Crap journalism – swine flu, risk communication

In the New York Times, think tanker, James Jay Carafano (areas of expertise: homeland security, defense, military affairs, affairs, post-conflict operations, and counterrorism) gets hot under the collar about “news stories [that] play fast and loose with terms like ‘outbreak,’ ‘epidemic,’ and ‘pandemic.'”

His advice: “We should all just wash our hands and go to the doctor if we have flu symptoms.” Er, wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (area of expertise: public health):

If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

CDC is happy for people to contact their doctor if they need advice, but it only recommends adults seek emergency medical treatment if they have: (i) Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; (ii) Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen; (iii) Sudden dizziness; (iv) Confusion; (v) Severe or persistent vomiting. (The advice for children is similar – the list of warning symptoms different.)

In the UK, health authorities are even more explicit about the fact they don’t want people with flu sitting around in doctor’s waiting rooms. “If you have flu-like symptoms and have recently travelled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who has, stay at home and contact either your GP or NHS Direct on 0845 4647,” advises the NHS. Treating people without requiring face-to-face contact with healthcare professionals is at the heart of of the UK’s pandemic flu plan.

Carafano’s sins are minor compared with this preposterous Guardian article by Simon Jenkins (core expertise: frothing at the mouth).  According to Jenkins, swine flu is “a panic stoked in order to posture and spend” – with the public too moronic to resist having the wool pulled over its eyes:

We appear to have lost all ability to judge risk. The cause may lie in the national curriculum, the decline of “news” or the rise of blogs and concomitant, unmediated hysteria, but people seem helpless in navigating the gulf that separates public information from their daily round.

The government was “barking mad” to convene its emergency planning committee, Jenkins argues, while the World Health Organization is not really worried – it’s just making a pathetic bid to shore up its funding. Attention-whore doctors, health and safety hysterics, and rapacious drugs companies are all in on the plot, while ‘professional expertise’ (presumably from shrinking violent newspaper columnists) is being completely ignored.

BSE, SARs and avian flu, meanwhile, provide cast iron assurance that no pandemic is on the way. (more…)

Swine flu vs. the Black Death

Paul Kedrosky has dug up this interesting map of the spread of the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century – a process that took place gradually, over a span of four years.

blackdeath

So how would such a map look if used to plot the spread of a pandemic today, Kedrosky wonders? Well:

there would be similarities, of course, but there would also be big differences. Instead of contiguous, banded advance you would see viruses hurled ahead of the index cases by air travel, like spot fires a mile ahead of a Santa Ana-driven wildfire. Instead of bands you would have clusters and jumps, mostly corresponding to airline disease vectors. And instead of four years to travel through a corner of the known world, you would have the virus around the world in four days, as is the case today with this H1N1 swine outbreak.

Interesting coda: in comments, Matt Dubuque notes that when the Black Death wiped out a significant chunk of the English labour force in 1340, remaining agricultural labourers were able to crank their wage rates sky high. Presto! – major resource transfer from rich to poor.

Swine flu: how to stay alive

Over on the public health section of the always-excellent Change.org, Alanna Shaikh has helpfully written The Definitive Swine Flu Post.  Here’s her advice:

1. Swine flu will spread globally. The only question is whether it will be a mild flu or a severe one. It could still go either way. My best guess would be that it will be bad, but not mass-death-1918 pandemic bad.

2. If you want to routinely protect yourself from swine flu, wash your hands every single time you enter a building with facilities to wash. This means when you go into your house, your office, a restaurant, a bar, whatever. Carry hand sanitizer, and disinfect your hands before eating if you are away from home and can’t wash your hands right before. Do not kiss your friends hello. Don’t share food, or eat the unwrapped mints from that bowl in the foyer of the Italian restaurant down the street. Now would be a very good time to quit biting your nails.

3. If your city sees an outbreak of swine flu, avoid crowds. Don’t take public transport, or attend public events like concerts or sports games. Limit your social contact by reducing your shopping trips to once a week. Wearing a mask is overkill unless your local health department recommends it.

4. If you have flu symptoms, stay home. Call your doctor, and describe your symptoms. She will decide if you need to go to a hospital. (Do NOT go straight to an emergency room.) Don’t go to school or work. If you do have to go out (like you live alone and need food), wear a mask and choose a time that minimizes human contact. Avoid contact with the people in your house. Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing, and use paper tissues and flush them once they are used. Clean surfaces like doorknobs with a regular cleaner, like Lysol.

5. If you are genuinely terrified of bodies-in-the-streets mass public health hysteria, then prepare. It will make you feel better, and in the unlikely event your worst fears come true, it will help. If you can afford them, emergency supplies are always good to have. Any number of websites can help you make a plan. The CDC is a good place to start.

To which I’d add: if you do live alone, then you’re more vulnerable and you need to be thinking ahead.  The vulnerability here is less to infection per se than just the lack of backup: someone to go and get your Tamiflu from the chemist, or to get some food in for you.

So as Charlie recounts in his excellent new pamphlet Resilient Nation, the kind of preparation you really need to be thinking about is less a cupboard full of Tamiflu or a cellar full of canned food than a social network you can rely on.  So if / when you get to the point when infection rates are rising in your area, then agree to buddy up with friends and check on each other regularly. Swap phone numbers with your neighbours, so that if one of you falls ill then you can keep in touch without sneezing all over each other. Think about who else might need help in your circle or on your street.

Swine flu cooked up in a lab (updatedx8)

From 9/11 truther mission control, Infowars, comes stunning news: “deadly swine flu… was cooked up in a lab.”

Yes – the first swine flu conspiracy theories are hitting the Internets, providing a rare opportunity to view these numb skull paranoids as they struggle to assemble a few fragments of information into a suitably cunning plot.

Here’s how it goes:

Evidence: The flu virus is reported to combine “genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before.” Implication: the virus was probably deliberately released.

Evidence:  “In all U.S. cases, the victims had no contact with any pigs.” ImplicationPigs are evil… er they caught it from other people… er pigs never had anything to do with it.

Evidence: A public health official says: “This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere [before].” Implication: The poor guy wasn’t referring to standard identification techniques, but letting slip vital details of a dastardly scheme. WE TOLD YOU IT WAS DELIBERATELY RELEASED.

Evidence: The world has huge stock piles of Tamiflu. Top globalists and Bilderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld” have a financial interest in Tamiflu. Implication: THEY’RE BEHIND THE ATTACK.

Evidence: The 1976 swine flu scare didn’t add up to much. Implication: RUMSFELD WAS BEHIND THAT TOO.

Now I am sure the story will become more polished as additional information is available to be distorted. But remember. This is how it started. And this is how little evidence these cretins need to start spinning their fantasies…

(more…)