still worrying

Not many people have died in the US from swine flu, excuse me H1N1. But the fact that it's mid-May and we're seeing flu season levels of influenza cases - half of them H1N1 - is worrying. Hope that vaccine work goes quickly. It could be ugly this winter.

it ain't over necessarily

The public health pros at Effect Measure have it right. When you see a potential emergency like swine flu or H1N1 come along, you don't wait to see if it's bad. You act quickly.

Say you see a fire in a wastebasket in your house, near a curtain. How do you respond? Do you just wait, comfortable in your assumption that it will burn itself out without further damage? Or do you dash to smother it before it can get out of hand?

Well that's what public health people in Mexico, the US and elsewhere are doing. I think it is too much to call it "overreacting", even IF swine flu aka H1N1 turns out to be less effective at spreading and less lethal than initial reports indicated.

Remember, for public health, "When public health works, nothing happens." And that's a good thing.

In any case, another concern is that this will be a prequel to a resurgence of swine flu during the normal flu season. That does happen - see 1918-19.

human nature

It is good to know that at a time of growing concern about swine flu, aka H1N1 influenza, that people are urgently seeking to respond to the situation, applying ingenuity and technology to respond to growing concerns.

I speak of course of scammers. Seems your friend and mine, the internet scammer community, are taking advantage of the flu scare to sell fake drugs and steal credit card info.

Isn't that special?

This blog has some examples of names that have been registered since last Friday and some of the not so helpful "products" they are selling. As always, buyer beware.

a whole *$@^load of !(%+ing news

Lots going on.

Spectral Shift

You may have heard that Senator Arlen Specter the RINO is now a Democrat. Newt Gingrich snarks that Specter left "the Republican Party in name as he left it in spirit". In fact, the Republican Party left Specter and lots of other moderate to liberal former Republicans. Normally you think people leaving you is bad news, but de facto Republican leader Rush Limbaugh joined in the chorus, saying this would make the GOP "more focused".

Hey, the Libertarian Party is also very focused. Of course, it's also not close to being in power. There aren't enough hard-right Americans of the Gingrich-Limbaugh ilk to put together a national majority.

The Flu

Meanwhile, H1N1, aka swine flu, maybe should be known as the Glorious Flu. It seems it may have begun in the little Mexican town of La Gloria. Lots of pig farms around La Gloria, so plenty of people to be exposed to whatever poor porker it was that had the misfortune of contracting a couple of different types of flu at once where they could do their recombining thing into this new form. La Gloria may not like being identified - and in fact Mexican epidemiologists suggest H1N1 could have originated in the US and been brought to Mexican by people visiting relatives.

Sounds a bit complicated, more than the idea that it began somewhere in Mexico. But not impossible - after all, it appears the great Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19 that killed up to 60 million worldwide probably began in Kansas.

Swearing'll Cost You

And finally the fucking Supreme Court fucking well ruled that the god-damned Federal Communications Commission "may penalize even the occasional use of certain expletives on the airwaves". Ain't that the shits?

Well it's not necessarily final - they kept the ruling narrow rather than establishing any constitutional principle.

don't panic about swine flu

Sure, it's too soon to panic about swine flu. Nobody outside of Mexico has died from it - yet.

But it has some unpleasant aspects to it - happening outside of east Asia, outside of flu season... and so the authorities in the US, Europe, and elsewhere are well, not panicking. But preparing.

people dead in mexico from swine flu

Some of these stories read like the script for a movie about pandemics. We know that some people in Mexico have died from the new strain of swine flu detected in California and Texas. We don't know that ALL the cases attributed to swine flu really are swine flu.

But obviously it's got the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization and the Mexican government, which has closed schools in Mexico City. And a prep school in New York City is testing students with symptoms that they fear are consistent with swine flu.

Two disturbing things if the reports are all accurate. (1) It appears to be hitting the young the hardest - like the "Spanish" Flu of 1918-19. (2) It isn't even flu season in Mexico and the US.

For those old enough to remember the swine flu scare of 1976 which in pandemic terms was a flop, remember that in 1976 one person died and the US had a vaccine available very quickly. Twenty or more people have died so far in Mexico and there is no vaccine available.

more swine flu

Now medical authorities have uncovered a total of seven people in Texas and California with a strain of swine flu. People that haven't been around pigs, so apparently human-to-human transmission. They are all OK - it seems mild. But the fact that the strain "is a hybrid that resulted from a combination of four different viruses -- one that typically infects people, one that originated in North American birds and two from pigs in Europe and Asia" demonstrates the dangerous side of flu, it's changeability.

swine flu 2?

Swine flu in kids in San Diego? They're okay, but it's still disconcerting...

not ready

Public health officials say the US isn't ready for a pandemic influenza outbreak. They are of course right.

The health care system as it exists now runs very much on a just-in-time system. That's OK when things are normal. But that would break down rapidly if the number of patients needing care rose dramatically.

There is no profit to be made in preparing for a pandemic. It's a classic market failure. And it's a clear example of where government should step in and be prepared. But in Republican America, there is no interest in doing anything like this. After all, that would require acknowledging the blessed Market is not all-powerful and all-wise. And it would require acknowledging there are a few things only the government can do.

And we can't have that, can we? Better to whistle in the dark and hope there is never another case of a new-to-humans influenza virus making the leap from birds or pigs to people. After all, 1918-19 is so long ago, right?

cough, cough i'm suing

It's outright weird that the moron who went to Europe for his wedding despite being asked NOT to travel because of his drug-resistant tuberculosis turns out to be the son-in-law of a TB researcher called Robert Cooksey at the Center for Disease Control. The fact that the traveler Andrew Speaker, who then flew to Canada and drove across the border to elude quarantine, turns out to be a LAWYER is much less surprising.

Speaker's law firm specializes in personal injury law. You know, ambulance chasing. It would be quite ironic if one of the passengers on his transatlantic flight were to sue him for mental distress caused by wondering whether they had contracted his nasty strain of drug-resistant TB.

This odd case also highlights one fact quite well: it is hard for a democratic society to stop somebody just for being sick. Another nail in the coffin of the idea that an influenza pandemic could be stopped cold just by restricting travel. You think we don't have enough troops in Iraq to stop the insurgents? Just try keeping residents of a city like New York quarantined in their apartments.

another pandemic candidate

It isn't just bird flu that medical scientists fear could cause a global pandemic. A nasty strain of tuberculosis that is resistant to most drugs is also popping up in places like Russia and South Africa.

Bird flu becoming a human pandemic would be just plain bad luck. But with TB, it is a case of doing it to ourselves -- failing to properly use antibiotics to completely knock out a particular case of TB just makes the microbe that much more resistant to the drug. I wonder whether the modern practice of filling our cattle, hogs and poultry full of antibiotics regardless of whether said cow or pig or hen is sick will contribute to making some nasty microscopic creature emerge already resistant to existing medicines?