Down the Rabbit Hole

Anna, Donan, and I watched  Fleet Week  from Fort Baker last year . Since we enjoyed our experience, we organised a trip to see it again from the same point this year. After Mass and lunch, we drove to Sausalito, intending to take the exit that would have taken us to Fort Baker. However, the queue for that exit was close to two miles long; we missed the exit because I had thought that the queue wasn't for that exit just yet. And so, as we passed by our supposed exit, I quickly decided that we were going to watch the Blue Angels from an even better area: Crissy Field ! The Blue Angels whizzed past us as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge . Anna and Donan had a great time watching them fly by as I tried to concentrate on watching the road. Some pedestrians on the bridge stopped to take videos of the aerial presentation. As I entered Crissy Field, I realised there was an even worse traffic jam because cars were parked on the road (the drivers and passengers just hopped out to watc...

As a public health microbiologist trainee last year, I learned a mnemonic:  D irty  F ingers  B ring  S higella . The first letter in each word helps me remember the different groups of  Shigella , which coincide  with the species names: Shigella d ysenteriae (Group A), S. f lexneri (Group B), S. b oydii (Group C), and S. s onnei (Group D). S. sonnei accounts for a significant proportion of cases in the USA.  This mnemonic came to mind while listening to a presentation on extensively drug-resistant (XDR)  Shigella during the California Association of Public Health Laboratory Directors (CAPHLD) Annual Institute. This bacteria is a big concern for public health professionals in the United States because it is easily spread (mainly) by consuming contaminated food (it only takes 1–100 Shigella cells to get sick with it). It causes both domestically acquired and travel-associated acute inflammatory diarrhoea. Infections with XDR strains are made w...