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My goodness gracious. I used to live in St. Louis County and he was a giant among politicians. Terrible loss.

This staph problem is getting out of control. This ought to get the attention of everyone before we have a full blown epidemic of these cases.

Terrible, terrible.

I used to live in St. Louis County and he was a giant among politicians. Terrible loss.

Losing a politician is never a "terrible loss". A "giant among politicians" is a pygmy among men.

Please be advised that Staphylococcus Aureus and a couple of other species of "Staph" are most likely all around and upon everyone since time immemorial, even up your noses. Every now and then, these bacteria get through a break in the skin in sufficient numbers and cause really nasty infections including fatal ones.

There are a few steps that if everyone observed the problem would be less severe.

First is adequate cleaning of all wounds. The problem here is that many wounds are ignored or not even noticed for a variety of reasons.

The next two are inter-related between patients and doctors and involve the inadeqate use or overuse of antibiotics, which in their most common usage are actually antibacterial drugs.

An infection can be caused by a variety of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. When a doctor gives an antibacterial drug like penicillin for an common cold or sore throat caused by a virus, it fosters drug resistance to penicillin in all the other bacteria that are colonizing that person who has a normal immune system , as well as nothing to fight the viral infection. This happens most commonly when a patient demands an antibiotic and the doctor acquiesces either for he/she doesn't have time to explain to the patient or fear of losing a patient with good insurance. The other most common reason for developing drug resistance is that a patient stops taking an appropriately prescribed drug because the patient is feeling sufficiently better before the infecting organism is completely killed off.

Drug resistance is inevitable with the use of antibiotics and has to be limited to appropriate infections. Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus(MRSA) has evolved because of this phenomena. Methicillin is a semi-synthetic penicillin, i.e. it was derived from penicllin. It is a very commonly acquired organism in hospitalized patients who have intravenous(IV) catheters. If infected with MRSA, the patient is treated with Vancomycin which is totally unrelated to the penicillin class of antibiotics and is reserved for the most severe infections. Every hospital probably has MRSA coating its surfaces somewhere. The only way to suppress MRSA is adequate disinfectant application, adequate hand washing by medical and nursing staff, and changing IV lines and access sites every 72 hours, IIRC.

I hope I didn't bore you or lose you.

Mr. Westfall was my boss, both as prosecuting attorney (I was an assistant P.A. in his office) and as county executive. I knew him only as a decent man, a good leader and fine prosecutor. Having moved from St. Louis early in his county executive tenure, I can't comment on his performance or politics in that capacity, but to the extent I knew him, I respected him and will mourn his passing.