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.
How do you eat locally in the winter? The answer may surprise you. If you live far enough north that winter time ends the normal growing season, the choices are going to be considerably more limited than if you live in California, southern Florida, or, say, Costa Rica. But you may be surprised to find out that there generally are crops available late in the fall and early in the spring.
The best place to find these? Your local farmer’s market, friendly local farms, or a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) cooperative. Our local CSA has just offered an extension of the summer CSA fruits and vegetables program into the middle of December. Of course, the vegetables offered are mainly tubers and root vegetables—carrots, rudabagas, cabbage, several varieties of potatoes and sweet potatoes, turnips, beets, winter squash and winter greens such as kale, chard, bok choy, spinach, mustard, and collard greens. There are more.
So if you haven’t yet tried joining a CSA, you might want to look into it. Our list of Useful Links is on the left sidebar, maybe about 1/3 the distance down the page. There, at the top of the list you will find Eating Locally, which is a link for the site Local Harvest. (We first wrote about it here.) If you are interested in eating locally (and you should be!) this is your site. You can search for local farms, farmers markets and CSAs, even for yarns and fleece for knitting, crocheting and spinning projects!
If you need a bit of convincing, read our original story and watch the video below, which will give you some motivation for seeking out local harvests. Remember that fresh produce in your supermarket travels an average 1,500 to 2,000 miles—and that’s not even necessarily organic. Organic food is not just about eating what’s healthier for your body, it’s also about what’s healthier for the planet. Sustainability is key. All else being equal, sustainable agriculture is local agriculture.
In case you haven’t heard, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has pending legislation mandating that non-health professionals (commonly read as police) can enter homes and force vaccination of children against the will of both the children and their parents if the governor or state health department have declared a state of medical emergency, as would occur in an H1N1 outbreak with resulting compulsory swine flu vaccinations.
The video below features a Fox newscast announcing this statute with analysis provided by Judge Andrew Napolitano, the Fox judicial consultant. That video was recorded after the bill—then Senate Bill 2028—passed the Massachusetts House of Representatives. (The bill had passed the Senate unanimously.)
For those who are opposed to compulsory vaccination, the story is pretty scary. Although adults are not subject to the same compulsory vaccination as children, they are subject to compulsory quarantine. Initially, the bill provided that the compulsory vaccination and quarantine could be performed without a warrant, and transgressors were subject to $1,000 per day in fines and up to 30 days in jail. The bill has since undergone revision as House Resolution 4271 and the warrantless provisions appear to have been removed. The law apparently still does not require that the compulsory vaccinations be given to children by healthcare professionals.
Senate Bill 2028 has become HR 4271
HR 4271 has been passed by the Massachusetts House and has gone back to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. Governor Deval Patrick has already said he will sign it.
Below the Fox newscast (which is now a bit out of date in terms of the provisions of HR 4271) we have posted an older video by way of background. Why post an even older video? Because we thought you might like to see the attitude of the legislator interviewed in this piece and understand the evolution of this particular bill. It gives an answer, we think, to a question we saw posted on another website: “Which is stronger, herd immunity or herd mentality?” (Definitely herd mentality.)
And last, but not least, we’ve posted a video recorded by Barbara Loe Fisher, who is president of the National Vaccine Information Center. This video was recorded in April, but most of the information it provides is not time-sensitive. Fisher discusses the lack of liability and other issues involved in the planned school-based vaccination programs.
Fox news broadcast after Massachusetts bill passes House
Broadcast after Senate Bill 2028 passed Massachusetts Senate
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of National Vaccine Information Center, discusses swine flu vaccination issues
The word’s been out for several weeks now: Newseek has reported that hand-washing won’t help you avoid swine flu. That sounds like the bad news, but it’s really the good news: you’re not likely to get swine flu from touching things that someone who has swine flu has touched.
The most likely way to get swine flu (H1N1) is via particles of moisture suspended in the air and known to scientists as aerosol. That means that a really good way to avoid getting swine flu altogether is to wear a face mask all the time when you’re around other people. It may make you seem weird, but it likely will keep you safe from infection.
Coughs and sneezes from the swine-flu infected are what you have to fear if you’re worried about catching swine flu.
If wearing a face mask doesn’t strike you as a lot of fun but you still want to avoid the pork plague, then we suggest you start downing vitamins D and C: at least 3 grams a day in the case of vitamin C and at least 4,000 IU of D3 a day in the case of vitamin D. Going up to 10,000 IU a day of D won’t hurt you, and you should easily be able to consume 10 grams of C daily without ill effect.
The sign that you’ve taken too much vitamin C? Diarrhea, which also happens to be a symptom of swine flu, but we’re guessing you’ll be able to tell the difference. That’s only likely to happen if you exceed 10 grams of C a day, and it may take nearly twice that—average overdose of vitamin C is around 18 grams for most people.
But it shouldn’t take nearly that much to keep you healthy. And as we said, 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day should be more than enough to ward off the flu.
By the way, don’t give up on hand washing. It may not make any difference against swine flu, but for seasonal flu and colds, it likely will. And there are myriad other infections you can get from not washing your hands.
The things they try to slip past you. We were catching up on our reading in the general press, in particular reading a piece in the New York Times about New York state requiring its health care workers to get both seasonal and swine flu vaccines, which has the unions of the health workers up in arms. And there it was, in the Times:
Immunologists generally agree that real protection against any disease requires vaccination rates over 90 percent. But because rumors always circulate and many people fear needles, voluntary acceptance never gets that high.
Nice try, NYT. “Real protection against any disease requires vaccination rates over 90 percent”? (Italics mine.) Does that mean real protection as opposed to the illusory protection we get from vaccines otherwise?
Obviously our NYT reporters are confusing issues here. They refer, we think, to so-called “herd immunity,” which, the story goes, requires over 90 percent vaccination rates to protect the remaining 10 per cent or fewer who are unvaccinated from being exposed to the disease. In other words, if you don’t get vaccinated and over 90 percent of the total population does, your chance of getting the disease drops to a rate comparable to that for people who did get vaccinated. That’s assuming, of course, that the vaccine really works and people really do derive immunity from it, both increasingly dubious assumptions these days.
That, apparently, is what the New York Times considers “real protection.” But, as the main thrust of the Times story clearly demonstrates, 58% of health care workers across the country disagree with that analysis and choose not to get vaccinated against the flu—H1N1 or otherwise.
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