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Over 230 people get puzzling neurological disorder in Peru; emergency declared (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by ono@lemmy.ca to c/news@beehaw.org

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[–] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Read the article folks. This is very different from covid, and they had a similar outbreak in 2019. Sounds like it's something to do with their food sanitation practices?

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

There's an article? I thought it was just a headline!

For context:

Peru—a country of over 34 million people—typically sees fewer than 20 suspected cases per month of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (pronounced ghee-yan bar-ray or abbreviated GBS). But, between June 10 and July 15, the country tallied 130 cases, including the four deaths, bringing the year's total to 231, the WHO reported Tuesday.

...

The cause of the outbreak is puzzling—even though this isn't Peru's first alarming GBS outbreak. In 2019, the country reported an unprecedented surge of nearly 700 cases between May and July, bringing the total to over 900. Before that, a large GBS outbreak was considered between 30 to 50 cases.

Researchers concluded that the culprit behind the extremely unusual 2019 outbreak was the intestinal pathogen, Campylobacter jejuni. The gut-dwelling bacteria is well-known as one of the most common causes of food poisoning and diarrheal cases in the world. But, less well-known, it's also one of the leading triggers for GBS.

(Bold text is from me)

Edit: I find it a bit funny that they have to introduce Peru as being a country. Is this not a widely known fact?

[–] autumn@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

there’s also a peru, indiana!

[–] thereticent@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

Pee-roo!

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's also an Indiana, Pennsylvania!

Also, US cities love to butcher names of other places. At least two of the cities I've either lived in or friends have lived in were like that.

[–] SenorBolsa@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hometown of Jimmy Stewart. It's an interesting little city, seen better days but IUP basically keeps it afloat.

There's also a Manchester in all northeastern states.

[–] SenorBolsa@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the point of that was mostly to give info on the population of Peru to put the other numbers into context. I know a lot but the approximate population of Peru doesn't come to mind off the top of my head.

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's fair. When I see a country name, the population of the country isn't really something that comes to my mind since I just figure it's a significant enough number of people (generally in the order of tens to hundreds of millions, except notably populous or small countries).

[–] SenorBolsa@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

It's an order of magnitude difference in prevalence if Peru only had a population of 3 million, which if you asked me before I read that would have been a plausible number.

[–] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

HA! Your edit just floored me, I didn't even catch that. Lowest common denominator and all that jazz lol.

[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They're just introducing the population size of the cou try, for comparison with the number of people affected. Saying "a country of over 34 million people" is a quick way to do that, though it could've been rephrased as "Peru - which has a popularion of over 34 million people -" or something.

Point is, it's just an incidental redundancy in the way they phrased their delivery of the population number, I think, not an attempt to tell people "Peru is a country."