How are you feeling today? Feverish? A little bit under the weather? It's probably the flu, right? Or it's a new, antibiotic-resistant "superbug"! They've already appeared in three U.S. states. But don't fret! Follow our guide to stay healthy!

It's been way too long since we had a nice public health panic, so thank God the AP has alerted us to the problem of "drug-resistant superbugs," which, bolstered by "an alarming new gene" that makes them resistant to most antibiotics, have already infected three whole people in the United States and two in Canada. None of them have died, but they totally could have! Probably! I mean, eventually, if they hadn't been successfully treated, they definitely would have died.

And it wouldn't be a hypochondriac's dream without a foreign country to act as unsanitary boogeyman, would it? This time, the "superbugs" are mostly being found in people who have recently received medical treatment in India, which AP describes as an "overpopulated country that overuses antibiotics and has widespread diarrheal disease and many people without clean water." Sounds totally grody!

Soon, these drug-resistant superbugs, which are so far treatable with combinations of antibiotics, and have only appeared in five isolated cases in North America, will take over the United States and demand equal representation in the Senate. "The ingredients are there," Dr. Patrice Nordmann, microbiology professor at South-Paris Medical School, told the AP. Unless you follow our simple advice to avoid catching these dastardly diseases:

  • Wash your damn hands. Really!
  • Don't "pressure your doctor" for antibiotics when you don't need them. Doctors are really susceptible to peer pressure! If you jumped off a bridge, your doctor would too.
  • Don't go to India or Pakistan. Or really any part of Asia. Or Europe, for that matter. Honestly, just don't leave your house.
  • Treat yourself with combinations of antibiotics, which seems to have worked in the two Canadian cases. This is assuming that you are prescribing your own medication, possibly due to some kind of post-apocalyptic pandemic scenario.
  • "It's going to spread by plane all over the world," says Dr. Nordmann. Solution: Destroy all planes.
  • Since the gene "has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections," don't ever eat anything, or pee.

[AP]