(click to enlarge) - photo credit

Lyrics from Poor Ned, by Redgum :

Eighteen hundred and seventy eight
Was the year I remember so well
They put my father in an early grave
Slung my mother in gaol
Now I don't know what's right or wrong
But they hung Christ on nails
Six kids at home and two still on the breast
They wouldn't even give her bail

"It's A Dog Marooned On An Island Story. George Clooney Can Play The Dog"



I wrote back here what an obviously excellent tale for the movies the story of Sophie The Wonder Dog is. Dog falls off boat, dog swims through shark infested waters, dog spends weeks on a tropical island fending for itself, dogs learns to hunt and eat goats, owners never believe Sophie is dead, dog is rescued, reunited with owners, everyone weeps and leaves the cinema feeling great.

Simple.

A great Australian movie about a great Australian dog.

But now Hollywood is getting involved.

This first PR pitch, however, isn't promising :

"...it's Castaway meets Survivor except it's a dog. Americans love uplifting stories about animals."

So does the rest of the world. So don't turn Sophie's Story into loud, moist American schlock.

And if Sophie isn't a Blue Heeler in the movie, with an Australian accent (if she must talk at all) there will be cinema boycotts.

When Washing Your Hands Is Caving In To A Rudd Fear Campaign

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot yesterday thought this is good advice to lessen the chance of becoming infected with the new ManBirdPig flu virus, or Influenza A H1N1 :

1: Don’t go to Mexico. Step 2: Wash your hands.

He thinks this is good advice, and it is, but it's NOT when Prime Minister Rudd thinks so :

...there is no fear so ill-founded that Kevin “Do Something” Rudd isn’t on hand to offer totally unnecessary advice designed to make you worry more, not less:

Wash your hands, PM says

Wash Your Hands = Totally Unnecessary Advice.

This whip-lashing about face by The Professional Idiot on simple hygiene took less than 12 hours. A brain scan may be needed.

Do you think The Professional Idiot told his family to stop washing their hands to prove that he's right and PM Rudd is a crazed fearmongerist?

Any doctor will tell you washing your hands regularly, a few times a day, will lessen your chances of becoming infected with ANY flu virus, and people should be reminded of that simple fact at the start of every flu season, not just when the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic alert to threat level 5 out of 6.

This incomprehensible fuckwit is leading his more gullible readers down a very, very dangerous path of anti-Rudd irrationality.

UPDATE : A prediction from The Professional Idiot, for the ages :

Australians are more likely to be eaten by mice than to die of swine flu.

That sound you hear is thousands of pandemic-briefed health professionals laughing, in horror.

To Stockpile Or Not To Stockpile

By Darryl Mason

A "run on the shops" to stock up on enough food and water to last your household for two weeks of voluntary home isolation is exactly what's needed to pump those $900 bonuses straight back into the economy :

The Federal Government's pandemic plan, a 132-page manual issued to medics, media and the public, insists that once the world reaches phase five, Australians should stock their pantries with food and bottled water to last 14 days, check on elderly neighbours and put emergency numbers by the phone.

But yesterday a spokesman for the Department of Health and Ageing called for calm, saying the Government did not want to spark panic buying - ignoring its own plan, already issued to hospitals across the nation.

"I agree that is it confusing," the spokesman said, admitting he had not read the pandemic plan despite being employed to answer questions about it from national media. "The manual may say people should be preparing but we don't want a run at the shops," he said.

It doesn't matter what the government wants. The people will do whatever they think they have to do to ensure their loved ones are going to get through whatever is coming next.

Woolworth's getting emptied in a weekend of fevered stockpile shopping is the least of their problems if an influenza pandemic is on the verge of being declared (if it hasn't already inside the government).

The pandemic response plans made back in 2005 and 2006 were deadly serious, very detailed. Most didn't read them. It's not too late to get some of the highlights of how prepared you are expected to be for something most didn't even know was coming this time last Friday morning :

Residents are advised to stock their pantries with drinks, including three litres of water for each person each day, dried and long-life food such as canned meals, toilet paper, batteries, candles, matches, manual can openers and water sterilising tablets. Analgesics, masks, gloves, a thermometer, disinfectant and prescription medications should also be stockpiled and people should have enough supplies to stay in their homes for 14 days.

Householders should also have plenty of tissues, alcohol-based hand-wash dispensers in kitchens and bathrooms, and soap and disposable towels near all sinks, the manual says.

14 days.

And three litres a water a day is the minimum you need per day, it doesn't include water for washing clothes, or bathing.

If you had to take the family off to a central coast holiday house for two weeks, and the house had nothing but the kitchen basics, what would you take with you if you thought you wouldn't be able to get to the shops? And the place might run out of running water? And electricity?

Here's a story from 2006 detailing just how extensively Australian businesses were preparing back then for an influenza pandemic. The public fear then was of a bird flu pandemic, but Australian and American government response plans were always for the "inevitable" influenza pandemic, not a pandemic of just one type of influenza :

Mounting fears of an avian flu outbreak amongst humans has caused Australian businesses to stockpile anti-viral drugs and face masks and make definitive plans for how they will continue to operate when almost half of their workers may be off work, either ill or looking after someone who is.

Pandemic risk committees already exist within major companies such as Bluescope Steel and Telstra while the Commonwealth Bank has appointed a pandemic planning project manager.

Expanded computer networks to enable staff to work from home in the event of an outbreak have been included in the preparations against bird flu.

Through its relationship with medical support agency International SOS, BHP Billiton, has stockpiles of anti-viral drugs in regional offices considered at high risk.

The Bank of Queensland has proposed to implement basic hygiene education for staff. According to immunologists this measure would help to reduce the spread of disease if a pandemic develops.

Businesses have been advised to plan for up to half their staff being absent due to illness, or caring for sick family members or children because of school being closed.

As immunologist Ron Penny said," There's no strong recommendation that people who have a seriously infectious disease should stay at home. I think we need to educate people".

Federal Government advisers have warn that economically, Queensland would be the hardest hit of any Australian state with even a modest level pandemic causing a loss of about $11 billion, off the Gross State Product (GSP) in the first year alone.

According to Telstra's network services managing director Michael Lawrey preparations for the likelihood of a pandemic were slightly higher in intensity than planning for other business risks such as fires, cyclones and floods.

Don't worry, Australia's biggest businesses are well prepared if the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic threat level to 6 (its highest) over the weekend, or if the Rudd government officially announces we may all have to think about taking a 10 day long 'home-cation" sometime soon.

But how prepared are you?

Just in case.


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Some Things Are More Important Than A Pandemic

By Darryl Mason

The biggest story in the United States today is the "imminent" pandemic of Swine Flu/Pork Fever/Frankenstein Flu/H1N1/Bacon Lung. Right?

Wrong.

At least, it's not at KFSN-TV in Fresno California :



The very popular video of a 61 year old Californian cannabis grower standing out front of a courthouse, unpacking, weighing and then repacking the twelve pounds of medicine (to check it was all there) that has just been returned to him by police, by order of a judge, can be viewed here.

More on that story and America's news obsession with cannabis stories here.


As I mentioned yesterday, while Bacon Lung, or Pork Throat (it is an upper respiratory virus) is at the top of the evening news, as the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic alert level from 5 to 6, the Australian media is having a hard time selling this story to a mostly skeptical public. There are still no deaths in Australia from it, there is no celebrity connection to it, yet, and outside of colourful heat scans of airport arrivees, and I Am Legend-like projections of what life will be like during and after a full-blown influenza pandemic, the rest of the visual story of what's actually going on is not very exciting to watch.

At all.

And readers of online daily newspapers in Australia couldn't be less interested. For now.


(click to enlarge)

Outside of The Australian, not one pre-pandemic or H1N1 influenza-related story makes the Most Popular Stories lists in the Murdoch online tabloids. In Sydney's Daily Telegraph, what may be one of the biggest story in a generation doesn't even rate in the Top Ten most viewed :



Readers of the Fairfax online newspapers are only slightly more interested, and only because Hugh Jackman's cancelled a premiere for his new movie in Mexico :


(click to enlarge)

All the Australian media would get more readers clicking on swine flu headlines if they called it Pork Throat. Or Bacon Lung. Or Year Long Sex Celebrity Weight Loss Alien Flu.

Public disinterest will change if an 'Oh, Fuck! Pandemic!' leads to the cancellation of the State Of Origin, of course, or if any of the following becomes reality :

* Belinda Neil returns from Mexico with Mad Pig Brain Fever, causing her to rant about "demon babies" and the poor service of wine bar restuarants in Mexico.

* International cricket players wind up on a slab.

* Long dead Osama Bin Laden announces in a "new video" that Al Qaeda bioweapons specialists released the virus to end the Allah-insulting American lust for deep-fried bacon.

* Barry Hall goes into 'voluntary' home isolation, coughing blood.

* The entire casts of Neighbours and Home & Away decide to do some "location shooting" on a remote, uninhabited island in the WhitSundays for the next six months.

* Mel & Kochie start broadcasting their morning show from the top of a 100 foot tower, surrounded by a moat of fire, in a remote Queensland rain forest.

* The Footy Show hosts appear in biosuits, or in glass bubbles.

* Federal parliament decides to "temporarily relocate" to a huge sealed plastic dome on top of Uluru.

* It turns out that 10% of all H1N1 victims are likely to turn into brain-hungry zombies.


US Vice President Says New Flu So Dangerous He's Already Warned His Family To Stay Out Of Planes, Trains And Automobiles - But When Did He Warn Them?


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You'll Know It's Serious When They Cancel The State Of Origin

By Darryl Mason

There is talk getting around about the proposed cancellation of State Of Origin matches, as governments in New South Wales and Queensland fire up their pandemic response plans. The pandemic response plans also include, eventually, closing most places where people gather in crowds - cinemas, schools, child care centres, public transport, shopping malls, restaurants, theatres, cafes and pubs, and some of these closures may happen even if we don't have a slab of new flu deaths once the World Health Organisation moves its pandemic alert from 5 to 6, its highest alert status.

But major sporting events are still going on elsewhere in the world, they're just closed to the public, so big crowds don't gather in the stands and potentially share the Frankenstein Flu amongst themselves. The Qld government, however, is apparently considering not having the State of Origin held at all. Not letting crowds come to the games, but still holding the sports event so fans can at least watch it at home, seems almost normal if we are actually in pre-pandemic days. But cancelling these events completely?

If most of the city populations have to, eventually, stay in their homes for a week or two, to lessen the spread and the potential for the H1N1 virus to continue swapping genes and growing stronger, maybe more deadly, people will need those familiar events on the box to go ahead as normal. If a pandemic unfolds.

Life without footy on the TV might please some, but there are millions who will need the big games to still be played, live, if only to distact them for a while from the rest of the chaos.

With or without a pandemic, I'm with the PM on this, Wash Your Hands.

This is a chunk of what I wrote up on Your New Reality last night :

It's fine to laugh and mock and be rationally paranoid and snortingly, skeptically question what is unfolding, and how the mainstream media and blogs are covering the possible pre-pandemic, and hyping it, and this questioning and personal judging of the information you're getting should be done, always, your brain demands you question reality, particularly a new reality that seems to be coming on with the momentum of monumental historical events, question it all.

But refusing to develop a handwashing routine as whatever is going to happen unfolds, refusing to increase the frequency of a basic routine of personal hygiene, might in the end turn out to be a pretty fucking big risk to take just to say You Weren't Fooled By Fearmongering Media when the pandemic doesn't become reality.

I've never asked any readers here to donate money to keep the site going, and I won't (though I might try and flog you a few books sometime soon), but you can take this message as a kind of call for a Your New Reality Donation Drive. Your donation to this site is this : You will spend an extra five to ten minutes a day keeping your hands clean, and the hands of your family members, and particularly your children, just for the next few weeks, at the very least. That's it.

Do whatever else you think you should do to prepare for what may happen, or do nothing and soak up the reality-cracking Fearorama of the evening news. Regardless, get your hands in water and soap, five or six times a day and that will be the only donation I will ever ask you for.

But if you do start to notice on the news that Richard Branson, The Royal Family, Al Gore, Stephen Spielberg, Tom Cruise, the entire US Cabinet, Henry Kissinger and Oprah Winfrey have been climbing into personal space ships and blasting off from Planet Earth with no plans to return for a little while, then maybe, maybe, you should check to see if you've got enough food, and water.

Read The Rest Of The Story Here

Aporkalypse When?

The World Health Organisation spoils Frankenstein Flu hysteria, for now :

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says there have only been seven laboratory-confirmed swine flu deaths, all in Mexico, from 79 confirmed cases around the world.

The Australian media appears to be rapidly losing interest. Frankenstein Flu has not delivered a body count here yet, despite the dozens in voluntary home 'quarantine', and seeing the isolated infection-suspected being interviewed by phone from behind their front window is about as exciting a visual for the evening news as new internet cable being laid.

Comments on news.com.au are heaving with talk of bioweapons and Big Pharma conspiracies to flog more anti-virals (the old stockpiles are hitting or passed their expiration dates), but the mainstream media hasn't even begun to nibble at any of this stuff yet.

They probably won't, denying many of their readers exactly the kind of stories they want to hear and read about, even if it is to only debunk them.

The history of bioweapons and bioresearch labs mixing influenza genes, from a variety of animals, including human, bird and swine, makes for some wild, but still interesting reading.


UPDATE : First Official New Flu Death In US

From news.com.au :

• 10:56pm US swine flu child visited Mexico

Seeing media tag the 22 month old Texas victim of H1N1 as 'The Swine Flu Child' makes a calm person want to slap around some people in a news room. Just fucking ugly.

But then, merchandisers have already rushed out new baby bibs :

The Anti-Nature Resistance Rises

Some crazed freak in comments at Grods is using the Man-Bird-Pig Flu outbreak to try and start all sorts of trouble for the ecosphere :

Bin Laden is dead and Mother Nature is history's greatest terrorist.

It took us the whole of the 20th century and a lot of ingenuity and effort to kill 100 million people in our wars. Mother Nature can beat that with a string of earthquakes, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami or two and a solid global pandemic (as in 1918).

Mother Nature's War On Humans is ramping up, so we must punish this brutal old hag now, and show her no quarter. Concrete her rainforests, damn her wilderness rivers, squish her precious frogs and eat all of her rarest species.

If She kills 100 Australians with her new virus, we behead one thousand koalas. If She wipes out one thousand of us in revenge, we harpoon 10,000 whales. The big ones first.

My new anti-nature resistance is called Humans Against The Rest (HATeR).

Who's with me?

Isolate him now.

Err....Yessss...I Too Am An Essential Worker, Really I Am

Hopefully, Health Minister Nicola Roxon is right :

"...we have 8.7 million courses of these antivirals in our stockpile."

And this news report is wrong :

Australia has stockpiled 8.7 million doses of the Tamiflu and Relenza drugs, which are believed to be effective in treating the virus.

This one, too :

...the Government has a stockpile of nearly 9 million doses to be used in the event of threatened epidemic.

The confusion over Doses and Courses is widespread in the Australian media.

Anti-virals are only as effective as they can be if a course of them is taken, a series of doses. Catching the New Flu and taking one or two Tamiflus or Relenzas is not expected to make much difference.

During a pandemic, the government's plan is to make sure doctors, nurses, hospital staff, ambulance drivers, body collectors, firefighters, some police, essential government and infrastructure workers get the anti-virals they need to keep doing their work surrounded by, and coming in regular contact, with a killer virus.

9 million doses of anti-virals is fuck all for 21 million Australians, if a course is six to twelve doses, with "essential workers" likely needing at least few courses over the many months it would take for a pandemic, or pandemic waves, to unfold.

9 million courses, however, will allow hundreds of thousands of workers to continue doing their jobs, while the rest of the population, for varying amounts of time, are confined to their homes, either voluntarily or under police order.

If there is a pandemic.

There will be anti-viral courses left over for some of the sick, and the ramped up production of anti-virals in Australia now (300 new jobs!) will reach government distribution points in a month or two. But, if 30 to 40% of the Australian population falls ill, over six months to a year or more of pandemic waves (as some experts are now predicting), the anti-viral production output in Australia will not satisfy demand.

If a pandemic becomes reality sooner rather than later, there will be extemely hard choices that will have to be made about whether people more likely to die from the virus, even if they have treatment, should be given a course of drugs that are in limited supply.

It's a surreal reality we might on the verge of being plunged into....

If a pandemic happens.

If.

But a couple of weeks worth of food and water stockpiled in the home, just in case, and to be on the safe side, shouldn't be left to the last minute.

Like the YK2 episode, you can eventually get through all those extra cans of soup and bags of rice crowdiing up the spare room later on if nothing happens, or donate it to charity.

The QLD Government's 'Pandemic Planning In The Workplace' Guide

September 2005 : Then Health Minister Tony Abbott On Influenza Pandemic In Australia - Die In Your Homes

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Official : It's Not Illegal To Drive A Fake Pope Mobile Around Sydney To Taunt Catholics



So now you know :

Police have withdrawn charges against a man who was found driving a fake pope-mobile around Sydney.

The car was built as a protest against the Pope's visit and World Youth Day in July last year.

Mr Bryce says the decision is a victory for free speech.

"The purpose of the pope-mobile was the draw the media attention and the public's attention to the false claims and the very bad actions of the Pope and the Church in coming here for World Youth Day, which I believe is in effect a latter day crusade.

"It was against the Pope's claims to have supernatural authority...."

More Here

Pandemic Expert : Airport Screenings For Pig Flu Infected "Purely Political"

This pandemic expert claims it's already too late to contain the Human-Bird-Pig Flu, and airport screenings are more to do with politics than halting the spread of the virus :

Airports around the world were screening travelers from Mexico for flu symptoms. But containing the disease may not be an option.

"Anything that would be about containing it right now would purely be a political move," said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota pandemic expert.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon, looking stunned, as though she just stepped out of a reality-cracking briefing from influenza experts, admits on the 7.30 Report that inflight and airport screenings for those who may be infected with the Human-Bird-Pig Flu virus are more about raising pubic awareness than containing the virus :

"...the key thing is for us to raise awareness for people who've been travelling in Mexico and the Americas, if they arrive back home, to not just brush off some flu-like symptoms, to go immediately to their doctor and have an assessment to see if they might be vulnerable."

As we move into our normal winter flu season, doctors and medical centres are going to be inundated with people concerned about symptoms of flu, who would normally not bother seeking medical help outside of what they can score over the counter at a local pharmacy or the benefits of hot lemon and honey, a 12 hour sleep and plenty of sunshine.

Nobody seems to know yet what will happen, if anything, when the new Human-Bird-Pig Flu meets the 'normal' Australian Influenza A virus, in our respiratory systems, as it very likely will in the months ahead.

Hopefully, Influenza A will smash the hell out of the newcomer.

Australia Has Been Invaded

By Darryl Mason

Today, there is a new, triple influenza virus, of which little is known, circulating in Australia. Just as we move into winter and closer to the peak of Australia's flu season, another flu virus has come to join the annual influenza party inside us.

So how do you know if the influenza you have is the new one, or just one of the old ones? You don't, until you're tested. Apparently, the symptoms of infection from the strange new influenza virus, and the human flu viruses of recent years, are all but exactly the same. You get aches, you feel like puking, you can't hold down food, your nose runs, you sneeze, you spend more time on, or with your head in, the toilet than you do in bed.

What is known is that the new influenza virus is an unnatural, never-before-seen brew of genes from human influenza, avian influenza and swine influenza. Human to human transmission of the new triple influenza virus appears to be happening faster, and easier, than with bird flu outbreaks in Indonesia in 2007 (our most recent brush with pandemic influenza), though it doesn't yet appear to be as fatal, as bird flu proved to be, for those who become infected.

However, this effect of fast, widespread infection, but lower overall mortality, may make the possibility of a pandemic more, not less, likely.

It is not in the interest of a virus to kill its host quickly, the virus wants to spread, to invade other cells, to find new hosts, to mix with other genes, to grow, to super-strength its rapid evolution, to perfect itself, to move on.

Even though fewer who are infected may die from the virus, the death toll is likely to be higher, as a prolonged human incubation, with few or no signs of possible infection for days, or a week, will allow the virus to spread itself farther through the human population.

If the pandemic mortality rate for human infections by the Human-Bird-Pig Flu virus is only 1-2%, the death toll for a hundred thousand Australians sickened by the virus would be a few thousand. But if the new virus is highly infectious, kills fewer of those it infects initially, but spreads fast across the population, we may see millions catch the virus over the longer exposure time, with tens of thousands killed.

If we are heading into a pandemic, it is likely it will unfold over many months, or more than a year. New influenza viruses rarely appear, and then quickly disappear again. They hang around, they spread and mutate, searching for the best combination of genes from its hosts to evolve further, they come and go from our bodies like once-a-year hotel guests.

The closest influenza virus that some virologists believe this new virus will be eventually matched to is the 'Spanish Flu' pandemic influenza of 1918, which killed its tens of millions of victims around the world in waves, a few months apart, each wave of the pandemic lasting two to five, or more, weeks. This kept the 'Spanish Flu' virus in circulation across the planet for more than 14 months, or longer. The longer it survived, the more it infected, and the more people it eventually killed.

There will be a human influenza pandemic, eventually, most influenza experts certainly agree on that. "Inevitable" is the word they use. And many are nervous today, about what may unfold in the months ahead if the Human-Bird-Pig Flu virus does indeed turn into a pandemic.

The best case scenario is that this will turn out to be only another pandemic close call, a brush with a virus that could kill tens of millions, but does not. This time.

Either way, the Federal Government will get to live-test its pandemic response plan.

That pandemic response plan is now getting underway. Quarantine centres near major Australian airports, including Sydney and Brisbane, are preparing to begin isolating Australians and foreigners who are showing visible signs of influenza infection as they step off planes from the United States.

There may be ugly scenes at our airports if passengers are falsely identified by others during flights to Australia as showing signs of flu infection when they're not sick, or don't believe they're sick. If one member of a family of travelers shows enough signs of infection to convince a Qantas captain to radio ahead that they have "a hot one", the whole family is expected to be placed in quarantine.

The almost incomprehensible option of completely shutting down the airports to all arrivals, including Australians returning home, is also part of the official government pandemic response plan, though no doubt the government will wait until deaths from the new virus occur here before it takes any steps that radical.

Can you imagine the fury and chaos if thousands of Australians living and holidaying internationally were told they can't come back to their own country for the time being? Particularly if there was a deadly pandemic breaking out in the rest of the world, and the growing death tolls terrified them about the fates of their friends and families?

There'd be new waves of boat people, but they'd be Australians desperately trying to get back home through closed borders.


UPDATE : As of May 7, there have been no confirmed cases of H1N1 infection in Australia.

"I'm Not Doing Anything"

Do you want to see raw footage of a TV news reporter and cameraman being arrested?

Of Course You Do

The Mysteriously Suspicious Case Of The Time Traveling Comment

The Professional Idiot's blog has magical, time-traveling powers....or magical time-traveling commenters.

The Professional Idiot posted his latest story attempting to out federal government global warming sceptics, who he claimed have been "dobbed in" to him by their friends and/or colleagues on Monday, April 27, at 12.12am :



I saw the story about 12.50am, on Monday. It already included one comment :



At 3.15am, the only story of the five The Professional Idiot published between 12.01am and 12.23am that had a comment onscreen was the above. But then, Allan Of South Melbourne did get in early.

Two and a half hours early.

Somehow....




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July, 2005 : Indonesia Holds Mass Cull Of Pigs Infected With Bird Flu

The following is from The Bird Flu Blog, quotes were transcribed from a print edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, September 25, 2005 :

The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday that hundreds of people gathered to watch the mass slaughter and burning of dozens of pigs in a Javanese village in July this year.

The Indonesian Agriculture Minister, Anton Apriantono, warned reporters that they should be wearing masks to protect themselves as they witnessed the pig cull.

“This is very dangerous,” the minister announced, “...the virus can be transmitted through the air.”

“Don’t blame me if you get bird flu because you don’t have a mask,” he said.

The slaughter of pigs and ducks in the Tangerang region, close to Jakarta, took place after Ivan Rapei and his two young daughters died with symptoms of heavy pneumonia. Mr Rapei was confirmed to have been infected with the bird flu virus.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported tests completed in April showed pig farms with infected with bird flu, but that no official culls were ordered.

Aporkalypse Now?




By Darryl Mason

Some 25 students and teachers in New Zealand have been quarantined and checked for infection by the killer swine flu virus after returning from a trip to Mexico, where more than 1000 people have caught the communicable H1N1 influenza virus, killing more than 100. The swine flu virus has been detected in humans in three major American cities, apparently spreading from Mexico to New York in less than 72 hours.

The current swine flu virus which appears to be spreading human to human is a bizarre brew of genes from American and Asian swine influenza, human influenza and avian influenza (bird flu). Did someone spill something in a bioweapons lab?

After spending a good chunk of 2007 and 2008 researching what a killer flu pandemic could do to a city society, for my online novel, ED Day, and learning perhaps a little too much about the shocking potential for death and suffering a deadly influenza pandemic can deliver, the fast spread and high death toll of this swine flu outbreak, so far, has given me a serious case of The Fear.

The World Health Organisation regards what is now unfolding as a worse case scenario.

The first cases of human infection by this new swine flu in Mexico are believed to have been detected in mid-March, more than five weeks ago.

There is no vaccine for this virus, and it could take six months to develop and begin distributing one, with no guarantee it would stop the deaths, or halt the spread of the virus. Anti-virals, like Tamiflu, can offer some protection, but the Australian government stockpiles of Tamiflu are believed to have reached their expiration dates late last year.

We are being told, tonight, that anyone in Australia who has visited Mexico since early March, and are suffering "influenza like illness" (ILI), should get to a doctor. That's not enough. They should also be avoiding physical contact with friends and family, and wearing a face mask to stop themselves from inadvertently spreading this potentially pandemic influenza virus further.

To be truly safe, the government should immediately announce the same for anyone who has visited the United States, and New Zealand, in the past two weeks. The swine flu virus, H1N1, can be carried by humans for weeks without manifesting itself, but still allowing possible human to human transmission.

Yesterday, the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), basically the front line soldiers for stopping the spread of pandemic influenza in the United States, admitted defeat :

CDC acting director Dr. Richard Besser told reporters in a telephone briefing it was likely too late to try to contain the outbreak, by vaccinating, treating or isolating people.

The CDC must know a lot more about just how far and wide the swine flu virus has already spread in the United States to officially make such a stunning claim.

The Australian FedGov's Pandemic Influenza website is here, but it is woefully un-updated.

UPDATE : The Mexican government is asking the public to wear face masks, stay away from large gatherings - schools, shopping malls, sports stadiums, train stations, have been closed in Mexico City (population 22 million) and obey the following rules :

...avoid large crowds, refrain from kissing as a greeting and maintain a distance of at least 1.8 meters (six feet) from each other.

Shaking hands should also definitely be out. During the SARS and Ebola Virus outbreaks, WHO officials visiting infected countries developed the habit of tapping elbows when they greeted someone, instead of shaking hands. Like this :



The federal government is expected to hold what amounts to emergency meetings on how to deal with a possible, looming pandemic on Monday and Tuesday.

You will be able to judge for yourself how serious the threat of a swine flu pandemic is in Australia, before any official announcement, by how quickly government ministers and the media start talking about the importance of :

Social Distancing


UPDATE : Would it be tasteless to start referring to this new deadly virus as ManBirdPig Flu?

It's certainly accurate.

Thanks to an anonymous commenter for the suggestion.


UPDATE : I just got an e-mail from a virologist who helped me on some details for the ED Day novel. He said he would call what's going on now "pre-pandemic", meaning if a pandemic was to become reality, this is pretty much how it would begin, that this is what the first few days would look like : one big central outbreak, then rapid a stream of reported infections around the world.

He said it's still too soon to say whether the swine flu virus is more than likely to become a pandemic, though he noted that at least one virologist he knows well is claiming the World Health Organisation is preparing to move its Pandemic Threat Level from 3 to 4, on a scale of 1 to 6.

I asked him if other virologists and pandemic specialists were nervous, he replied that every time there's another run of human deaths from H5N1 (bird flu) - there's been at least three deaths in Egypt, and two or three in Vietnam, from H5N1, in the past week - his peers get nervous. Human to human transmission of swine flu is simply bad news in general, but pandemics of swine flu and bird flu spreading at the same time is the stuff of nightmares.

He also said that most mainstream media are particularly hopeless at accurately reporting medical stories, infuriatingly so. He said he doesn't hold out much hope the reportage of the swine flu virus from the mainstream media will impress him and his colleagues.

More On This Soon

Misner must be killed for the good of all, above and below ground :

I've been busy posting new stories over at Your New Reality tonight :

If A Robot Could Build Its Own Brain, Why Do We Think It Would Try To Replicate Ours?

Right, Now I Get It

So I go off the grid for more than two days - no phone, no internet connnection, no blogging - and I come back to find that visitors to this blog rose by about 10% on average, and page views were up nearly 20%. So I don't post anything new for two days, but visitors to The Orstrahyun increase.

So the less I post, the more people will visit?

I can kind of get behind that logic. Kind of.

Abandoned Single Mother Struggles To Stop Wild Kids Trashing The House

A weird, but quite good, speech was prepared for Richard Nixon in case the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon failed, back in July 1969. Had the astronauts become Moon Marooned, Nixon would have been the first, and probably only, American president to openly discuss the trippy concept that 'Mother Earth' can go into mourning at the deaths of humans who dared to leave her atmosphere.

Which raises the question :

If Earth is the Mother, where the hell is the dad?

And is he paying child support?