revere | February 13, 2007The sad saga of Anna Nicolle Smith has pushed the equally sad story of Astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak off the front pages and it's not our intention to revive it. But we would like to call attention to one aspect that has received no discussion:
Police said Nowak drove 900 miles, donned a disguise and was armed with a BB gun and pepper spray when she confronted a woman she believed was a competitor for the affections of Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, an unmarried fellow astronaut.
[snip]
Police said Nowak told them that she only wanted to scare Shipman into talking to her about her relationship and…
revere | February 13, 2007An influenza pandemic will have many casualties, but truthfully, it never occurred to me YouTube might be one of them:
Many companies and government agencies are counting on legions of teleworkers to keep their operations running in the event of an influenza pandemic. But those plans may quickly run aground as millions of people turn to the Internet for news and even entertainment, potentially producing a bandwidth-choking surge in online traffic.
Such a surge would almost certainly prompt calls to restrict or prioritize traffic, such as blocking video transmissions wherever possible,…
revere | February 12, 2007There are so many sad and dismaying things about this story, not the least of which is that even without my telling you, you know how it will end:
It took two years of hell to convince him, but finally Jonathan Schulze was ready.
On the morning of Jan. 11, Jonathan, an Iraq war veteran with two Purple Hearts, neatly packed his US Marine Corps duffel bag with his sharply creased clothes, a framed photo of his new baby girl, and a leather-bound Bible and headed out from the family farm for a 75-mile drive to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minn.
Family and friends had…
revere | February 12, 2007The Hungarians are miffed because the UK is trying to pin the blame on them for the recent bird flu outbreak. They think blaming Hungary for the virus is the easy way out. It isn't. What it implicates is that the vaunted biosecurity firewall for developed country poultry producers is porous. Whether it finally turns out that the virus came from Hungary or not, the possibility is there. We checked to see what the US industry had to say on their website, http://www.avianinfluenzainfo.com/:
Asian bird flu is H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) - a disease of birds that has occurred…
revere | February 11, 2007A paper that appeared a week ago seems to have made its way to the wires. I had intended to post on it but didn't get around to it. But I guess the time has come.
Two medical geographers have written a letter to CDC's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, about what many have already observed: 90% of the WHO cases of H5N1 in humans are under the age of 40 years old. Using information on 169 of the current 271 cases, Matthew Smallman-Raynor and Andrew D. Cliff, medical geographers at the Universities of Nottingham and Cambridge in the UK find:
Subject to multiple selection biases in the…
revere | February 11, 2007The far right smear machine against John Edwards has moved into territory close to home: attacking Edwards by attacking his newly hired bloggers, Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon fame) and Melissa McEwan (from the equally eminent Shakespeare's Sister). The big media (cable news of all stripes, AP and New York Times) are reporting it just as it comes off the far right tickertape, as usual. It's not an accident that Amanda and Melissa are noted and notable progressive feminist bloggers. Not an accident unless you believe in the tooth fairy, anyway. Why is in the Sermonette? Because the thin end of…
revere | February 10, 2007There is no bird flu in the UK. The biosecurity is too good for that to happen. OK. There is bird flu in the UK but it is well confined. It must have gotten there from wild birds. Biosecurity is too good for anything else. OK. It might have gotten to the UK on a truck from Hungary where there is bird flu in poultry. But it's well confined. OK. It's not well confined, but just affects turkeys in one small shed on one farm. OK. It somehow got out of that shed and infected birds in three other sheds on that farm. But it's confined to that farm. OK. It's possible it got loose into wild animals.…
revere | February 9, 2007The gene for the optic nerve anal sphincter reflex arc is on the Y chromosome. Newspapers are cheaper.
revere | February 9, 2007Cats again (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Now the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is warning that cats are susceptible to H5N1:
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today that cats should be monitored for signs of bird flu or avian influenza.
They said that cats, like humans, can become infected with the deadly strain of the H5N1 virus that causes avian flu, possibly from eating infected birds, or from being in very close contact with infected birds or their feces. But they emphasize there is no evidence of a sustained cat to…
revere | February 8, 2007Here's a serious manhole question for the hivemind. We all "know" that there have been instances of people or dogs being shocked or even electrocuted by stepping on electrified manhole covers. Our oldest didn't believe it was possible. His point: a manhole cover is embedded in the ground. Therefore, almost by definition, it is grounded. So how is it possible to have a voltage between the metal cover and the street in which it is set? I was sure I had read it more than once in the paper. Mrs. R. was so sure she had read about at least a "half dozen" such cases in New York she made a bet with…
revere | February 8, 2007I sympathize with the Indonesians up to a point. Their outrage over what they perceive as the plundering by vaccine makers of their natural resources (in this case a lethal virus isolated from Indonesian bird flu cases) is understandable -- barely. Their subsequent actions to stop sharing samples of the virus with WHO and their attempt to justify it by blaming WHO is not understandable. Nor is it intelligent. But then very little in the way of effective and intelligent bird flu policies has come out of Indonesia anyway. This is part of the package, alas.
The complaint of the Indonesian…
revere | February 7, 2007One of the places to see (and be seen?) in the public health blogosphere these days is the new group blog, The Pump Handle. Among the many terrific posts there recently was one by Boston University School of Public Health epidemiologist Richard Clapp, "Drop in Cancer Deaths hype - what's behind the numbers?" The numbers he refers to are the 0.5% drop in US cancer deaths, from 556,902 in 2003 to 553,888 in 2004.
The story made the newswires and big media outlets as good news. It certainly isn't bad news, but as Clapp points out, the drop in cancer deaths lags behind the drop in deaths from…
revere | February 7, 2007This was an incident waiting to happen. Indonesia has signed a preliminary agreement with vaccine maker Baxter international an arrangement to supply with with viral vaccine seed in exchange for an unknown compensation. It is unclear whether the arrangement is exclusive to Baxter or not (see today's New York Times, says not). Until the deal is completed they will not continue to send viral isolates to other scientists for research or other purposes. Sharing of sequence data is said to be unaffected. The deal with Big Pharma Baxter International puts viral seed strains from the world's…
revere | February 6, 2007When the witches in Shakespeare's MacBeth assured the great war captain that "...none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth", the Thane of Glynis didn't take into account that his undoing, MacDuff, was "from his mother's womb/ Untimely ripped," that is, born by Caesarian section. Today's MacBeth would have thought of it.
For today MacDuff would not be an oddity, when childbirth is becoming decidedly unnatural. The Caesarian section rate hit a record high in 2005 (latest year for which we have figures), up nearly 50% in ten years. Now almost one in three babies (30%) come into the world…
revere | February 6, 2007The public may not have bird flu on the front burner but there is action elsewhere. New vaccine technologies are being worked on and so are antivirals. One ready to be used clinically is peramivir, made by BioCryst. Peramivir is another neuraminidase inhibitor like oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) although it has to be given intravenously or by intramuscular injection.
Tamiflu and Relenza are chemically similar, looking like the natural cell surface receptor (sialic acid) the virus latches on to to initiate infection and which it needs to be released from when the replicated…
revere | February 5, 2007No vaccine, antivirals in short supply, what to do if bird flu strikes? Wash your hands, seems to be a favorite. While its efficacy is unproven, it's not a bad thing to do anyway. Dry skin is the only plausible side effect. Dry skin and hand sanitizer abuse. It's 70% ethyl alcohol:
The 49-year-old Maryland inmate seemed seriously sick after he drank from a gallon-container of hand sanitizer. Described as "loony," "red-eyed" and "combative," he was whisked by officials to a nearby Baltimore hospital for treatment.
But they quickly discovered he wasn't ill -- just very, very drunk on Purell.…
revere | February 5, 2007The big news is that the UK has its first large outbreak of H5N1 in commercial poultry, a turkey farm in Suffolk. Retailers there are already moving to reassure the public. Although this is the UK's largest turkey farm, large chains have been quick to say they do not sell its birds. The Talking Points have been ready for some time. You have nothing to fear but fear itself. It is perfectly safe to eat an infected bird if you cook it properly.
The US poultry industry is also ready, although they have assured us they are safe because they have excellent biosecurity. Just like the UK farms…
revere | February 4, 2007Friday CDC released its guidelines for communities to respond to pandemic flu. It adopts a hurricane warning analogy (Category 1 to Category 5 pandemic). The Categories are keyed to case fatality ratio, with the lowest category being roughly the experience of seasonal influenza (less then 0.1% CFR and illness rates of 5 - 20%), Cat 2 being the experience of the 1957 and 1968 pandemics (CFR of less than .5%) ratcheting up to Cat 5, the experience of the 1918 spanish Flu, whose CFR has been roughly estimated to be around 2 - 3%. By these measures, if H5N1 went pandemic at its current CFR of 60…
revere | February 4, 2007Austin Cline is one of the more incisive regular writers on atheism. This week he discusses a Paula Zahn show on CNN that begins with a brief vignette about couple in a small town in Mississippi who complained to their son's public elementary school principal about time spent in bible study and prayer. Yes, his public elementary school. For their trouble they became outcasts. No one would speak to them or let their children play with their children. When it was later revealed they were atheists, the father's boss got calls complaining he had brought an atheist to town. People drove parked in…
revere | February 3, 2007It's official. Bird flu has come to poultry in the UK, with the death of 1000 turkeys in Suffolk. The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) just announced confirmation that the H5 virus is indeed H5N1 (via BBChat tip Peter McG.). This is the second confirmed appearance of the virus in Europe this year and the second appearance in the UK in the last 12 months (previously chickens in Norfolk in April 2006). Most people expect there to be more instances elsewhere in Europe.
The virus is out there. Gone from the headlines doesn't mean it's gone from the world.