea, sometimes with stomach pain, fever, and body aches, so it’s hard to tell what kind of illness you have based on symptoms alone. But norovirus tends to have a rapid onset and short duration - typically lasting 1-3 days max. Other stomach bugs last longer - rotavirus lasts up to 8 days for example. More so than other viruses, noro is incredibly contagious and is often associated with community outbreaks in nursing homes, schools, cruise ships, and restaurants.
No, naloxone (brand name Narcan) will not harm someone who doesn’t have opioids in their system. In fact, it has no effect on them at all. It works in the brain only, binding to opioid receptors and blocking the effects of opioids. If someone is having some other kind of medical emergency, giving them naloxone won’t hurt them. Narcan usually starts working in 2 to 3 minutes. If someone does have opioids in their system and has been using regularly, they may start having sudden withdrawal symptoms, but that’s a sign that the medicine is working to reverse the effects of the overdose. Be sure to call 911 immediately after administering naloxone.
While there’s no requirement for individuals to report their own rapid test results, there is a way for anyone to report their at-home tests to the National Institutes of Health at https://makemytestcount.org/. The vast majority of COVID tests taken now are at-home rapid tests instead of PCR, which means that most aren’t being reported back to the health authorities. That means that cases are woefully under-counted, which makes understanding what’s going on with the virus harder for public health experts. In a perfect world, we’d love for people to take a few minutes to anonymously report their tests (both positive and negative) to help get better data on what’s really going on out there, but we know that short of some incentive, that’s unlikely to happen in any meaningful numbers. Certainly, if you’re so motivated, we encourage you to report your own test results.
Tuberculosis, or TB, is a bacterial infection that primarily affects the lungs. It’s spread from person to person through the air when someone with active TB coughs, sneezes, or talks. TB can be life-threatening if left untreated and symptoms include coughing (including coughing up blood), chest pain, fatigue, and fever. TB can be treated with antibiotics, but treatment can take several months and it’s crucial to stick to the medication schedule to avoid developing drug-resistant TB. It’s important if an employee says they have TB to verify that it’s active. It’s very common to be reactive on a TB skin test, which doesn’t necessarily mean they have active TB, only that they’ve been exposed or had the BCG vaccine in another country as a child (it’s not offered in the US). Be sure to check for a true positive for active TB before taking any action. If it’s confirmed, send the employee home and require a doctor’s note to return once treatment is complete. Sanitize all surfaces and prepare for a health inspection. Depending on your local reporting guidelines, you may need to report, though in most places the lab or doctor’s office that did the test will report it to the health department.
What is Shigella, the increasingly drug-resistant bacteria the CDC is warning about? | NPR
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