revere
Posts by this author
August 12, 2006
There can be no doubt that the combatants in the battle between Hezbollah and Israel engulfing southern Lebanon have lost all moral credibility. Both sides are waging a war without any regard for innocent human life, except insofar as it is regard for the public relations problems it causes.
The…
August 11, 2006
The venerable and slightly right-of-center (but excellent, nonetheless!) British publication, The Economist, has taken note of the Indonesian decision to release the bird flu sequences. [NB: also see Addendum, after the continuation below the fold. The Peiris and Guan labs in Hong Kong are now…
August 11, 2006
In many cities we are out of parking spaces. We could restrict cars, but that would be un-American. So we find ways to cram more and more cars into the same space. That's what a new breed of robotic parking garage does. Cars are stored on top of each other on automated lifts that can move the cars…
August 10, 2006
China now admits what everyone knows already knows. It had a death from H5N1 in November of 2003, a full year before its "official" first case (The Guardian). In fact everyone also knows that there was H5N1 in February of that year when the disease was diagnosed in Hong Kong in a family just…
August 10, 2006
The lull in bird flu is over. At least the lull in the news about bird flu. The virus didn't go away. Editors got tired of it and national agricultural officials were quiet about it. Now Thailand is again engulfed with poultry infections and experiencing human cases and Indonesia continues to…
August 9, 2006
The Indonesian government has given permission to release the sequences of some 40 or so H5N1 viruses isolated from human cases in that country to publicly accessible gene databases. The US CDC has now removed any password protection preventing general access at the Influenza Sequence Database at…
August 9, 2006
For a country that claimed to be bird flu free just a month ago, things seem to have changed rapidly in Thailand:
The government Tuesday declared twenty nine central and northeastern provinces, including Bangkok, as disaster zone as part of measure to curb bird flu, government spokesman Surapong…
August 8, 2006
Some people are likely to formulate a simple strategy for bird flu. Get rid of the birds. Here's a cautionary tale:
An attempt to control pigeons at a hospital escalated into a hazardous material incident as sick and dying birds falling from the sky forced a temporary shutdown of the emergency room…
August 8, 2006
An astounding 2000 people die of rabies every year in China. There might be a reason why they don't have mandatory vaccination of dogs there, and if some reader knows, tell the rest of us in the comments. Meanwhile the Chinese authorities in Jining are attacking rabid dogs the way we recommend…
August 7, 2006
It's a region where three major religions and various ethnic groups compete and pursue ancient grievances. It's a bad place for a war because things can easily spin out of control. The incident that sparked it all, the killing of two people by a terrorist, happened earlier in the summer but by the…
August 7, 2006
There is an AP story circulating in Florida newspapers that IBM Corp. and The Scripps Research Institute want the federal government to pony up $500 million for some of their research on computer models to track the spread of bird flu. Why Florida? Because they also want Palm Beach Country and the…
August 6, 2006
There are a lot of ways to kill someone without meaning to. For example, not caring whether they die or not if you can make a buck. We do it a lot in the US and the same is true elsewhere. In the UK they are having a few second thoughts.
The government will today resolve a long-running internal…
August 6, 2006
Sunday in the US. Since Australia is an 18 hour time difference I'm not exactly sure what day it is down there. But it doesn't make much difference because whatever day it is, the young folks are probably not in church.
Or so says a new study, The Spirit of Generation Y (Gen Y are those born…
August 5, 2006
Indonesia is making its sequences available to the world scientific community, at long last. We aren't going to ask how or why or continue to chide them for keeping the sequences until now. We applaud their decision to do so and urge others to follow their example.
"I've learned that scientists…
August 4, 2006
On August 8 - 10, 2005 county mosquito control in Sacramento, California aerially sprayed the pyrethrin pesticides with piperonyl butoxide (PBO) over 85 square miles. On August 20 - 22 they did it again, this time covering 104 square miles. Their objective was to kill adult mosquitoes that carried…
August 4, 2006
A dead swan in a Dresden, Germany zoo signals the return of bird flu to that country (AFP). It is not the only locale where the disease is reappearing after a lull. Laos and Thailand have cases in birds and Thailand has just registered its second death in a week, a nine year old girl. Several more…
August 3, 2006
Karo, Indonesia is back in the bird flu news. Another village in Karo district was the scene of the largest human bird flu cluster to date (eight cases, seven of whom died). Human to human transmission was grudgingly acknowledged by WHO as occurring in this case, although Indonesian health…
August 3, 2006
We've gotten pretty used to the idea that if H5N1 appears in birds it is legitimate to slaughter birds wholesale within a certain distance of the infected flock. In the west, birds are kept as caged pets by some people but not huge numbers. In Indonesia and other countries, however, birds are the…
August 2, 2006
I have now had a chance to read the PNAS paper by Maines et al. and it is surprising in two respects. The first is it isn't that interesting. The second is related to the first. Why did they bother to hold a press conference about it? Even more, why did the press conference focus on the…
August 2, 2006
Thailand seems to have gone from "no bird flu in the country" two weeks ago to having the whole nation on alert.
As the number of suspected bird-flu cases increases nationwide, Thailand Agriculture Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan declared Monday (July 31) all 76 provinces of the country animal epidemic…
August 1, 2006
The long awaited reassortment experiment where the 1997 H5N1 virus was combined with a seasonal strain of human H3N2 virus is being reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, known colloquially amongst scientists as "penis"). As of this writing I was not able to…
August 1, 2006
The most successful armies learn from their adversaries. There is no doubt Hezbollah is an enemy of public health. We'd say the same of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but it's Hezbollah which has more to teach public health. Here's what we're getting at.
The New York Times has an excellent story…
July 31, 2006
I noticed that Governor Mitt Romney, Republican presidential hopeful and much despised Governor of Massachusetts, just vetoed $8.15 million in funding for addiction treatment and prevention in his state. I'm not an expert on substance abuse issues, but I know it is an area of public health where we…
July 31, 2006
A reminder it's not just bombs and bullets in Lebanon:
BEIRUT. July 29 (Interfax) - The World Health Organization (WHO) fears an eminent humanitarian disaster in Lebanon, and the quality of drinking water is among its greatest concerns in the current situation, a WHO official in Beirut told…
July 30, 2006
We've posted about this before (here and here) when it was still in the middle distance, but now it's a disaster just over the horizon. It's the National Uniformity for Food Act (S.3128) (aka The Food Industry Protection Act), poised to become law if it passes the US Senate. It is a blunderbuss…
July 30, 2006
Sunday is a quiet time to relax, read the papers, listen to music on the radio. If you live in Fresno, try KFYE-FM. Not interested, because last time you listed to it there was nothing but Christian music, sermons and Bible stories? Tune in again. As of last week it's now Porn Radio: "all sex radio…
July 29, 2006
Yesterday we posted on the failure -- the refusal, really -- of Indonesia's Ministry of Health to release any of the human flu sequences or isolates. Indonesia is now the country with more fatalities than any other, having passed Vietnam for that dubious honor. We now learn via Declan Butler that…
July 29, 2006
I think NY Senator Chuck Schumer is a jerk, so don't take this defense of him the wrong way. I still think he's a jerk. But this attack on him by the wingnut wrongosphere is just too stupid to pass commenting on:
The executive committee of the National Clergy Council, representing church leaders…
July 28, 2006
The failure to have sequences from Indonesia made available to the world's scientific community continues to be a scandal. Whose doorstep to lay the blame? There would seem to be three possibilities: WHO, the scientists who do the sequencing, and the Government of Indonesia. An official from the…
July 28, 2006
Forty-two scientists and two unions are asking OSHA to do something about popcorn workers lung, a serious, sometimes fatal respiratory disease called bronchiolitis obliterans associated with breathing diacetyl or diacetyl-associated fumes while working with flavorings like artificial butter in…