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Religion is good for your health? Conservative Christianity bad?

Prevalence Of Religious Congregations Affects Mortality Rates: ....Blanchard found that people live longer in areas with a large number of Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. He offers two key reasons for these findings. "First, these types of churches have what's known as a 'worldly perspective.' Instead of solely focusing on the afterlife, they place a significant emphasis on the current needs of their communities," he said. These religions commonly organize outreach efforts for the needy and homeless, invest in the health infrastructures of their town and participate in other forms…

Freaky Prosopagnosia disorder

Prosopagnosia is "An inability or difficulty in recognizing familiar faces; it may be congenital or result from injury or disease of the brain." I've talked about this before. Well, Jake "The Superficial" Young now has a follow up post on the paper which elicited my initial skepticism. Since you can read the abstract, here is the conclusion: Congenital PA is the only known monogenic dysfunction of a higher cognitive visual skill. Among more than 90 different cognitive functions (e.g., musical mind, absolute pitch) and dysfunctions (e.g., agraphia, dyscalculia, dyslexia) related to…

Sins of omission

The other day, I got a request for an interview: a reporter was writing a story about Ken Miller. I was happy to do so — this was clearly going to be a friendly piece about Miller, and I thought it was good that he get some more press. I talked on the phone with this fellow for 20 minutes or so, and I told him what I thought: Miller is a smart guy, a great speaker, a hardworking asset to the people opposing creationism, and I also said that his efforts to squeeze religion into science were ill-founded and badly argued. I said, "It's an effort to reconcile a legitimate discipline with…

The Netherlands, Islam and Radio Open Source

Radio Open Source had a show about Islam & The Netherlands. They mention one of my comments in the last 5 minutes (the download should be up tomorrow). I have cut & pasted my first comment below. And what better place for this flourishing multicultural paradise than the tolerant Netherlands of the Church-baiting Erasmus and the Portuguese-Jewish rationalist Spinoza? Let me be frank, this makes great rhetoric, but the reality was far less peachy. The Calvinist confession dominated Dutch society and tolerated a level of dissent, it did not accept or celebrate it. Baruch Spinoza was…

Religion: adaptation or by-product?

For years, whenever someone asks me about the evolution of religion, I explain that there are two broad categories of explanation: that religion has conferred a selective advantage to people who possessed it, or that it was a byproduct of other cognitive processes that were advantageous. I'm a proponent of the byproduct explanation, myself; I tend to go a little further, too, and suggest that religion is a deleterious virus that is piggy-backing on some very useful elements of our minds. Now look at this: there is a wonderful paper by Pyysläinen and Hauser, The origins of religion : evolved…

We Are All Minorities Now: Thoughts on the "White Vote"

Recently, I ripped into Kathleen "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" Parker for mainstreaming white power garbage. But Gregory Rodriguez makes a good point about the "formal re-articulation of whiteness as a social category and a racial interest group" (italics mine): To be white in America meant that you were a member of the default category that just isn't discussed. In 2000, journalists didn't incessantly mention that George W. Bush was seeking to become the 43rd white male president of the United States. No one even thinks in those terms. It's implied. It's one of the perks of dominance.…

Out-of-Office Reply Is a Good Thing

Despite what Tyler Brûlé writes at The Financial Times. Brûlé writes: When an e-mail bounces back with: "I'm travelling on business in New York (or Rome, Taipei, São Paulo ...) and will have limited access to e-mail," such messages usually pose the following questions: is this individual employed by a company that can't afford BlackBerrys or iPhones? Can this person not manage their time away from the office? Or are they simply away having a laugh at my company's expense? Unless they work in the public utility business and are 200ft below the streets of New York repairing the sewers…

The Canard of 'Responsible Fiscal Policy'

For most people reading this blog, especially the scientists, budgets matter. Not only is most of the cool science stuff you read about here funded by government funds, but, unless you're independently wealthy, you're going to need an uncut, untouched by Peter Peterson Social Security. Regarding budgets and deficit spending, we constantly hear about 'responsible fiscal policy'--that is, we can't engage in deficit spending (I've dealt with this silliness here and here). But political wishes notwithstanding, unless we want to reduce our savings (the stuff individuals and businesses own), we…

On Genetic Denialism

Mary Carmichael has a great video (and associated post) about the rise of genetic denialism--ridiculous arguments that 'genes don't cause disease.'* Carmichael offers two reasons why the argument is flawed; I'll offer a third in a bit, but I do want to note one minor point of disagreement with Carmichael. If you go to roughly the ten minute mark, Carmichael has a summary slide that lists several phenomena that could account for the 'missing heritability'--the observation that currently identified genomic variation can't account for much the expected heritability as determined by various…

I Agree With Bob Somerby's Challenge to Ezra Klein & Kevin Drum: Will Progressives Stop Engaging in Willful Ignorance About Education?

I write about education and educational data a lot, and I'm always struck by the insistence that the U.S. K-12 educational system is DOOMED! This is a staggering display of willful ignorance that rivals creationism (and, arguably, is more pernicious). Without going through the entire backstory (that's what links are for), some U.S. states--relatively large ones--excel, to the point where they do better than every European country and most Asian countries. These states also do better than expected, given their childhood poverty rates; some cities also do a better than expected job of…

Will HR 669 Transform Your Exotic Animals into Illegal Aliens?

tags: House Resolution 669, HR 669, The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, legislation, pets, politics Elektra, my female Solomon Islands eclectus parrot, Eclectus roratus solomonensis. This is the smallest and most distinctively marked of all the subspecies of eclectus parrots. Image: GrrlScientist 4 July 2008 [larger view]. A proposed new law, House Resolution #669 (HR 669), also known as The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, is inching its way through congress [free PDF]. Tomorrow morning, it will be heard by the Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife.…

Chrysotile asbestos measure dies

Instead of putting this as an Addendum to today's post, I'll let it stand by its ignominious self. Thanks, Canada. Background: The Rotterdam Convention is a multilateral environmental agreement designed by a United Nations agency to protect vulnerable populations by ensuring that hazardous chemicals which are added to the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) list can only be exported with full disclosure and documentation. Although five types of asbestos were PIC listed in 2004, action on chrysotile asbestos was blocked by asbestos stakeholders including Canada, China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and India…

What ee cummings said: "There is some shit I will not eat" (with Update)

I'm with Lindsay of Majikthise (and many others) on this one in telling Senator Reid that Republican legislation that would allow torture and allow George Bush to define the Geneva Convention to suit himself is beyond the pale. Even worse, the same legislation essentially abrogates habeas corpus, a writ for which is "a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody." (LectLaw). Here's what Lindsay said: Senate Minority Leader…

Was blind, but now I see (profits)

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of blindness and the wet form is the worst version. So it should be good news that the US FDA just announced its approval for a new biological treatment for it. The drug has shown remarkable effectiveness when injected into the eye, monthly. AMD is caused by the new growth of leaky blood vessels beneath the retina. The drug halts this neovascularization and even results in improvement of vision in a substantial fraction of those treated. It not only thus stops the relentless deterioration of vision that leads to blindness but can reverse…

Measles and bird flu

Computer programmers are associated with computer viruses, not human viruses. But at the end of April an Indian computer programmer landed in Boston incubating measles virus. He had been hired by a business investment firm whose offices were on the 18th floor of a Boston skyscraper, the John Hancock Tower. May 5 he developed fever, cough and then a rash and became the index case in what is so far an 11 person outbreak, the largest number of measles cases in the city since 1989. (Boston Globe) The outbreak is of special interest for what it says for the spread of infectious disease in the era…

Reviewing the Expert Reviews of The Neighborhood Project [Evolution for Everyone]

The Neighborhood Project is written for the full spectrum of readers, from inquisitive high school students to my professorial colleagues. I look forward to reading the reviews by the experts, which I expect to reveal the diversity of opinion that I already know exists among the cognoscenti. So far, there have been three reviews by respected colleagues who unquestionably know their stuff about evolution: Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Laland in the scientific journal Nature, and Jerry Coyne in the Sept 11 Sunday book section of the New York Times. Kevin's review is my favorite…

A Visit to the fMRI

I’ve heard that for some the experience of undergoing an MRI scan is claustrophobic, but I find it oddly comfy and cocoon-like. OK, there are those gear-grinding screeches and thumps interrupting the music in the earphones. And the cumbersome set-up for imaging breasts, along with the usual admonition to keep perfectly still, does not leave me in a position I would choose for a nap. Still, I’m on the verge of dropping off when the whole table starts shaking under me. They had warned me about this before I climbed onto the apparatus, but for a second I’m not sure whether to laugh (without…

Books I'd like to read: Climate change, critical thinking, the dangers of big data and more

It's been quite a while since I've done one of these posts, that's for sure. But since we're at the start of the new school year, I thought it might be fun to highlight some recent and forthcoming books about science and technology and especially how they intersect with the human condition. Climate change, critical thinking, new horizons, threats to privacy...and more. These are all books on my list to get at some point, either to catch up on books from earlier this year or books that are yet to be published. Enjoy!   A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age by Daniel…

My new job: Owner and publisher of the International Journal of Usability, Systems and Technology

I really appreciate how all my Internet friends have followed me from major career announcement to major career announcement over the last few years. From my job at Elsevier all the way to last year's temporary detour as Chief Advisor on Science Libraries for the Government of Canada! The last few years sure have been exciting but it's time for a new challenge. And yes, I'm taking a leap back into the scholarly publishing world. This time I'm starting up my own open access scholarly publishing company to publish in all the STEMM fields with a special focus on computer science, which is, of…

Reading Diary: Survive! Inside the Human Body graphic novel series

As I've often said, there are two kinds of science-themed graphic novels. The kind that's usually more fun reading are historical or biographical in nature, like a couple of my favourites Feynman or Logicomix. Generally in this species of graphic novel, the actual science content kind of takes a back seat to the historical or biographical narrative. In some ways, I think those are easier to do than books that try to very directly convey scientific information via the comics medium. These often end up as little more than regular textbooks with funny pictures, kind of boring and dry but…

What does the 2013 IPCC Summary Say About Water?

The latest in a long series of science summaries on climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just been released. While the report has a massive amount of information in it, related to a wide range of geophysical implications of climate change, here are some of the key water-related findings for precipitation, evaporation, glaciers, ice mass, and more. While many other findings are reported that have hydrologic implications (such as all the findings related to temperature and warming), I have not usually included them here. Definitions of the confidence of…

The data gap problem

“The monitoring of the atmosphere, of the surface of the Earth, of what’s going on in the ocean and under the ice — all of that is overwhelmingly funded by the federal government.” — Former Obama science adviser John Holdren The other day a friend of mine who works in Beijing as a foreign correspondent suggested that of all the acts of stupidity committed by Donald Trump since assuming office, the thing that bothers him the least is the decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement. Haven't we actually moved beyond relying on government to reduce carbon emissions? he asked. Isn…

The narrow mind of Greenpeace

Way back when I was just a novice environmentalist, Greenpeace seemed like a good idea. It published a decent newsletter, was drawing attention to otherwise neglected issues, and, while understandably suspicious of technology, seemed to have more than a grudging respect for science as a tool to preserve those things worse preserving. It was one of the few NGOs that received what little I could afford to donate to charitable causes. I don't regret supporting them in the 80s, and not just because I shared the group's desire to save the whales. I still want to save the whales. I no longer…

It's (not) funny, because it's true: Ignorance on Capitol Hill

"What is the optimum temperature for man?" asked Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith at yesterday's Congressional hearings on a bill that would remove the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "Have we looked at that? These are questions that, believe it or not, I lay awake at night trying to figure out." Call me crazy, but I don't believe it. I worry about climate change every day of my life and this is not something that keeps me awake at night. Although, if I understood as little about the basic facts of human history as you, who knows what would keep me up night? The truth is, we…

Proving Malthus Wrong: Sustainable Agriculture in 2050

Guest Post: Dr. Robert L. Thompson is a senior fellow for The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Over the past few months, we've watched as governments have been overthrown in Tunisia and Egypt, as governments across North Africa and the Middle East promised reforms, some even handing out cash to pacify angry citizens, and as demonstrations in Libya intensified into outright civil war. Although a number of issues have come to a head, one constant across countries is the rocketing prices of basic commodities, and the…

The Kate Middleton Dress? Calling Out the News Media Over Where Our True Priorities Should Lie

Fed by the news media, our fascination and reverence for celebrities has reached shameless heights. But when you add the element of royalty to the mix, celebrity worship can take off into the stratosphere, triggered even by an item as seemingly mundane as a dress. This leaves me wondering -- and angered -- over what is happening to us and our priorities. I'm referring most recently to the whirlwind North American tour this month of newly weds Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton (a.k.a. Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge), who seem to be a wonderful couple committed to fostering…

Using protein blast and identifying unknown proteins, part II.

In which we identify unknown human proteins. Yesterday, I wrote about using the BLOSUM 62 matrix to calculate a score for matches between two proteins. Those scores give us a good start on understanding how blastp determines whether two sequences are matching by chance or because they're more likely to be related. But that's not all there is to calculating a blast score, and there's at least one other statistic to consider as well, the E value. It all comes down to biochemistry The BLOSUM 62 matrix is based on the substitutions that really do or do not happen in real protein sequences. I…

The Time I Broke My Neck

This is a story with a happy ending, or at least a happy middle, because it isn’t over yet. Right after it began I found myself floating face down in the water, drifting very slowly with the current, trying to stand but hardly able to move my legs. Trying to swim, but unable to move my arms. One Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi four. I waited for my dad, standing a few feet away, to notice something was wrong. But as a younger person I had often played dead in the water, daring someone to be alarmed. Finally I turned my head to the side, my lips above the surface for a split-…

One or Two Americas?

Another one from the post-election 2004 analysis series (November 27, 2004): My previous post is long, I know. It is quite dense and there are lots of links. Many areas are touched on quite superficially. I have covered some of them in more detail earlier, and intend to cover some others in the near future. One response to my previous post (on Kos, by "dotpeople", who I believe is Rich Persaud, a brilliant guy who appeared not to have liked me very much in the good old days of the Edwards campaign blog, particularly when I wrote this after Super Tuesday: http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/…

When to use antivirals for swine flu

We've gotten the question here fairly frequently: If antivirals (Tamiflu, Relenza) for swine flu work best when given early but shouldn't be given to people who aren't really that sick, how do you balance waiting for them to get sick and have the drugs not work well with giving it when you don't need to? There is no absolutely right answer to this difficult question. Early in the pandemic antivirals were being given prophylactically to stop spread, then they were being given only when a diagnosis of swine flu was confirmed. Then only to the sickest patients. We're all on a learning curve. The…

If you smell, here's a remedy

If you don't want to smell, the FDA has a recommendation: use an over-the-counter cold remedy that contains an intranasal zinc solution. You won't smell. Possibly ever again: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent. (FDA Press Release) Losing your sense of smell is no joke. It is intimately involved with your sense of taste and is a warning sense for dangerous gases. The role of zinc in…

The California swine flu cases

Late yesterday afternoon a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Dispatch appeared on CDC's website that is unique in my experience. MMWR is usually heavily vetted and edited and nothing gets out of there fast. Indeed, in recent years, nothing at all got out of CDC very fast. And yet here is this Dispatch, with text referring to the same day of issue (April 21), reporting on two young patients with febrile respiratory illnesses, one of whose cases CDC only learned about on April 13, 8 days earlier. April 17 CDC determined that the two children, both from the San Diego, California area…

Ebola and the henhouse

When an Ebola virus related lab accident in German occurred, special pathogens researchers girded themselves for bad news. Working with agents for which there is currently no treatment of vaccine requires high containment laboratories, often touted as being virtually fail safe. While engineering and procedural controls can be instituted to minimize accidents, the wild card is always the human element, so accidents in these laboratories happen. There has already been an Ebola related death in such circumstances, and when the German woman pricked her finger with a needle containing Ebola virus…

Adjustable rate mortgages and West Nile Virus infection

A fascinating paper in CDC's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases has more details on a problem we first mentioned, on the basis of news reports, back in June. It's about a possible relationship between West Nile Virus infection and the mortgage crisis, but the paper also gives a dramatic example of how the physical, biological and social environment can affect disease patterns and risks in populations. Infection with West Nile Virus is primarily a disease of birds. It is transmitted from bird to bird by mosquito bites and the disease is maintained by the cycling between birds and mosquitoes…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 17 new articles in PLoS ONE published last night. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Was Dinosaurian Physiology Inherited by Birds? Reconciling Slow Growth in Archaeopteryx Background Archaeopteryx is the oldest and most primitive known bird (Avialae). It is believed that the…

The Two-Party System in the USA

Here is a post exactly a year old (January 02, 2006) ------------------------------------------ There was an interesting discussion a few weeks ago on The Carpetbagger Report about the viability of third parties in the US political system. Of course, the US system is officially a multi-party system. There are dozens of political parties out there, each with a name, a logo, a platform, elected officers, a newsletter, etc. Several have managed to field candidates in local and statewide elections. Greens, Libertarians and Reformists have had Presidential canidates and some impact during the…

Wayne Farms slammed by OSHA for gaming system on poultry worker injuries

OSHA proposed serious and repeat violations yesterday to Wayne Farms for a variety of safety hazards, including those that led to musculoskeletal injuries among the company’s poultry processing workers. By my calculation, it was the first time in more than a decade that the Labor Department used its “general duty clause” to cite a poultry company for ergonomic hazards. OSHA conducted the inspection in response to a complaint filed six months ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of a group of workers. The complaint described the harsh working conditions in the Jack, Alabama plant,…

Study: Industrial food-animal workers test positive for livestock-associated MRSA

In a recent study comparing workers at industrial livestock operations and those employed at antibiotic-free livestock operations, researchers found that industrial workers were much more likely to carry livestock-associated strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly and scarily known as MRSA. First, it's important to note that both groups of workers had a similar prevalence of S. aureus and methicillin-resistant S. Aureus (MRSA); however, it was overwhelmingly workers at industrial livestock operations, sometimes known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs,…

Ceremonies honor the 19 fallen firefighters, wisdom of battling wildfires questioned

A memorial service honoring the 19 firefighters killed in the Yarnell Hill, AZ wildfire will be held today at Tim's Toyota Center in Prescott Valley, AZ.  Forty eight hours earlier, an honor guard escorted 19 hearses carrying members of the 20-person Granite Mountain Hotshots on a 125-mile route from Phoenix to Prescott.  This string of somber ceremonies started Monday, July 1 when a crew of 12 firefighters were permitted on the mountain to remove the firefighters' bodies. In "It's something you never want to see again,"  The (Arizona) Republic's Kristina Goetz describes a brotherhood of…

Touchdown, Baby Goat Style!

It isn't that I'm not athletic, I am - but my strengths in the athletic zone were never speed and agility - more forceful forward motion and tough elbows in basketball games. I've never been the kind of person who makes that rolling catch to save the game. Until now. You see, I've got a new sport - the baby goat roundup. This is definitely a speed and agility event, and I am now the queen. You see, we let our goats roam loose. Believe it or not, they don't go wandering into the road, but stay in the pastures. We only do it when someone is around to keep an eye on them (the rest of the…

Zombie Attack...No, Really!

(Awesome image of zombie me by Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre and the originator of the cool RPG Gearhead Check out my fellow bloggers to see their zombie pix! I wonder if New Society would let me use this as my book jacket photo for the new book?) As all of you obviously know, July 1 is International Zombie Day - celebrated around the world by the zombifying oneself, posting brain recipes, strategies for fightin' em off, etc... Well, ok, it is kind of a new, science-blogs-only-holiday so far (credit for the idea goes to Scicurious!), but following the stunning success of international…

More on Methane

Real Climate has an analysis of the methane release paper up, which is at least partly reassuring - partly. CO2 is plenty to be frightened of, while methane is frosting on the cake. Imagine you are in a Toyota on the highway at 60 miles per hour approaching stopped traffic, and you find that the brake pedal is broken. This is CO2. Then you figure out that the accelerator has also jammed, so that by the time you hit the truck in front of you, you will be going 90 miles per hour instead of 60. This is methane. Is now the time to get worried? No, you should already have been worried by the…

The New Rez, 2010 Edition

In the comments thread to my previous post, Greenpa, who apparently gets a kick from watching She Who Cruncheth over at The Crunchy Chicken and me competing, suggested that I ought to try to top her "latest post." In the interim, La Crunch put up a fascinating post about bull semen and the genetic diversity of dairy cows, which left me deeply, deeply confused. Was I supposed to top her by talking about some other crisis in genetic diversity? Spotlight some other species' semen? Or was I supposed to put my own contributions to species diversity up for scrutiny? (Sadly, we don't pass muster…

Michael Nielsen & Clay Shirky: Futurologists 'R Us

Predicting the future is tricky business. Trust me, I know. But there's two ideas I always like to keep in mind when I put my futurologist's hat on: The future will be at least as diverse as the present, probably more so. But not likely less. There's no guarantee that things will change for the better. There's also no guarantee that things will change for the worse. The only thing you can be sure of is that it'll be hard to get any agreement on which is which. These two ideas are closely connected in my mind, compelling me to (hopefully) think realistically and honestly, if not always…

So, You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 0: redux

What should a high school student do to get on a track to become an astrophysicist? Reworked from a rework from an oldie. Something prompted me to think it is time to lightly update and republish this series, possibly with added bonus parts! So, you're in high school wondering what to do with yourself, and you think: "hey, I could be an Astrophysicist!" So, what should YOU do, wanting to get into a good university and an astro/physics major? 1) Take all the math that is offered, and do well in it. The limiting factor for most students wanting to do astronomy or astrophysics is poor math…

APHA OHS Section Awards Honor Winners and Remind Us of Ongoing Struggles

by Elizabeth Grossman The American Public Health Association's (APHA) Occupational Health & Safety Section has announced the winners of its 2010 Occupational Health & Safety Awards. In a year that has been marked by what David Michaels, Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, has described as "a series of workplace tragedies" - among them the deaths of 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch Mine and 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico - noting both the honorees, and those in whose honor the awards are given, is a reminder of the enormous work,…

The People and Prejudices Behind Chao's Secret Rule

Celeste was the first to draw attention to the Department of Labor's proposed risk-assessment rule, whose title appeared suddenly on the Office of Management and Budget website without having been published first in DOL's regulatory agenda, and she's continued to track the news about it and explain how it threatens worker health. Yesterday, Congressman George Miller introduced a bill (which also has 11 cosponsors) to block the rule, stating, "This Congress will not stand for the further weakening of worker protections, particularly when itâs done in secretâas this Administration heads out of…

MSHA Rejects Petition to Improve Miners' Rights

Earlier this year, a group of worker advocates sent a petition to MSHA Chief Richard Stickler asking for rulemaking to improve the training miners receive about their statutory rights.  The petition called for significant changes in the way in which all workers employed at U.S. mining operations learn about their rights, including the right to refuse unsafe work and to express concerns about hazards. (Previous post here)  The petitioners asked MSHA to consider changing how miners' rights training is conducted, specifically having someone other than the miner operator or his…

Taking the measure of the swine flu pandemic

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure Crafting a message on swine flu is not easy, and it's easy to make missteps. I think CDC has gotten it pretty much right over the last two months, but not everyone has. We've written here since the beginning (some examples here and here) that describing any flu outbreak as "mild" is inapt. Flu always has the potential to be a serious disease and kill people, even in flu seasons termed "mild" by comparing them to flu seasons that are "bad." Even with virulent flu viruses many people have minimal illness -- in comparison to those who don't. But flu,…

Swine flu comes home

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure There is no reason why a flu blogger-epidemiologist-physician's family should be immune to flu in the community. And it appears my family is not. My daughter has had a cough for the last few days and Friday night was suddenly seized by nausea, vomiting and fever. Her HMO's urgent care directed her to the Emergency Room of the local hospital where a rapid flu test was positive. While waiting to be seen at the ER, her 10 month old, who had a croupy cough, also started vomiting and was warm to the touch. His (slightly) older brother (2 years) was also…