Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admits it: H1N1 swine flu is a mild disease for most people, but for those whom it hits hard, it is often fatal.
Approximately a third of those who die from the disease do so because of other complications—generally pneumonia or MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) so that the two primary killers once H1N1 gets involved are S. aureus and S. pneumoniae.1 In part, this reflects the fact—reported here earlier2—that pandemic H1N1 tends to go deeper into the lungs than seasonal flu. According to Dr. Sherif Zaki, a pathologist at the CDC quoted in the November issue of Nature,3 this particular property of the virus is similar to H5N1 avian flu, a far more virulent form of flu that scientists have feared for years might take on a highly contagious human form.
The good news is that this particular scenario has been slow to develop in nature, and may prove difficult to replicate even in the lab. Researcher Bruno Lina at the Jean Merieux/INSERM biosecurity facility in Lyon, France proposes to try to force recombination of H1N1 and H5N1 in the lab and test the survivability and virulence of any resulting products. Based on some of his previous attempts to reassort H5N1 with seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 and the fact that the two viruses in question are different subtypes, he doesn’t expect to find reassortments that are survivable.
Referring to his previous experiments with reassorting H5N1, Lina told Nature, “After a year we only had three reassortments, and none was fit. They just don’t reassort well.”4
Maher, Brendan. One killer virus, three key questions. Nature 2009 (Vol 462): 155. ↩
Even as a feeding frenzy surrounds the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, New Yorkers were confronted with the news that Wall Street banking firms Goldman Sachs and Citibank were given 200 doses of swine flu vaccine—the same quantity given to Lenox Hill Hospital.
Goldman and Citibank were not the only corporations given doses of the vaccine, and any companies receiving the vaccine had to have their own medical personnel in place. Also, the understanding was that the vaccinations would be given only to employees in the highest-risk groups, which includes pregnant women, children, and those with chronic diseases such as asthma.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is widely credited with the apparent gaffe, sources say the CDC gave the vaccine doses to the state, which dispensed them to hospitals, doctors, and corporations.
The video below from NBC’s Today show, summarizes the whole issue quite well, we think. For a more humorous approach to the subject, check out the Saturday Night Live clip below that.
Friday happens to be Malaria Day in the Americas 2009, and while malaria is not much of a problem here in the United States, it does affect our neighbors to the south and is a major problem in Africa. So we thought we’d take the time to acquaint you with the issues.
Malaria kills more than one million people a year, most of them children. (Most of the remaining fatalities are pregnant women.) Somewhere between 350 million and 500 million people are infected with malaria annually, at great economic cost, especially to families, since breadwinners are often unable to work for weeks, even if they eventually recover.
The main efforts being taken to combat malaria involve encouraging the use of bed nets in malaria-infested regions, particularly long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets, which are the state of the art, and combating antimalarial resistance. So far, resistance to antimalarials —the ineffectiveness of malaria medications due to evolving strains of malaria that are not killed by them—has cost us the use of the cheapest and all but the very best antimalarial medications. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has mandated that artemisinin, the best of the antimalarials available currently, not be given as a monotherapy. In other words, artemisinin must be adminstered with at least one other antimalarial drug to comply with WHO guidelines.
In the Americas, targets for 2015 include:
Decreasing annual malaria cases from approximately 1.15 million in the year 2000 to 575,000 by 2010 (50% reduction) and to 287,000 by 2015 (additional 25% reduction)
Reducing malaria deaths from 348 in the year 2000 to less than 174 (50% reduction) by 2010 and to less than 87 (additional 25% reduction) by 2015
The effectiveness of long-term malaria control is governed by the strength of health systems. Strong health systems can deliver effective, safe, high-quality interventions when and where they are needed and assure access to reliable health information and effective disease surveillance. At the same time, integrating malaria treatment, prevention and surveillance into existing health programs and activities in endemic countries will ensure that funding earmarked for malaria control contributes to the development, expansion and continuous improvement of national health systems.
While the malaria situation in Africa is particularly dire, in the Americas there have been some successes since the turn of the century. Specifically, between 2000 and 2008, we have seen
a 50.4% reduction of malaria cases in the region
Approximately a 77% reduction in malaria mortality
Seven countries have witnessed a greater than 75% reduction in annual malaria cases
Five countries have shown a reduction in annual malaria cases between 50% and 74%
Six countries have decreased annual malaria cases by less than 50%
Just in the Americas, the investment needed for malaria control and elimination are $227 million in 2009 and $261 million in 2010.
What do you suppose is the number one killer among infectious diseases? Ask a number of people, and you will likely get a number of different answers: AIDS, malaria—maybe even this year, swine flu.
But the answer isn’t among the above: It’s pneumonia. Pneumonia claims more than four million lives annually. Just within the U.S., pneumonia claims more lives in a week than swine flu has from its initial outbreak to this date. Worldwide, it kills more children than any other disease—more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Children under five account for nearly half the deaths from pneumonia. And guess what is the number one fatal complication to swine flu? Yep. Pneumonia.
Although it primarily kills those under five or over 65, no one is entirely safe from pneumonia. A strong immune system is of course your best defense. In summertime, see that you get enough sunlight to maintain your vitamin D levels. Supplement with vitamin D3 or high-vitamin cod liver oil in winter. And in all seasons, get plenty of vitamin C—three grams or more daily.
There are three videos here, so be patient. The first is nominally a debate between Betsy McCaughey and Anthony Weiner, but moderator/interviewer Dylan Ratigan gets heavily involved. This debate starts out well enough, but it turns into a bit of a free-for-all when Dylan Ratigan refuses to let Betsy McCaughey ignore his question and go off on a tangent to scare seniors with accusations about health care reform. McCaughey is obviously not used to being called on this tactic and becomes defensive.
Meanwhile, New York Representative Anthony Weiner continues to impress as an articulate spokesman for healthcare reform. This particular video may not provide you with lots of new information about healthcare reform, but it should at least make you aware of the attempts some are making to spread propaganda about some of the current healthcare reform bill’s provisions.
In a separate interview with Jon Stewart (below), McCaughey is credited with raising the issue from which Sarah Palin coined the phrase “death panels.” Stewart attempts to hold McCaughey to her task, though more gracefully than Ratigan. The amazing thing is the way McCaughey consumes the whole interview with evasive tactics, never actually coming to the point of demonstrating where in the bill the text she refers to allegedly exists. (It doesn’t.) The whole interview is a study in evasiveness.
But in Jon Stewart’s gracious and skillful hands, it becomes a hilarious commentary on the current healthcare reform debate. He and McCaughey part on friendly terms.
Below is the unedited Part 1 of the Betsy McCaughey interview with Jon Stewart.
Ready for more? Are you still waiting to hear where the health reform bill proposes to pull the plug on seniors? Below is the rest of the interview, uncut.
By the way, there are certain inaccuracies here that Stewart apparently doesn’t know about. When writing previous articles, we’ve checked on health care statistics from WHO and other sources. The method McCaughey uses here to correct for deaths due to violence and auto accidents, thereby establishing the U.S. as the #1 source of effective health care in the world does not work. In fact, the WHO has already thought of these issues and they are incorporated into the statistics WHO provides. Not only is no correction for violence and auto accidents necessary, attempting to do so results in inaccurate statistics. McCaughey is falsifying her evidence, and probably knows it.
President Obama today declared the swine flu epidemic in this country a national emergency. Forty-six of the 50 states now have widespread flu contagion.
“It’s important to note that this is a proactive measure — not a response to a new development,” an administration official said.
“H1N1 is moving rapidly, as expected. By the time regions or healthcare systems recognize they are becoming overburdened, they need to implement disaster plans quickly,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that the extent of swine flu contagion in the U.S. is currently on a par with the peak of the seasonal flu season, which normally doesn’t occur until at least late November and sometimes not until early March.
By declaring the national emergency, the administration enables Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health insurance agencies to waive certain requirements. This will smooth the way for doctors, hospitals and clinics to treat patients. As the flu season peaks, health-care providers such as hospitals are expected to be overwhelmed with patients.
The table below shows figures from the CDC giving the breakdown of lab-analyzed specimens for last week. Note that out of nearly 5,000 positive specimens, over 99% were Type A and approximately 70% were swine flu. This latter figure is slightly misleading, however, because almost 30% of the samples determined to be Type A were not subtyped. This means that virtually all positive respiratory specimens that were analyzed last week have turned out to be swine flu if there subtype was checked.
If you’ve read our previous articles on fluoride—Fluoride message still not getting through and Fluoride still not safe, despite tooth-decay data—you already know most of the information here. However, there is something about seeing the actual authorities speak on camera that makes it all the more convincing and reassuring. Phyllis Mullenix is here, as are Drs. Robert Carton and William Herzy (former president and current vice president of the EPA Union, respectively) and Arvid Carlsson (Nobel Laureate in Medicine), as well as other scientific and governmental luminaries too numerous to mention.
Yes, fluoride does cause brain and skeletal damage. Yes, it is harmful to the thyroid and pineal glands. And our children are getting overdosed with it. And yes, as we reported before, it is a toxic waste that’s being disposed of in our water supplies at some additional local expense.
You may recall that approximately a year ago the nation was in the throes of a severe financial collapse and that the government—then the Bush administration—had taken upon itself to dole out billions in taxpayer monies to those deemed deserving: by which we mean giant corporations, not our taxpaying individual citizens. Among those recipients was Goldman Sachs, which was selected as among those “too big to fail” and given, in round figures, approximately $70 billion. Forgive us if we err by a few billion in either direction—we’re using round numbers here as the government or Goldman executives would—as though a few billion either way is, well—chicken feed.
You may or may not be aware that Goldman has since enjoyed its best-ever quarterly profits, after a down quarter that coincided with the payouts and a pretty respectable first quarter this year, which was followed, as we say, by a couple of blowouts. Since words don’t really do it justice, we refer you to the chart below right, which was lifted from no less a source than the Washington Post, though we borrowed it in turn from Glenn Greenwald’s excellent blog.
Goldman has its best-quarter ever
You must understand that the figure depicted for the second quarter was the best quarter everfor Goldman Sachs. A mere $3.4 billion in earnings. (That’s in three months, in case you weren’t paying attention.) And the quarter that just ended—the third quarter—was no slouch either. In fact, it just happened to be Goldman’s second-best quarter ever. How’s that for coming back like bandits after a mere $70 billion loan, which—did we mention?—had no strings attached, so Goldman is not obligated in any way to share its outsized profits with those of us who contributed our share but may have continued to fall upon hard times—losing jobs, businesses, houses and so on—despite Goldman’s rather spectacular windfall. Those profits occurred, we’d be remiss not to add, at the same time the unemployment rate went to 9.8%, the highest in 26 years.
You get the picture.
This is a company, you must remember, that were it not for the American taxpayer, would have gone bankrupt a year ago. We repeat: Goldman Sachs was going out of business before we, the taxpayers, intervened. (Okay, our leaders intervented on our collective behalf—had it been up to many of us, Goldman might well have joined the likes of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust, and Salomon Bros as footnotes in history.)
Indeed, as other firms on Wall Street failed, Goldman—as one of the privileged bailed-out bankers—was able to quadruple earnings year over year. No small feat, we can assure you. And the scary part is that since the money they used was essentially free in terms of any moral hazard involved, their bailout acted as an encouragement for further risky behavior. (The worst that could happen was that they would still go bankrupt despite raking in billions in government money. But it was our money—not theirs—so they had nothing to lose.)
Mind you, we don’t think Goldman took on undue risk and just got lucky. As seasoned traders, they had every reason to believe that they were trading at or near the bottom of the market, so the bargains they picked up—knowing full well that hardly anyone else was in a position to do so—were likely to remain great bargains a year or so later.
So after skidding over to the brink and looking down, Goldman has managed to land right back on top. And the employees are anticipating record bonuses. Yes. We’re not kidding. Record bonuses for bonusable Goldman employees. Again.
How could all this happen, you might ask? Well, there are legions of Goldman alumni in the Federal government, which is mostly what Greenwald’s column is about. Indeed, those Goldman alums are particularly concentrated in the Treasury Department (which, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, is where the money is).
Dylan Ratigan has a pretty good explanation of it all in this video.
But what does all this have to do with health care or even just plain health? you should be asking. Glad you got around to it.
The point is, we’re pussyfooting around health care because of the great cost, isn’t that right? The Republicans especially love to point out that all this health care could get terribly expensive.
But look at the difference. We paid out $70 billion so that a few hundred or so Goldman employees could get multimillion-dollar bonuses. We paid out over $700 billion just to bail out Wall Street in general and over $2 trillion as of November, 20081. The CBO puts the cost of the current healthcare bill around $1 trillion. What’s so bad about paying out half what we paid out to mismanaged, failing companies so that every citizen in America gets (and will continue to get) good health care?
“Make the U.S. the envy of several African nations,” he says
Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit that Bill Maher is the master of acerbic whit and political satire. Here he displays his growing irritation with Obama’s apparent laissez-faire attitude toward right-wing Republicans and the inroads they have made against the Obama administration. He then rips into the healthcare debate in a way that no one we know of can better.
Just a warning: there’s some language partially bleeped out in this one, but you can still tell what Maher is saying.
To counterbalance Maher’s acerbity, we’re following that video with an interview with Bill Moyers, in which Bill Moyers displays the command of language, of history and of the issues that has made him so revered as an observer of the American scene.
If you’re a conservative and not too fond of Bill Maher, we urge you to skip the first video but view the second. Moyers is ever the gentleman. He points out that the big difference between the healthcare fight and the civil rights fight is that the healthcare fight is opposed more strenuously by Big Money. And he points out that the Republicans have every reason to oppose healthcare reform. Not only has there been a conservative revolution in the U.S. in recent decades, but Republicans are reluctant to hand President Obama the biggest political victory since President Johnson established Medicare.
Remember that President Nixon first proposed health care reform in 1974. The Republicans have since lost that initiative. Why should they just hand it to the Democrats and make it easier for the President to seek re-election in 2012?
Below: Bill Moyers speaks to Bill Maher about health care reform and related issues.
This first video, a brief excerpt from a roundtable discussion, focuses on the public option in healthcare. In it, first Robert Reich says a few words, then Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tells us what’s behind the resistance to the public option in the Senate. Then in the clip below that, Robert Reich, who is a former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton and currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, explains what the public option really means.
Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics; and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography.
Robert Reich (below) is currently Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
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