revere
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February 19, 2007
Here is another dispatch from our continuing series, Notes from a Parallel Universe (parts I and II here and here). In this universe there is a confirmed H5N1 outbreak near Moscow.
In The Parallel Universe this is impossible:
MOSCOW. Feb 18 (Interfax) - Experts from Rosptitsesoyuz, Russia's…
February 18, 2007
The mess up at the Bernard Matthews H5N1 infected turkey farm just gets worse by the day.
Health officials are urgently investigating fears that the disposal of contaminated waste from the Bernard Matthews plant at the centre of the bird flu outbreak may have allowed the virus to spread to other…
February 18, 2007
The American electorate is apparently not too keen on having a Mormon as the next President. Compared to an atheist, however, a Mormon is a Highly Desirable Personage.
Gallup Poll, 2/9- 11, 2007:
If your party nominated a well-qualified Candidate for the White House in 2008 who was a ___, would…
February 17, 2007
One thing at which WHO is spectacularly successful -- sending mixed messages. In October avian influenza was a major public health threat and the world needed to do more.
While the deadly bird flu virus has not spread as widely as feared in Africa, vigilance is still needed across the world to…
February 16, 2007
The smell of coins. I can't resist blogging this. It's science.
The signature metallic smell of a handful of coins isn't the scent of pure metal. According to Virginia Tech organic chemist Dietmar Glindemann, most people wouldn't even recognize the acrid smell of a vat of copper. But in a recent…
February 16, 2007
I rarely plumb Effect Measure's archives except when I think the material has some point for today. And today we are treated almost daily to reports of bird flu outside of asia: Turkey, the UK, Nigeria, Hungary, Egypt. What's going on?
Sometimes it's useful to look back. Here's our post from one…
February 15, 2007
If you hanker after the good old days when things were simpler, times when we knew who are enemies were, you still have a home. It's the folks at Accuracy in Media, a conservative group dedicated to the principle that no amount of disinformation is too patriotic. They are now exercised about the "…
February 15, 2007
Health Care Renewal is an excellent blog with a special interest in medical conflict of interest issues. Last week one of the HCR bloggers, Roy Poses, posted about "The Threat of Pseudoevidence-Based Medicine." The occasion was a article by Smith in the UK journal Clinical Governance (2007; 12: 42-…
February 14, 2007
Many years ago, so long ago she says she never remembers any such thing, Mrs. R. said to me that if I ever brought her flowers she'd think I'd done something wrong. I suspect this was prompted by the fact I wasn't much in the habit of bringing her flowers, but I chose to interpret it more literally…
February 14, 2007
A new paper has just appeared in PLoS Medicine on an old topic: whether seasonal influenza vaccines might also cause enough cross-reactivity to protect against H5N1. The basic idea is simple. The immune system "sees" the surface proteins on the flu virus and makes protective antibodies against them…
February 13, 2007
The 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…
February 13, 2007
An 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…
February 12, 2007
There 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…
February 12, 2007
The 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.…
February 11, 2007
A 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…
February 11, 2007
The 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…
February 10, 2007
There 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…
February 9, 2007
The gene for the optic nerve anal sphincter reflex arc is on the Y chromosome. Newspapers are cheaper.
February 9, 2007
Cats 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…
February 8, 2007
Here'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…
February 8, 2007
I 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…
February 7, 2007
One 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…
February 7, 2007
This 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'…
February 6, 2007
When 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…
February 6, 2007
The 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…
February 5, 2007
No 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…
February 5, 2007
The 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…
February 4, 2007
Friday 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…
February 4, 2007
Austin 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…
February 3, 2007
It'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…