Also, I have a very strong suspicion that the medication you have on hand is Azithromycin (because very few medications come in blister packs), so here’s a list of infections that a Z-pak is good for:

If it’s not on this list (like pretty much any gram negative, anaerobic, or gram positive with resistant features like MRSA, among others) I wouldn’t count on the Z-pak actually being useful.

The article you listed reads more like preliminary research more than anything else, and aside from medical school, I have done research into drug expiration on my own given that I have multiple complex health problems and I need to know how long I can count on my medication being effective if I needed to stockpile it. My background education in organic and general chemistry tell me that the two biggest concerns are humidity and temperature. You can also get information from the drug manufacturers about storage recommendations and cautions about efficacy following improper storage. If humidity or extreme temperatures (like where I live in Minnesota) come into play, the guidelines get a lot more fuzzy.

Also noted in there, a concern with antibiotics in particular is, that while they will retain some efficacy, the diminished effects over time can lead to more problems with resistance, and that can become important in a single individual depending on their colonization status and how often they end up needing to use the antibiotics.

Don’t get me wrong, keeping a stockpile of medications is important (I’m trying to build up a buffer that I cycle out for some of my more critical medications) but it has to be done with cognizance and awareness of the pitfalls of such a practice. Personally, I would not trust my life to medication that has been expired for more than about 3 years if it is at all avoidable which is why I cycle my stockpile each time I get a refill. (i.e. putting the new meds in the storage container and taking the ones that were in there so that the storage is never more than a couple months old) I’m on a couple medications that stopping them suddenly for even a few days has the potential to put me in the hospital if not end up being lethal depending on the severity of the withdrawal.

As someone who works in medicine, I would just caution you to take that with a grain of salt, especially since they repeatedly mention the storage of said medications. Not all pill bottles are airtight, and if you keep them somewhere that isn’t always less than 75 degrees Fahrenheit or so, I wouldn’t trust them more than a year past the expiration date. Note also, when they say “cool, dark place” that is not accounting for freezing temperatures which can also mess with the medications.

All this to say: if you have emergency medications, cycle them out with new ones as often as possible, and store them in airtight containers in a climate controlled area of your house.

Make sure the antibiotics don’t expire. Most of them just become useless when they expire, but Tetracycline becomes poisonous when it expires. Also, not all antibiotics are good for all infections, so make sure the ones you have are useful for the kinds of infections you anticipate.

That’s the thing though…I think it is part of their due diligence to know what’s going on in their own business. If they can’t guarantee that it’s safe, they shouldn’t release it.

The c-suites have the ultimate power and therefore ultimate responsibility for whatever happens in their organization. Similar to how parents can be held criminally liable for their children’s actions. It’s just that much more incentive for them to make sure things are in order in their organization.

Also, Citizen’s United ruled that corporations are people, so they can be held to the same standards of responsibility as other people.

I think the threshold for proving the “reasonable person” standard for companies should be extremely low. They are a complex organization that is supposed to have internal checks and reviews, so it should be very difficult for them to squirm out of liability. The C-suite should be first on the list for criminal liability so that they have a vested interest in ensuring that their products are actually safe.

I’d accept that if the makers of the self-driving cars can be tried for vehicular manslaughter the same way a human would be. Humans carry civil and criminal liability, and at the moment, the companies that produce these things only have nominal civil liability. If Musk can go to prison for his self-driving cars killing people the same way a regular driver would, I’d be willing to lower the standard.

Relevant XKCD H. Bomberguy

The nuclear industry is heavily regulated by the government via the NRC, but they impose even stricter regulations upon themselves. Solar and wind are cheaper, but they are less reliable. A grid comprised of a mix of solar and wind, bolstered by nuclear is the most effective and least environmentally harmful option that we currently have.

The emissions are negligible on the grand scheme of things, especially compared to fossil fuels. The manufacturing of solar panels isn’t the cleanest either.

Thank you!

Do you know the name of this sculpture or the name of the artist?

There are plenty of people in the West, especially in America, that are desperately impoverished. There are millions of people without access to any healthcare, let alone the fabulous new advancements in medicine. Education is also being torn down at the foundations by the GOP fucking with schools, and higher education is extremely expensive. You can only get a college degree with generational wealth or crushing, inescapable student loans.

I don’t blame people who are not financially comfortable for being fatalistic.

There are plenty of people in the West, especially in America, that are desperately impoverished. There are millions of people without access to any healthcare, let alone the fabulous new advancements in medicine. Education is also being torn down at the foundations by the GOP fucking with schools, and higher education is extremely expensive. You can only get a college degree with generational wealth or crushing, inescapable student loans.

I don’t blame people who are not financially comfortable for being fatalistic.

They require the certificate to be installed to have access to the network.

I use Proton when I’m on my university’s campus because they switched to using EDUroam for the campus wifi. I used to be a Sys Admin at a different university a while back, and from what I know, EDUroam allows the IT department to monitor basically all of the traffic over the network. I don’t know exactly how deep that stuff goes, but if I was doing anything personal or sensitive like banking or whatever, I’d flip on the VPN on my personal computer. I also don’t have any personal accounts logged in on the school issued laptop because they have it loaded with institutional spyware. Once I graduate, I’ll blank the drive and reinstall the OS to have a decent Lenovo laptop on hand as a spare.

Edit to add: I use Proton because it was the least shady service that I could get for a reasonable price as a student. It is also helpful for finding textbooks. :)

That is a deeply unfortunate genetic mutation. As if life weren’t hard enough for them already.

Humans kind of have that with HPV. Get your vaccines!

A lot of “tumors” seen on wild animals are fungal infections from invasive fungal species brought by humans. It really sucks because fungal infections are very hard for mammalian immune systems to fight without help from antifungal medications.