Category: Public Health

It Could Be Worse, I Could Live in Minnesota

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And be represented by Michele Bachmann, though she is worth a spit take.

Latest case in point: Suggesting that the Swine Flu outbreak is some sort of Democratic Party plot:

‘I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.’

Except, of course, it happened under Gerald Ford, and the media frenzy over the flu was electioneering largely driven by Ford’s SecDef, Don Rumsfeld, like a bad apple, he keeps turning up.

The stupid, it burns, it burns.

Good Read on Swine Flu, By an Expert

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John M. Barry, who literally wrote the book on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic, has an article on the Swine Flue outbreak that is a must read.

I also need to read his book.

I had not previously realized that the initial Spring outbreak was very mild, and it was the Autumn outbreak that had the virulence that we now remember the disease for.

Money quote is at the end:

In all four instances [Influenza Pandemics], the gap between the time the virus was first recognized and a second, more dangerous wave swelled was about six months. It will take a minimum of four months to produce vaccine in any volume, possibly longer, and much longer than that to produce enough vaccine to protect most Americans. The race has begun.

Go read.

Swine Flu Update

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The caveat here is that the only country with enough cases for any real data is Mexico, and their public health system is awful, so the numbers are suspect, and there are a lot of untreated TB, asthma, and HIV, but it appears that most of the deaths so far have been young adults.

This may just be an artifact of the fact that Mexico is missing cases, etc., but it could point to an immune system response known as a Cytokine storm it was the reason that Spanish Influenza in 1918, and SARS more recently, disproportionately effected young adults.

Washington’s Various Serious People in Action

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Here we see Republican Senator Susan Collins saying that we should cut the stimulus money for flu pandemic.

They cut the money, because they are “centrists”, and unless they do something to throw their weight around, it means nothing, so Collins killed the money on pandemic preparedness, to show “fiscal responsibility”, and we may be on the brink of a major flu outbreak.

Bobby Jindal lambasted volcano monitoring, and Mount Redoubt erupted.

Republican spending cuts are making me very nervous about the next shoe to drop.

My Take on Swine Flu

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In no particular order:

  • It is H1N1, a variant of the Spanish Influenza.
  • We don’t know the numbers from Mexico, only the numbers of those seriously ill, so we don’t really have mortality and serious illness percentages from them.
  • The US numbers appear to show that it’s not so bad.
    • It may become a pandemic, but if so, think Hong Kong Flu (Influenza A virus subtype H3N2) where the 1968-9 pandemic killed about 33,800 in the us, primarily among the old, very young, and immune compromised, not Spanish Influenza, where ½-¾ million died, and it hit the young and healthy hard through cytokine storms.

Summer flu is not unknown, so don’t panic, but do wash your hands.

And Now Republicans Come Out in Favor of Giving AIDS to Children

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If you ever wondered just how immoral the Talibaptist wing of the Republican party is, look no further than state Senator Dave Schultheis (R-Colorado Springs), who is opposed to testing pregnant women for AIDS, because it would lead to treatments to reduce the chance of their children catching the disease, and their children having AIDS is appropriate punishment for their promiscuity.

The frightening thing is that coming from Colorado Springs, home of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, a significant portion of his constituents likely agree:

  • What he said during the debate: “This stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part and I just can’t go there. We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I’m not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.”
  • What he said afterward: “What I’m hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years … begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior. We can’t keep people from being raped. We can’t keep people from shooting each other. We can’t keep people from jumping off bridges. People drink and drive, and they crash and kill people. Poor behavior has its consequences.”

For all those wankers (that’s you Lord Saletan) who think that we can engage in meaningful negotiations with the abortion criminalization crowd, understand that they want to eliminate all forms of birth control, and re-institute criminal penalties for “fornication”.

In fact, they want to give children AIDS to punish their parents.

You can no more find common ground with them than you can with al Qaeda.

This is Despicable

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It appears that big pharma and medical device manufacturers are gearing up to fight a provision in the stimulus bill which would compare outcomes for different treatments, so that healthcare professionals would know how they compare to each other, they are claiming that it’s, ” the first step to government rationing.”

The real reason that they are opposed to this is because selling people expensive s#@$ that does not work better than the cheap stuff is their business model.

Zimbabwe Passes Power Sharing Law

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Well the Zimbabwean parliament finally passed the constitutional amendments to enable a power-sharing government, though cabinet positions are still not set, and a number of MDC and human rights activists remain detained.

Governments in the west have softened their rhetoric, for a while, at least, but are maintaining the sanctions against Mugabe and senior ZANU-PF officials.

As to whether things are going to get better, the fact that Robert Mugabe’s wife just seized a farm, from a judge on Zimbzbwe’s high court….Damn….It takes stones to steal from a judge in broad daylight, so I’m not expecting things to turn better at any time soon.

In the meantime, Cholera is continuing it’s Zimbabwe concert tour, with the WHO saying that cases have broken 65,000.

I’m not sure if I am a realist, or a pessimist, but I don’t think that things are going to turn out well for the people of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Update

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It looks like the MDC will join the ZANU-PF in a unity government.

Unfortunately, it appears that the MDC will have no control of the state security apparatus, so I’m wondering if this will be as hollow as Nkomo entering government.

Of course, right now, government actually has to work, with current cases of cholera estimated to be in excess of 60,000, and the currency so debased that foreign currencies will now be allowed to be officially used in commerce.

I think that 5 years from now, there will be no Zimbabwean dollar at all.

The EU has tightens sanctions on prominent ZANU-PF members, but I don’t thing that this will amount to much

We Oppose the Idea Because It Will Help People and Save Money

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Seriously, this is the state of ‘Phant ideology.

Lindasy, “Majikthise” Beyerstein notes that this is why Republican oppose any form of public insurance:

Mark Hayes, a Republican health policy adviser to the Senate Finance Committee, said Republicans have concerns because the government plan might have access to price controls and other tools not available to private insurers. This could lead to lower premiums in the government plan, which would cause most consumers to migrate out of the private market, he said.

Do you notice what Mark Hayes is saying.

He is saying that the government will provide a better and cheaper service, and so this will damage the private providers of under-performing products.

If the private sector works so well for keeping people insured, surely the private sector would beat the public sector….except, of course, that it doesn’t.

Zimbabwe Update

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Well, it appears that I missed a rampage by Zimbabwean troops who had not received their pay, but caught the story that Mugabe is looking at retribution against those soldiers:

In a clear sign that President Mugabe’s hold on his state security machinery is starting to crumble, his once-loyal soldiers ran amok across the capital on Monday after they failed to access their paltry wages in the cash-strapped banks. The unarmed soldiers fought with heavily-armed police and several were arrested.

It was the third outbreak of such violence since last Thursday. The sight of rampaging soldiers was then unprecedented. Army sources said an inquiry had already begun, with dozens facing courts martial. Unconfirmed reports say three of the 12 soldiers who took part in Thursday’s riot have been killed.

So it appears that the rank and file in the Zimbabwean Army are starting to lose discipline.

In the short term, this is troubling, in the medium term, it may mean that Mugabe is closer to being out than I would have believed, and in the longer term, it does not bode well for a post ZANU-PF nation.

In the mean time, things are getting worse, with cholera deaths increasing, and there have been public protests about this from health care professionals.

It’s not just cholera though, the UN has run out of funds for food aid, so for many, starvation looms.

On the bright side, we are seeing a bit of backbone from the African community, with
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga calling explicitly for Robert Mugabe’s removal and he and ANC president Jacob Zuma have publicly declared that that will work together on the crisis, which is clearly a disavowal by Odinga of Thabo Mbeki.

It’s also interesting that the Kenyan Prime Minister has called for a military intervention to depose Mugabe, followed by war crimes trials.

Hopefully, this means that there will be some meaningful movement (meaningful means out) by Robert Mugabe, but I have a feeling that he will not leave while he is still alive.

Why We Need a National Health Service

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This little anecdote from the New York Times:

The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.

Our system is not just broken. Our system is insane.

Let’s Be Clear on This: There is No Autism-Vaccine Link, Just Scientists On One Side and Liars On the Other

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That’s the truth and Washington Post reporter Shankar Vedantam manages to ignore the fact that there is no correlation between vaccines and conditions on the autism spectrum.*

The author mentions that the new study contradicts a 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, but ignores the fact that he was accused of, “suppressing and falsifying data”, that his co-authors of this study have disavowed his reasearch, and at this time is under investigation for serious professional and financial misconduct.

He faces removal of his medical license as a result.

If there is any justice in the world, he will end up in to jail too.

*There is some dispute as to whether Aspergers is mild Autism, or a different condition on the Autism spectrum, a distinction which I would generally expect a reporter to miss.