A peek inside the conservative mind

By Carl

WARNING: Below, you will be exposed to toxic thinking and noxious conclusions from right-wing partisans. A Level Four HazMat suit is recommended. The CDC will NOT be available for protection. You have been warned. Proceed with caution. Should you experience nausea, vomiting, tearing eyes, a rise in blood pressure SHUT DOWN YOUR BROWSER IMMEDIATELY and seek expert medical attention from Doctors Jack Daniels or Jim Beam.

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The Ebola crisis is, in point of fact, a manufactured crisis. Media outlets, tired of covering insipid and meaningless political horse races found a sexy and dangerous news item and not only ran with it, but decided to tie it into the politics of the day.

The prevailing wisdom, of course, is this crisis reflects badly on the CDC. I suppose when you push a false narrative, it has to. After all, the CDC is supposed to be on top of "crises" like these, and handle them with aplomb.

Tell that to the 20,000 AIDS victims who died before the CDC even got their boots on back under Reagan.

In point of fact, the real enemy of the American people is, not surprisingly, the GOP, and Texans specifically. It's no surprise that this outbreak occurred in the state least able to handle an outbreak. Texas has great hospitals -- the heart transplant was practically perfected in Houston -- and clearly there's enough oil money down there to import the finest doctors who want a live of luxury.

Before we get into this too deeply, let's take a look at the timeline of the outbreak:

On September 15, Thomas Eric Duncan becomes exposed to the Ebola virus when he accompanies a pregnant friend to a hospital in Liberia, who believes she is miscarrying. According to the cab driver, they tried four hospitals. None would see her (this echoes later in the tale. You'd like to think the States would be different...). The next day, the friend dies.

On September 19, Duncan leaves Liberia to visit family in Texas. He cannot fly directly to the States, so he flies to Brussels, then DC, then Dallas. He is not symptomatic. Much has been made by the lunatic reactionary fringe of the fact that Duncan "knew" he had the virus, as he quit his job on September 4, and arranging a visa to the US, but that's patently untrue. The visa was of long standing and his girlfriend had moved here long before the contact.

That Ebola was an unmanageable problem in Liberia may have contributed to his decision to leave, but there is no evidence that Duncan even saw a doctor prior to Dallas, much less received a diagnosis. Indeed, all reputable sources point to the September 15 trip as the first time he even sets foot in a hospital and that was for his neighbor.

On September 24, Duncan is symptomatic: fever, and nausea. Two days later, he decides to go to the emergency room, since a) he has no insurance and b) Ronald Reagan mandated that no emergency room may turn away a patient without treatment.

At Texas Presbyterian, Duncan tells a nurse he recently arrived from Liberia but that information does not get passed along because, Texas (In NYC, by contrast, emergency rooms routinely have maps of the world that staff can refer to on which disease outbreaks by nation are charted.) Conservatives have gotten this part wrong endlessly, preferring to point to one interview where the TPH staff said no one was aware of his recent travels. Malpractice suit number one.

TPH, suspecting a low grade virus, send him home with a prescription for antibiotics. Antibiotics, it should be pointed out, are completely ineffective against any virus. Malpractice suit number two.

Two days later, on September 28, EMTs are dispatched to Duncan's home who bring him to the hospital. None of the EMTs have developed Ebola symptoms, we should note. And they would have had less reason to suspect Ebola than the hospital staff. Protocols were followed.

It's not until September 29 that the CDC receives even the most cursory notification of a possible Ebola case, when a relative of Duncan's calls them. He gets shuffled about, and the CDC has not confirmed this phone call, although the State Department, to whom the relative was referred, does acknowledge receiving a call, but that the relative and others who State interviewed denied that Duncan was exposed to Ebola (possibly fearing deportation, or at the very least, quarantine, I suspect).

September 30, four days after the first hospital visit, Duncan tests positive for Ebola. Up to 20 people would have come in contact with him prior to protocols being put in place. The hospital executives have admitted that the initial response to Duncan's case was pathetically, almost laughably, bad.

As you now know, two nurses contracted Ebola from Duncan. One, Nina Pham, was symptomatic as of October 12. It's possible that she came into contact with Duncan's bodily fluids before the protocols would have been triggered, as Ebola may, and I stress may, not have been diagnosed yet (although the mind wobbles at how you don't put full hazmat gear on for a vomiting patient, no matter what the condition).

Also on October 12, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins orders a watch list of people who came into contact with Duncan be created.

Yet, a moron, one Amber Vinson, gets on a plane the very next day from Cleveland back to Dallas. Malpractice suit number three.

Stories vary about whether the CDC okayed her travel. Vinson and her partisans have suggested the CDC cleared her. The CDC, however, maintains they tried to persuade her not to travel but ultimately relented for her return to Dallas, for reasons unknown.

Mind you, the responsibility for Vinson self-quarantining would have been TPH's and the Dallas department of health, not the CDC. Dallas authorities had already quarantined the Duncan family. The Jenkins order suggests they could have done the same as they identified potential patients.

But it's the CDC's fault. Of course. Because they are the Federal government run by the black guy in public housing.

Never mind that the combined budget for the CDC and the National Institutes of Health were cut 44% in the budget deal last year that re-opened the Federal government.

(And a side note: if this had happened in 2013 under the shutdown, the Republicans would have been revealed as the treasonous bastards they are, since the CDC would have been completely prevented from doing anything except maybe issuing warnings.)

Never mind that we still don't have a Surgeon General, who might have been able to move more quickly on this matter and certainly brought more resources to bear to deal with this problem, because the NRA has vetoed the most recent candidate.

And never mind that the last time the Feds imposed a mandatory quarantine on anyone, they ended up getting sued (although a judge threw the case out.)

This is not an epidemic. This is not even an outbreak. We may still see a few more cases in the States, but for the most part, by October 1, the disease was back under control. It's more like a wildfire than a flu. But you'd hardly know that watching the conservative media like FOX News or CNN.

The missteps here are many, and kudos to the CDC for admitting they could have been quicker on the draw -- they could have -- but the bulk of the evidence suggests the problem lies in Texas: in it's poor healthcare system, lack of universal health insurance, and "damn the rules, I'll do what I want" rugged individualism.

Also, the fact that Duncan was not white may have played a role in his treatment at the hospital. I would like to think not, but I'll keep an open mind because this is Texas, after all.

All this occurs over a backdrop of precisely one Ebola death, the fellow who brought it here, and two additional confirmed cases.

Keep in mind that in the same time frame that this "crisis" has unfolded, there have been a thousand deaths by gun in this country.

That's a crisis.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Matt Damon does the stupid ALS ice bucket challenge, but in a good way

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Basically, I think the ALS ice bucket challenge is fucking stupid. I'm all for fighting this awful disease, but surely there are better ways to raise awareness, and, what's more, it pretty clear that many, and probably at this point most, of the people doing it are only doing it because it's gone viral and trendy, not because they have any idea about, let alone actually care about, what it's actually all about. And then there is, to me, the problem that lies at the heart of the matter: this whole challenge involves wasting clean water at a time when clean water is in short supply and drought is wreaking havoc. Not those dumping cold water over themselves seem to give a shit, but I think it's important that we do.

And so it was refreshing to see Matt Damon, whom I generally admire a lot for his activism, find a suitable alternative (see video below):

"It posed kind of a problem for me, not only because there's a drought here in California," Damon explained in the video, uploaded to the organization's YouTube channel. "But because I co-founded Water.org, and we envision the day when everybody has access to a clean drink of water -- and there are about 800 million people in the world who don't -- and so dumping a clean bucket of water on my head seemed a little crazy."

The actor -- who nominated George Clooney, Bono and NFL quarterback Tom Brady to do the challenge next -- said swapping clean H2O from the faucet for toilet water seemed fitting for the causes near and dear to his heart, as about 2.4 billion people across the globe still lack access to clean sanitation systems. Toilet water in westernized nations, Damon added, is still cleaner than the drinking water in many underserved communities in developing countries. 

Does this mean I'll now do this myself? No, it just means I'll applaud those celebrities who do. Even if I continue to think this whole thing is ridiculous, at least in its viral, trendy form.

Brainy idea

By Mustang Bobby

This is cool:

President Obama [announced on Tuesday] a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 million in 2014, to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain, senior administration officials said Monday.

A senior administration scientist compared the new initiative to the Human Genome Project, in that it is directed at a problem that has seemed insoluble up to now: the recording and mapping of brain circuits in action in an effort to "show how millions of brain cells interact."

It is different, however, in that it has, as yet, no clearly defined goals or endpoint. Coming up with those goals will be up to the scientists involved and may take more than year.

The effort will require the development of new tools not yet available to neuroscientists and, eventually, perhaps lead to progress in treating diseases likeAlzheimer's and epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. It will involve both government agencies and private institutions.

The initiative, which scientists involved in promoting the idea have been calling the Brain Activity Map project, will officially be known as Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or Brain for short; it has been designated a grand challenge of the 21st century by the Obama administration.

There are several reasons why I like this. Everybody knows someone who has either suffered some kind of injury or has a brain disorder. It is also the kind of thing that government funding does best. Private medical research could do it, but unless there's a way to make money at it, they're probably going to spend more time on boner pills and hair restoration than curing Alzheimer's.

It is often the government that gets America to do big bold things without a profit motive. If you think of some of the things that we've done in the last sixty years, such as the interstate highway system or putting Neil Armstrong on the moon, it was done because we as a nation decided to do it through the government. And along the way, the government didn't exclude the capitalists; it hired them and paid for the research and promoted their products along the way. Everybody wins something, and that's called progress.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Whitney Houston and our fucked up priorities

By Michael J.W. Stickings

UPDATE: And, seriously, lowering the flags in New Jersey? Ridiculous. You have fucked up priorities as well, Chris Christie, and not just with your anti-gay bigotry.

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As you may have heard, Whitney Houston's funeral on Saturday will be broadcast on TV and the Web. No doubt it will be on CNN. (Could Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan be milking her death any more shamelessly, particularly the latter? Cooper, at least, seems to be a genuinely sincere guy, while Morgan is a smug, smarmy, dim-witted hack.)

In not unrelated news, a new study shows that five children die every minute as a result of malnutrition. (via)

This is exactly what I was getting at the other night in writing about Whitney's death and its coverage in the media.

And it's captured in this image someone sent me the other day -- share it, and do let me know if you know where it came from:

Yes, we do have our priorities all fucked up. And fucked up beyond any hope of fixing the problem -- and of dealing with the world's real problems.

(I would just note that the image significantly understates the problem. How many millions are crying over Whitney? And how many millions of children, how many millions of people generally, are dying?)

World AIDS Day

By Mustang Bobby

In August 1994, when I was living and working in Petoskey, Michigan, I received a phone call from Northern Michigan Planned Parenthood, asking me if I would write a short play for their Troupe Teen Theatre group for World AIDS Day 1994. The troupe, made up of local high school students, would perform the play on World AIDS Day and then take it on the road to high schools around northern Michigan. The theme was AIDS education and awareness. I replied, "Sure," and promptly forgot about it.

At the end of October, I received another phone call from the troupe's director, telling me that the first rehearsal would be the next afternoon and that the troupe was really looking forward to reading the play. I gulped, got the time of the rehearsal, and booted up my reliable old Apple IIc. Within an hour I batted out a twenty-page manuscript, proofed it, and ran to the copy center next door.

I have a reputation in my writing -- deserved or otherwise -- for being able to get it right the first time. I got through college and both grad schools turning in first drafts, and the only research paper I remember doing in more than one draft was my doctoral thesis. This play, which I titled Here's Hoping, was the same. The kids read it the next day and loved it, and other than some minor changes for scientific accuracy, the play went on pretty much as I wrote it that October afternoon.

It's the story of an AIDS support group meeting in a church basement, not unlike an Al-Anon meeting (with which I had recent experience at the time). All of the participants are supporting AIDS victims, including a college student with an HIV-positive boyfriend, a young couple with a child infected by a blood transfusion, and a widow of AIDS.  Into this mix comes a straight-laced couple pushed into the group by the illness of a son they cast out several years ago. The group meets their challenge and their needs.

All of the people in the group are based on people I knew -- and still know. Some are gone, but most are still with us. The play is dedicated to them and their memories.

The play was well-received, and, as far as I know, the Troupe Teen Theatre is still using it. I gave them permission to use the play for as long as they want to without paying royalties. Ironically, it's the only play of mine that is in regular production, but it's the least I could do.

Today I remember the friends who I've lost to this scourge: childhood friends like Mark, colleagues like Stephen, Matt, David, and Scott, and those who keep fighting, growing ever stronger in their resolve to win.

***** 

If you would like a free copy of Here's Hoping in PDF format, drop me a note via e-mail (mustangbobby (at) barkbarkwoofwoof (dot) com).  If you would like to use it for a production, I will waive royalties as long as the performance is conducted under standard contract terms of The Dramatists Guild and as long as the proceeds go to your local AIDS charity.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Michele Bachmann, cervical cancer's BFF

By Michael J.W. Stickings

She may be way down in the polls, but she's not giving up her crazy ridiculous fight against the HPV vaccine:

Michele Bachmann is still defending her opposition to the vaccine that prevents HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer. At a campaign event in Sheldon, Iowa on Monday night, she sympathized with a mother who believes her daughter Jessica, now 16, has been debilitated by headaches, pains and seizures brought on by the vaccine three years ago and can no longer attend school.

"Michele, on behalf of myself and a lot of other mothers that have a child that’s sick from the Gardasil vaccine, I would like to thank you for the attention that you brought to it," Julie Wepple said, according to the Des Moines Register.

Bachmann thanked Wepple for bringing up the vaccine issue. "Parents have to make that decision for their kids because it isn't the schools that are going to follow up with Jessica," she said. "It isn’t the schools that live with Jessica every day. It’s Jessica who’s having to have her body live with the ravages of this vaccine."

I sympathize with Ms. Wepple, but... please. This is all Bachmannesque conspiracy theory. Here's what I wrote after Bachmann raised the issue back in September:

After the debate, she sent out "a fundraising appeal," as the WaPo reports, claiming that the HPV vaccine, already opposed on the right for supposedly promoting promiscuity, can lead to "mental retardation." There is good reason to call out Perry, who mandated the vaccine in Texas, for his connections to the vaccine's maker, the pharmaceutical giant Merck, but Bachmann's claim is completely unfounded, just the sort of claim you can expect from a rampant conspiracy theorist like her. Even if you're suspicious of Big Pharma (as I am), even if you think that some vaccines are unnecessary and possibly worse (as I do, though I'm hardly anti-pharma and consider most vaccines to be essential to good health), it takes a leap into the chasm of craziness to think that this particular vaccine, Gardisil, causes "mental retardation." There may be side effects, of course, as there are with all drugs, but Gardisil would appear to be safe. My conservative friend Ed Morrissey acknowledges this, and Dear Leader Rush actually said that Bachmann had jumped the shark (as if this was finally the last straw).

Of course in Bachmann's view, there is no shark.

Thanks for the syphilis

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Another sordid episode from the long, violent, and thoroughly despicable history of U.S. interference in Latin America:

From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans -- prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers -- with venereal diseases in what was meant as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin.

American tax dollars, through the National Institutes of Health, even paid for syphilis-infected prostitutes to sleep with prisoners, since Guatemalan prisons allowed such visits. When the prostitutes did not succeed in infecting the men, some prisoners had the bacteria poured onto scrapes made on their penises, faces or arms, and in some cases it was injected by spinal puncture...

The revelations were made public on Friday, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized to the government of Guatemala and the survivors and descendants of those infected. They called the experiments "clearly unethical."

Clearly. Although I'd say that's an understatement.

"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health," the secretaries said in a statement. "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."

Along with what was done at Tuskegee, where the U.S. Public Health Service conducted syphilis "research" on poor blacks for 40 years, this is all pretty appalling.

But what's also appalling is that it took so long for the truth to come out. Which makes you wonder, as Melissa McEwan wonders:

[W]hat secret horrors going on now President Malia Obama and Vice President William Jefferson Mezvinsky will be apologizing for in fifty years. 

The imagination reels.

Condoms as metaphor

By Carl

It's taken thirty years, countless dead and infected, and a worldwide push, but it looks as though the very tricky and difficult HIV virus may be giving up its secrets to science:

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- An experimental vaccine prevented HIV infections for the first time, a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for a quarter century.

A U.S.-funded study involving more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand found that a combination of ALVAC, made by Paris- based Sanofi-Aventis SA, and AIDSVAX, from VaxGen Inc., of South San Francisco, cut infections by 31.2 percent in the people who received it compared with those on a placebo, scientists said today in Bangkok. Neither vaccine had stopped the virus that causes AIDS when tested separately in previous studies.

The finding represents a revival in a campaign that appeared to stall just two years ago when use of Merck & Co.’s experimental Ad5 vaccine boosted some people’s chances of infection in a study. The latest result will transform future research, said Mitchell Warren, director of the New York-based AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

31.2% is something, certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it means there's clues in there for a truly preventative vaccine or combination of vaccines.

I'm old enough to remember when sex could be had without any ill effects except maybe guilt. Syphillis and gonorrhea both seemed to be curable, and AIDS and herpes were on a distant horizon.

I've often wondered if the spread of AIDS, HIV, and even herpes was responsible, in part, for the rise of conservatism in this country. After all, when we could ball freely, we tended to be a little more open to new ideas as well as new experiences.

Once sex was clamped down upon, it seemed like everyone's rectums got a little more retentive, a little more conservative. Wearing a condom became a metaphor as well as a reality, forcing people to think back inside the box (um, pun not intended. Mostly.) because outside, alone, naked, was scary and a little dangerous.

Freedom became something negotiable, to an extent. You could be free, but you had to be ultravigilant, and once you had to be ultravigilant, that required an effort and efforts mean people will look for easy ways out.

Like the fox and the grapes, people began to look at sex as if it wasn't important, that sex was OK if it was readily accessible but to actually go out and pursue it became a matter of work. And who wants to work at sex?

So we saw a rise in monogamous relationships, but we also saw a rise in values that hearkened back to the Fifties, to a time when, yes, people had sex, lots of it, but no one talked about it, so everyone assumed no one else was getting any.

I dunno... just a thought.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Days of swine and neuroses

By Carl

It could get ugly this fall:

Up to half of the population of the U.S. could come down with the swine flu and 90,000 could die this season, according to a dire report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

[...]"It's a plausible scenario that we need to be prepared for," said Marty Cetron, the Center for Disease Control's director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.

The report says that under a worst-case scenario, between 60 and 120 million Americans could get sick with the swine flu and another 30 million could contract the virus but not show symptoms. Between 30,000 and 90,000 could die -- more than twice the annual average of deaths associated with the seasonal flu. Those deaths generally occur in people older than 65.

It should be noted that swine flu eruptions continue throughout the northern hemisphere, despite the onset of summer weather, which usually mitigates flu outbreaks.

So we're looking at a highly contagious, highly infectious disease that shows signs of only strengthening as people are forced into closer contact behind closed doors.

Not fun.

Keep in mind that a far larger percentage than normal of those getting ill with this flu will be younger, healthy adolescents and young adults. It's not clear if the same hiccup in the affected age will trend in the death statistics. One presumes that a healthy adult will be in a far better position to fight off a bug than the elderly, very young, or infirm.

But...

The 1918 flu pandemic saw an unusual spike in young adults precisely because of the nature of that virus (more avian than swine) and possibly because it was similar to another flu outbreak 30 years earlier.

With swine flu and avian flu currently exposed to one another in the southern hemisphere, it would be prudent to follow this story a bit more closely than current surveys indicate it has been.

It could be ugly. It might not be. My guess is it will be uglier than the CDC and HHS are making it out to be, particularly once the vaccine runs low.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The trouble with viruses...

By Carl

...is they don't take summer vacations.

As the first influenza pandemic in 41 years has spread during the Southern Hemisphere's winter over the past few months, the United States and other northern countries have been racing to prepare for a second wave of swine flu virus.

At the same time, international health authorities have become increasingly alarmed about the new virus's arrival in the poorest, least-prepared parts of the world.

They travel a lot, to be sure, but they never take vacations!

That last bit is the scariest part of this latest warning. The poor, even in this country, have terrible access to medical care, and of course, that leaves the poor as a perfect incubator for this virus as well as any mutations that might occur. This will make the virus that much harder to eradicate or at least contain.

Already, strains of the virus are showing up that are resistant to Tamiflu, one of two recognized flu fighters on the market. Too, isolation and quarantine in poor populations is harder, as people have to work merely to survive and will work until they drop dead.

Certainly, northern hemisphere governments have had plenty of warning and opportunity to set up for this winter's return and those preparations may turn out to have been overkill, although I doubt it. The virulence of this particular bug seems to be undoubted and we've already seen some extreme measures were needed last winter to contain it as best as we could.

One bright spot in all this nervous-making anxiety is this flu might be the final key in unlocking true healthcare reform, albeit at a tragic and hefty price.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Plagues and pestilence

By Carl

Well, when you weren't looking, yet another nasty bug pops up on the radar...

BEIJING — Officials have sealed off an isolated town of 10,000 people in rural west-central China after an outbreak of pneumonic plague killed two residents, the state-run Xinhua news service reported on Monday.

An official who answered the emergency line at Renmin Hospital in Ziketan, where the outbreak is centered, said that all roads into and out of the area had been closed off, but that residents remained free to move about within the town. The official, who refused to give his name, said it was unclear when the blockade would be lifted. Repeated calls to a plague emergency phone line produced only busy signals.

Pneumonc plague is airborne, as opposed to its cousin, the bubonic plague, which is transferred by flea bites. It usually occurs in rural areas (the US has about 15 cases a year) where bacteria forms in the dung of livestock and then is aerosolized in some fashion. Without the proper treatment, antibiotics within 24 hours of symptoms appearing, the disease is nearly 100% fatal.

So now we're tracking swine flu, avian flu, the plague and in addition to all these, there's a new form of HIV floating around, which will upend current scientific assumptions:

Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been identified in an African woman and researchers say it appears to be the first to be transmitted to humans from gorillas instead of chimpanzees.
The 62-year-old woman infected with the new strain of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, comes from the West African nation of Cameroon and now lives in Paris. She has no symptoms of AIDS, according to today’s report in the journal Nature from researchers at the University of Rouen in France.

The new strain, known as HIV-1, group P, is different enough from three previously identified strains that it can’t be detected by conventional laboratory tests, said Paul Sharp, a geneticist who studies AIDS at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The new form of the virus is unlikely to spread to large numbers of people, he said.

Sharp goes onto say that he doesn't believe this strain will be widespread or highly infectious. Then again, in the early 1980s, scientists thought AIDS was some "gay plague" limited only to unprotected sex.

When even keeping your hands clean can promote getting sick, you know things are a bit scary.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Klaatu barada nikto

By J. Thomas Duffy



Oh, sorry, wrong video.

That's the 1951 classic The Day The Earth Stood Still.

We meant to post Vice President Joe Biden, speaking today on The Today Show on how he would be handling the Swine Flu.

Biden: ‘Wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places’

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Well, the earth hasn't stood still, there isn't panic in the streets, but Biden is sure catching a lot of crap:

Vice president Joe Biden said today he would tell his family members not to use subways in the U.S. and implied schools should be shuttered as the swine flu outbreak spread to 16 states. His remarks quickly caused a stir, drawing a rebuke from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and later leading the White House to apologize.

The uproar began when Biden appeared on NBC's "Today" show and said he would advise against riding the subway or taking commercial flights and implied schools should be shuttered amid confirmation of the first swine-flu relation death in the U.S.

"I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said when Matt Lauer asked whether he would advise family members to use public transportation.

"I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now. It's not that it's going to Mexico, it's you're in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft. That's me. I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation suggesting they ride the subway. "

The vice president also implied that schools should be closed as the threat of swine flu increases.

[Snip]

About two hours after the interview, Biden's office issued a statement attempting to clarify the vice president's remarks.

[Snip]

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs apologized for Biden's remarks, saying the vice president misspoke.

It's been said, that "Klaatu barada nikto," in Klaatu's native, intergalactic language, translates to:

"Biden being Biden"



(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Strap on your tinfoil chefs' hats

By J. Thomas Duffy

And with good cause.

I had been looking at various articles, and posts, on the burgeoning Swine Flu pandemic (breaking this evening: 1. U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu, and, 2. It may be enormo-corp Smithfield Foods at the epicenter of it), and came across DownWithTyranny (you should book mark this blog -- typically excellent writing, research, and perspective).

Behind The Food, Inc Movie-- Massive Bribes To Congress From AgriBusiness

Last night I went to see the Anvil movie. It was great. But a trailer for Food, Inc stuck in my consciousness as much as the story about these Jewish Canadian heavy metal rockers. And I found that trailer... for you ...

It's not just about healthy and nutritious food either. With the whole country alarmed about an unending series of food-borne illnesses and, courtesy of the "Free Market" Bush gang and their Republican accomplices in Congress, a hollowed-out FDA, more frequent sudden death from taking a bite-- whether from China, Mexico... or Georgia-- food industry lobbyists are pressuring the members of Congress they've financed to prohibit even debate on the food industry! Tools of AgriBusiness run the regulatory industries meant to protect consumers but that, under the GOP and the equally corrupt Blue Dogs, now protect only company profits.

And this video was posted;

Food, Inc



DWT details the huge money behind AgriBusiness Lobby, and also details the pols getting bagloads of it.

Then, I checked out the Food Inc website:

How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli--the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising -- and often shocking truths -- about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

It's not Grandma's kitchen anymore.

It will be worth your time to check out the DownWithTyranny post, and Food Inc website.


Bonus Food Riffs

M'm! M'm! Good!

Forget About Tuesday, Cash On The Barrelhead Today, Wimpy!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Tell Tomatoes Are Safe Again

Spam-A-Lot ...The Eating Kind!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways Spinach Industry Plans To Overcome E. Coli Setback




(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Around the World: China, Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Ukraine, and the Vatican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The latest in our ongoing series... (for previous entries, see here or here).

1) China: "China's exports have dropped into their biggest decline in a decade. Exports in December were down 2.8% from the same time last year, a bigger decline than November's 2.2% drop, the China Daily said."

Even though "China's economy relies on domestic demand for its goods and services more than any other country in Asia," which is to say, even though the decline in exports is perhaps less of a concern to China than it would be for others, what the numbers show is that "China is no more immune to worldwide trade problems than any other large economy." And it is likely to get worse: "With Japan, the US and Europe now in recession, China's heavily trade-dependent economy is expected to harder hit through the coming year."

Still, a growth rate of 7.5% in 2009 wouldn't be so bad, would it?

2) Zimbabwe: "Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday."

As if it weren't already bad enough in that wretched place, what with the tyrant Mugabe clinging to power and continuing to oppress the people, now there's this, which "has spread to all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems." And the situation will only get worse during the January-March rainy season.

3) Somalia: "Ethiopian troops pulled out from crucial bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Islamist fighters who seized their positions."

And so, with the Ethiopians soon to be out, within a matter of days, Somalia is left to the Somalis... and to "Somalia’s Islamist movement," which "has made a steady comeback, with Islamist factions again controlling much of the country.

One war is over, but another is already underway: "Many Western diplomats and other Somalia analysts have warned that once all the Ethiopians are gone, the various Islamist factions will unleash their considerable firepower on each other in a scramble to take over the country. Some of that fighting has already kicked off, with dozens of people killed in the past week in combat between moderate and radical Islamist factions."

4) Ukraine: "Just hours after Russia resumed delivery of natural gas to the European Union through Ukrainian pipelines, Kiev has admitted to blocking the supplies. Ukraine is claiming that Gazprom has established 'unacceptable' conditions for the transit of the gas to Europe."

It's a complicated situation, obviously, with Gazprom blaming the U.S. for backing the Ukraine (and accusing the Ukraine of stealing gas), but it is essentially a regional dispute between Moscow and Kiev "over gas pricing and the lucrative transit fees paid to Kiev for gas transported across its pipelines." (Though Anne Applebaum notes that it was actually Putin, who still runs the show in Russia, who actually turned off the gas, not Gazprom. So it's political, not just commercial, and, this year, Russia is very much to blame.)

Russian gas is essential to much of Europe, but what is needed is for Europe to disentangle itself from the situation by reducing its dependency on Russian gas in the first place. And that requires, in Applebaum's view (one I share, though I defer to her expertise here), "a true, unified E.U. energy policy," even if, as Clay Risen points out, there are no "easy or obvious answers" and, to put it mildly, "difficulties inherent in any such effort."

5) Vatican: "Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year. But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged."

You think?

Year in Review

By Carl

OK, so it's the penultimate day of 2008.

I wait all year to use that word, "penultimate". It reminds me of the Parker ballpoint I got for graduating from junior high school.

Careful readers of my blog might recall that, back on January 4, I ran a special "Nobody Asked Me, But..." in which I predicted the top ten stories of 2008.

Let's look at those predictions again:

1) Sub-Saharan Africa - What can be said about what I picked as the most important story of 2008 except that I hate being right. Cholera and ebola outbreaks in Zimbabwe and the Congo, a stolen election in Zimbabwe that's threatening to overrun South Africa, tribal warfare in Nigeria, Somalia in chaos again... did I mention the pirates?

2) Global Warming - Well, what can I say? Two devastating wildfires in Santa Barbara, tornadoes at Christmas (!?), Hurricane Ike and five other storms touching down in the US as well as Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (which killed 85,000 people, tho you never read about it), and 87 tornadoes on Super Tuesday. Apparently, God didn't like His choices much.

3) Oil - Crude futures averaged $100 a barrel this year, and that's with the high of $147 a barrel in June. This likely caused #7 below.

4) 2008 Elections - I'd say I was right about this being an important story. I'm tempted to say this should have been swapped with number 2 for importance. The Congressional races were, as I pointed out, the real story of the general election. Even now, the entire story has not been written, as Minnesota is taking its time announcing the winner of its senate race.

5) Biotechnology - Believe it or not, this was a big year for biotech. For example, despite the cool Spring temperatures and June floods, the corn crop was the second largest ever produced in America, thanks to biotech. Soy had it's fourth largest crop. And who can forget the Gardasil battle? The genes for lung cancer were identified. And the crowning achievement: the transplant of a patient's windpipe grown from her own stem cells.

6) Beijing Olympics - pictorial proof:

7) Economic disaster - Your 401(k) lost 40% of its value in 2008 alone, 50% since October 2007. The Bush administration, yet again, proved its inability to respond to any crisis that didn't involve sending troops in.

8) Nationalism - I put this forward as an economic issue, never imagining that when the US sneezed, the world might catch its flu. No one really stepped up to absorb weakened US companies. We saw Saudis invest heavily in Citigroup, but they already had sizable investments there. Nomura Holdings did buy Lehman Brothers, but any chance of GM or Ford being bought is in abeyance as the bailout program is rolled out. I'd take this one off the list.

9) Indonesia - Again, I focused on natural disaster in Indonesia. This was a bit of a gamble, to be frank. altho I couched it in terms of "near term". Java did suffer some landslides, and many other parts of the island chain had fires, floods and landslides as the year closed. Estimates are that some 500-1,000 people died as the result of these events. The prediction I made was for a catastrophic event to occur. These were mostly do to deforestation and bad land management practices.

10) Avian flu - Fewer human deaths this year than last, however the disease remains as virulent in the avian population as ever and is spreading farther afield now. However, this is pretty disturbing news.

I'll have my predictions for 2009 up on Friday. Tomorrow, I look back on the year passed with a bit more reflectivity.

That's right, I'll put on my tin-foil hat!

(Cross-posted at Simply Left Behind.)

Around the World: Zimbabwe, Belarus, Greece, Russia, and Turkey

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This, apparently, is Post #6,000 at The Reaction. I suppose that's a milestone of sorts. Let's use the occasion to do another installment of our Around the World series (which we haven't done in some time):

1) Zimbabwe: "A cholera epidemic is sweeping across Zimbabwe, causing further suffering to millions of people already struggling to survive in a country close to systemic collapse as food shortages and hyperinflation continue to take their toll." It's pretty grim, to say the least -- and, as the BBC notes, it does not even have permission to report from Zimbabwe.

2) Belarus: "Police have arrested dozens of opposition activists across Belarus after a series of protests marking international Human Rights Day." Oh, what a lovely dictatorship. (And such irony: human rights abuses on Human Rights Day.)

3) Greece: "Riot police battled protesters outside Greece's parliament and in Athens suburbs yesterday while opposition socialists called for the conservative government to step down to end the worst civil unrest in decades." It's a complicated situation, but, essentially, students have risen up against the government of conservative Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis in the wake of the killing of a 15-year old boy by police. As the editor of one of the country's leading newspapers put it, the killing "It will quickly become a flag of convenience for anyone who has a grudge against the state, the government, the economic system, foreign powers, capitalism and so on." More here.

4) Russia: "[T]he Kremlin seems to be capitalizing on the economic crisis, exploiting the opportunity to establish more control over financially weakened industries that it has long coveted, particularly those in natural resources." Putin's authoritarian centralization -- and, make no mistake, he's still in charge -- is disturbing, but it's not like the alternative, the rule of the oligarchs and the various other corrupt and criminal elements that dominate Russian society, is terribly appealing either.

5) Turkey: "Amid corruption scandals and stagnating reform, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, praised in Europe as a modernizer, is seeking refuge in nationalist rhetoric, adopting a tougher stance on the Kurds and moving closer to the country's military leaders." It is nationalism, and not so much patriotism, that is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and certainly of the desperate politician seeking to distract public attention away from what really matters. Yet again, and so predictably, it's the glorification of the Self (us) and the vilification of the Other (them). And, in this case, it could put a halt to Turkey's pro-European modernization efforts and lead to further destabilization in northern Iraq (Kurdistan).

Some People Will Be Hungry This Thanksgiving - Reprise

By Carol Gee

Thanksgiving Day 2008 -- Bountiful tables, full tummies, excess leftovers characterize many of our Thanksgiving feasts. On one of our favorite holidays in the United States, we give thanks for all we have. Today's post is an updated republication of a post that has remained popular since it first appeared in 2005. I begin with an update:

An economist's view -- "The world financial, food and hunger crisis" by Lane Vanderslice from World Hunger Notes (updated Nov. 11, 2008). Some points:

1. The world food crisis has been replaced in large part by the world financial crisis.


2. . . . food prices have soared. . . rice, the staple food of billions of people, more than doubled from 2003 through March 2008. . . This is a crisis for the poorest people in the world. 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less. They spend approximately 50 percent of their income on food.


3. [Causes] What are key factors affecting the supply of food? [On] Demand side: There has been strong economic growth for the world economy over the past 10 years or so. . . the quantity people demand of food does not vary much with changes in prices. . . Commodity speculation has been widespread.


4. Supply side: A major factor affecting the supply of food has been the diversion of crop land to fuel production. . . the agricultural production of developing countries is now directed to a greater extent toward producing for export to developed countries rather than to producing goods for their own people. . . There have also been certain shortfalls in production. . . Assistance to agriculture by developed countries and multilateral development banks has been minimal, and, though some countries have adequately supported their agriculture sector including India and China, others have not, including many and perhaps most countries of Africa. Agricultural producers, especially the poorest, in Africa and elsewhere have been exploited or neglected by governments. Assistance to agriculture by developed countries and multilateral development banks has fallen dramatically.

Wikipedia page "Malnutrition" 2008 -- has what appears to be some good entries. For example:

Some environmentalists claim that the fundamental issue causing malnutrition is that the human population exceeds the Earth's carrying capacity;^[5] however, Food First raises the issue of food sovereignty and claims that every country (with the possible minor exceptions of some city-states) has sufficient agricultural capacity to feed its own people, but that the "free trade" economic order associated with such institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank prevent this from happening. At the other end of the spectrum, the World Bank itself claims to be part of the solution to malnutrition, asserting that the best way for countries to succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition is to build export-led economies that will give them the financial means to buy foodstuffs on the world market.

World Hunger Notes is a fabulous resource for the latest news about world hunger. For example:

• Rising unemployment could push an additional 7.5 million to 10.3 million United States residents below the federal poverty line in the next two or three years, study says Eric Eckholm New York Times November 24, 2008.
• Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately US food security report says Michael J. Sniffen Associated Press November 17, 2008

The original post -- Some Will Be Hungry This Thanksgiving -- Nov. 23, 2005

How does it feel to be hungry, really hungry? It is not the kind of hunger that comes with having missed a meal. It is also not the kind of hunger one feels when doing a very purposeful "cleansing fast," or fasting on Fridays, in the old days of an observed liturgical holy week.

This hunger is that which comes from not getting anything to eat, or very little to eat, on a regular basis for days, weeks, months or years at a time. It comes from not getting a nutritionally balanced diet. This kind of hunger makes it difficult, if not impossible for mothers to nurse their infants. Infants do not grow and thrive if they live. People - adults and children - starve to death, or they die of diseases brought on by malnutrition. There are entire nations starving or desperately endangered today; right now. And there far too many people in these United States that are also hungry. This week, this coming Thanksgiving Day, the weekend following , millions are hungry. For many of the rest of us, we will be trying to figure out what to do with all our leftovers.

A recent Reuters story focused on the just published United Nations report on hunger in the world which states that 6 million children a year die from hunger related causes. (see also the terrific pop up map in the title link above) Quoting Reuters,

Most of the 6 million child deaths a year are not due to starvation but
rather to neonatal disorders and diseases like diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles which would be easily curable if the victims were not weakened by lack of nutrition.

The food crisis brought about by climate change is also part of the larger hunger picture. The BBC article begins,

Climate change threatens to put far more people at risk of hunger over the next 50 years than previously thought, according to new research. Scientists say expected shifts in rain patterns and temperatures over that time could lead to an extra 50 million people struggling to get enough food.

(BBC image) In Africa people in Malawi face a maize crisis. Quoting,

The worse harvest in a decade and failed rains are being blamed for what aid agencies warn is a rapidly emerging food crisis. What is making matters worse is HIV/Aids. One in seven people in Malawi is affected and it is fueling the problem of extreme hunger. Money that households would normally spend on buying seed and fertiliser, is being spent on transporting the sick to hospital and buying basic medicine instead.

In Zimbabwe even their own soldiers are hungry enough that there are shortages of food in the barracks and forced leaves. High food prices are a factor in Niger's hunger problems, because of the high demand for food in the surrounding countries. The crisis of African hunger was debated in this BBC feature; some of the discussion comments were excellent. Millions are at risk in Africa, but so are millions in southern Asia.

Earthquake survivors face winter hunger in the Kashmir area. It is a major crisis for the millions left homeless by the quakes in Pakistan, Kashmir and India. The article states, "As of 16 October, food had reached 440,000 people but an estimated 560,000 remained in "desperate need of assistance".

In our own hemisphere hunger is a major problem in several contries. The BBC reports that Guatemalans face hunger as a result of the recent natural disaster, Hurricane Stan. Rats ate the crops of many people in Nicaragua, one of the poorest nations in the Central America. The BBC article headlines, "The UN is to send 230 tons of emergency food aid to thousands of Miskito Indians facing hunger in Nicaragua."

Here at home, the Food Research and Action Center is an excellent site for exploring hunger in the United States. America's Second Harvest, the nation's food bank network, has excellent material on hunger in the U. S. The Children's Defense Fund explores the question of U.S. children's hunger in this 6-page PDF document. Here is what the USDA site has to say about "food security" in the U.S.:

Eighty-eight percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year 2004, meaning that they had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households were food insecure at least some time during that year. The prevalence of food insecurity was 11.9 percent in 2004, up from 11.2 percent in 2003. The prevalence of food insecurity with hunger was 3.9 percent in 2004, up from 3.5 percent in 2003.

Since our population was 290,342,554 in July of 2003, the "3.9% of food insecurity with hunger" translates into 11, 323,360 hungry people in the United States. Is there anything that can be done about the recent increase in hunger? The above paragraph on hunger in America includes several references in the linked articles to organizations that endeavor to feed people who go to bed hungry. In your own city, there is probably a food bank, a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter that could use some help, either volunteering or donating. And many churches, synagogues and mosques as well as other faith based organizations focus of food pantries or feeding programs.

World wide, diminishing poverty and the predominance of violence and war will help. Improvements in agriculture are key to the long term solution. For example, unraveling the DNA code of the rice genome may be an answer for many countries where rice is the predominant staple.

Reference: Wikipedia's excellent section on hunger discusses many aspects of the problem and includes links to many organizations that work on hunger.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)