Hard News: There is History
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The Brits reckon you riding the elevator will kill you.
Not the elevator, the strangers in the elevator: it is best to maintain the English tradition of avoiding people to whom you have not been introduced, especially when they are children, or black.
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it is best to maintain the English tradition of avoiding people to whom you have not been introduced, especially when they are children, or black.
Or white and weedy, like the guy in the ad.
But actually, avoiding children is not a bad idea. Three years ago I went to my son's kindy for a pizza making session with the kids, and one of them gave me chicken pox. So that's how I spent Christmas.
Little blighters.
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WRT oseltamivir and zanamivir (Tamiflu and Relenza)
The reviewers asked two questions: do these drugs treat flu? And do they prevent it?
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The group treated with zanamivir were 24% more likely to have their flu symptoms alleviated than the placebo group, at a given time point. For oseltamivir the figure was 20%. It's alright. I'd take it. It's just not amazing.
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The prevention studies are a bit more exciting. Although patients had less of the virus on board, neither drug stopped patients from being infectious. In fact, neither had a protective effect at all against influenza-like illness, or asymptomatic influenza, even at higher doses.For preventing someone catching symptomatic influenza, the results were more impressive. A 75mg daily dose of oseltamivir was 61% effective compared with a placebo, and 73% effective when the daily dose was 150mg, while Relenza was 62% effective. In trials where researchers were looking at the prevention of influenza in households where someone was already infected, the drugs were also pretty good.
Things might be different in a pandemic, and the Cochrane review recommends them in such circumstances.
So:
- If you're one of The Infected and take your pills, you'll get some, but not a lot, of relief.
- If you're already one of The Infected, and you take the pills, you'll still infect others.
- If you're not infected, and you're taking the pills, and you come into contact with The Infected, you've got a reasonable chance of not becoming One Of Them. Although in a true pandemic situation, it might be a bit like trying to run through the rain and not get wet - some of the drops are going to miss, but even with an umbrella it's inevitable you'll get hit in the end.
And since we are already in the grips of a Pundemic, I give you for your reading pleasure:
The Aporkalypse.
Parmageddon.
Hamageddon
snoutbreak.
Hamdemic.All stolen from various sources.
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Do affirmations work? F'rexample, something in the order of "No no no by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin."
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Do affirmations work? F'rexample, something in the order of "No no no by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin."
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</quote>Although in a true pandemic situation, it might be a bit like trying to run through the rain and not get wet - some of the drops are going to miss, but even with an umbrella it's inevitable you'll get hit in the end.</quote>
Heh, that's a good way of summing it up.
One of the things that is worrying epidemiologists is the fact that the current strain of H1N1 (which is really a combo of porcine, avian and human viruses, not carried by pigs, so not swine flu at all) is showing swift and increasingly sturdy resistance to the antiviral most commonly used, and the more the antiviral is used, the more quickly the virus develops resistance. Surely we have learned something from the over-use of antibiotics down the ages?
High risk of resistant H1N1 flu if single antiviral prescribed,
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Parmageddon.
Roflnui
The trouble with drugs that make you feel better but don't stop you being infectious should be obvious: you get up from your sick bed and go out spreading the flu to everyone else.
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They said that the first time a black man becomes president, pigs will fly.......one hundred days into office for Obama, and Swine Flu!
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Michael Lhaws in his latest article has declared the whole thing a fraud:
And now swine flu this concoction of public health officials and hysterical news media, both looking to justify their drawing of a salary from someone else's pocket. Indeed, it is not simply hysterical rubbish. It is a fraud.
As someone who has made a career of pedalling hysterical rubbish, he should be well qualified to pronounce on such matters.
He takes the opportunity to show his expertise on family health matters:
It's like medical authorities trying to scare parents not to share beds with their children. Yes, some drunk, drugged insensate mums do roll over and asphyxiate their kids, but most of us don't. This natural bonding process between breast-feeding mum and infant is portrayed as akin to child abuse.
Emma told us in her post not to put labels on other people. So all I'll say is what a complete and utter person he is.
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As someone who has made a career of pedalling hysterical rubbish
You mistook this for the cycleway thread?
So all I'll say is what a complete and utter person he is.
Heh!
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Could somebody kindly point me to panic in the media? Over the last twelve hours I've followed TV One, the radio, the Herald and the DomPost, and they've all been pretty measured and informative. They have a legitimate story to tell and seem to me to be largely on top of it. Or am I missing something?
Perhaps missing the overkill/underkill factor. No less than 20 videos on Stuff.co.nz video page are swine flu related. the number of videos surpassing the current official death toll by one.
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the noise noticeably interrupted by the video entitled "Are our roads killing fields" detailing the deaths of 15 road deaths in NZ alone in the last 3 days. Simultaneously the media seem to be having a field day punning on the Field trial. This thread has been an often hilarious read. Most interestingly with official death toll now at 19, there are 19 posts for each for individually officially dead. And if you're still unconvinceable as to the panic Giovanni, here's a quote from AP
Experts warned the virus could mutate and come back with a vengeance.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzz357patY4-QaJFvo9O95zMM_EQD97UGQTG0
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I am lost for words and understanding of Michal Laws and as such not sure if I should ignore him or rally against him.
Michael Laws is to particapatory democracy what Adolf Hitler was to representative democracy.
They both use fundamentaly good systems for the worst possible outcomes. This isn't because I disagree with the results (but I do), it is the fear and division both require to achieve their results & that inturn destroys the greater sense of community and belonging by scape goating a minority. -
Experts warned the virus could mutate and come back with a vengeance.
Because it could. Frankly, when the media get the blame for reporting on the concern of the experts, I get very worried. And I was frankly aghast at the smarmy, kneejerk, uninformed scepticism of a fair few voices of the blogosphere in the last week or so. Alternative viewpoints are useful to filter and question the received wisdom and official party lines, and sure, the mainstream media are crap at so much of what they do. But reflexive disbelief a-la Poneke is just as bad, if not in fact worse.
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Alternative viewpoints are useful to filter and question the received wisdom and official party lines, and sure, the mainstream media are crap at so much of what they do. But reflexive disbelief a-la Poneke is just as bad, if not in fact worse.
Nicely nailed. Projecting one's own credulity onto a bunch of straw people would be sad if it weren't so wilfully spiteful.
As usual, the Opinionated Diner does a great job of putting things in proportion.
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As usual, the Opinionated Diner does a great job of putting things in proportion.
And again, I'm going to have to question those proportions.
Swine flu may be fizzing out, although I'd hesitate to say that we're out of the woods yet. But a pandemic will come, and it will hit disproportionately the people who are now dying of forgotten diseases like malaria and the measles. So it doesn't actually do those people any service at all to dismiss this event like a media beat-up.
(Although one could always buy a net. Or five.)
We need to look at biological bombs like the feedlots in the Perote valley. They're like unregulated, shoddily built nuclear facilities, in terms of the dangers that they pose. And increasingly, they're located in second and third world countries.
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So it doesn't actually do those people any service at all to dismiss this event like a media beat-up.
Not quite true. It takes the focus one step further away from the real problems facing people day to day in the developing and still to be developing world. Dengue (which goes from human to human via a mosquitio and fits pretty tightly the description of a pandemic in the part of the world I'm living in) is a massive issue and a day to day one for billions of people, but is largely assailable..if we could be bothered. It kills tens of thousands a year and is growing.
And it's mostly ignored because it doesn't really hit the non third world nations. The frustration felt in the third world over the Western panic over bird flu was another. While some huge percentage of the Western world paniced and spent billions on bird flu, the real story in this part of the world was how bloody hard it was to get. People in Asia live and just about sleep withtheir fowl and in real terms absolutely nobody caught it. At the same time millions succumed to very preventable scourges as they do every year but these are largely ignored it they dont impact ús'.
I'm very glad the world is wary of the possible dangers of the various mutations of influenza, as we swell know the threat they may pose, but find myself a little nauseated that it takes a, so far, mild, threat to our comfort zone before we actually care.
Unless of course someone can point me in the direction of an NZ Herald front page story about the 200,000 kids in South Asia who died of waterborn diseases in 2007. No, I thought not.
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Unless of course someone can point me in the direction of an NZ Herald front page story about the 200,000 kids in South Asia who died of waterborn diseases in 2007. No, I thought not.
No, of course not. But isn't that a deeply rooted problem that goes far beyond the coverage of health matters. I mean, the other day a guy killed thirteen people in a university shooting but it happened in Azerbaijan, so nobody round here cared. Had it happened in the States - which is also nowhere near NZ - it would have been a front page story in the Herald. What is known in the Northern Emisphere as 'the South', but really encompasses much of the east as well, is systematically ignored. I'm sure that living in Indonesia you have a keen appreciation of this, so please don't take this as condescending.
But it applies across the board: wars, diseases, school shootings, the works. It is lamentable and worth lamenting at every available occasion, but does not make the prospect of a pandemic any less important to report on. And billions spent on preparedness and prevention of bird flu and swine flu are most emphatically *not* wasted even from a second and third world perspective. They are everybody's insurance policy. Equally, discussion of how to remove these dangers from poor countries is not idle. These scares are opportunities to rethink a lot of stuff, and incidentally they are also the times when we do hear a bit about the forgotten diseases of this world.
But at the end of the day, do you want more money to fight dengue? Let's subtract it from research on erectile disfunction, or hair loss. Those are the true skewed priorities in medicine.
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Unless we can see it on our TV screens it doesn't exist.
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And billions spent on preparedness and prevention of bird flu and swine flu are most emphatically *not* wasted even from a second and third world perspective. They are everybody's insurance policy
I'm not necessarily taking issue with much of what you say but panics like bird flu and this current fuss (and yes, panic), which has generated untold billions of bytes in the past week (which is about all it is...it seems like endless months) do take money and emphasis away from the things that really do matter to those that most need them right now....vanity research doesn't in that it's mostly private. The threat of bird flu was an interesting one..those most likely to be heavily impacted by it were less concerned than those who weren't...simply because once you left the research labs of the developed world it became increasingly obvious that it was a very low immediate risk.
Education programmes funded by WHO here in Indonesia moved their focus from teaching folks to wash their hands and destroying mosquitos to warning them to watch out for their chickens. There is only so much money and time go around and these panics cause a re-prioritising to suit our Western feelings.
I'd like to think that Swine and Bird flu have put a little more of magnifier on the plagues that swirl through Mexico and South Asia but I'm thinking that as this thing leaves the twitter and google hot lists, nothing much will change.
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Hard to quarrel with any of that.
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Experts warned the virus could mutate and come back with a vengeance.
Because it could.
"with a vengeance". That's a little more personification than I can take with my morning coffee.
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But a pandemic will come, and it will hit disproportionately the people who are now dying of forgotten diseases like malaria and the measles. So it doesn't actually do those people any service at all to dismiss this event like a media beat-up.
When the media cries wolf - which is pretty much what's been happening of late - it undermines preparedness for real future pandemics. While coverage of the 2002-3 SARS outbreak was hardly the fourth estate's finest hour, compared to the present unfocused sensationalism it seems relatively responsible. In a time of huge evolutionary media changes and likely mass extinctions of old institutions, the ability to disseminate clear and trustworthy information in a genuine emergency seems seriously threatened.
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When the media cries wolf - which is pretty much what's been happening of late
Yes, except... no. It's not what happened at all. If somebody has been crying wolf it's the WHO, and a bunch of the world's leading virologists, and I doubt they did that either. I think Goldacre had this exactly right in the article quoted upthread.
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Yes, except... no. It's not what happened at all.
Ah . . . so, for example, "Nick Smith stricken with suspected Coughing Pig Death" isn't alarmist nonsense. I stand corrected.
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