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....




.

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?

Everybody's Trying to Cash In On Global Warming, Even My Boss

By Darryl Mason

Under the headline, No Backers For Rudd's Reckless Plan, The Professional Idiot promotes the claim that climate change minister, Penny Wong, has no backing at all for the emissions trading system :

Here’s the real growing consensus among the public - that global warming theory is wildly exaggerated.

The Professional Idiot has somehow managed to forget that there is one very obvious backer of the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, and its inevitable bigger family of global taxes, and credits, based on carbon usage, and that would be his own Earth Hour loving boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert "Climage Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats" Murdoch has put almost his entire worldwide news empire (including The Professional Idiot's Herald Sun) on a hardcore carbon diet, in the hope that when the carbon trading becomes reality, he'll be able to cash in. Just like the Rothchilds.

Hilariously, that big banner ad promoting the fact that News Limited, and the Herald Sun, are true believers in global warming, and reducing carbon emissions, appears yet again across the top of The Professional Idiot's story about how the Rudd government has little support for its emmissions trading plan.



(click to enlarge)

And in a bizarre admission for a journalist, hitting his sixth decade, The Professional Idiot reveals he has never seen the movie Network, hands down one of the most important films on the business of journalism ever made.

Quoting this fantastic speech by playwright Paddy Chayefsky, from a climactic scene in Network, was very popular with allegedly crazed, president hating, America despising Lefties during the Bush II regime. Now, of course, the "I'm Mad As Hell And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!" mantra is rapidly being adopted by conservatives for the Age of Obama, only eleven weeks into the new presidency. Same words, same message, same reality, different presidents :

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair also suddenly notices something that has been going on in the United States for years, that he somehow managed to not notice at all during his beloved Bush II
reign :

"The police state continues to grow..."

The big banner Corporate Green ads from the boss, proclaiming that global warming is so real News Limited is frantically trying to reduce its carbon emissions, keeps showing up on Blair's blog, too, mostly when he's running stories proclaiming that global warming is a farce, a con, a delusion, bogus and that carbon trading will spell doom for all.

And still nothing from Blair on how disgusted he is that global warming propaganda is being jammed into News Corporation TV shows aimed at children.

When Tim Flannery and Bob Brown scare children with global warming hysteria, it's something evil, but when Tim Blair's boss does it, hey, it's just business.

"Who's The President Of Austria Again?"

Now this, this is a snub. In South Park, John Howard is still prime minister of Australia :



What a waste. South Park could have so much fun with Kevin Rudd :

"John Howard and Vladimir Putin are depicted as still being the leaders of Australia and Russia, respectively, although Howard was defeated in his re-election bid and Putin stepped down as president of Russia, becoming prime minister, before the episode aired," the entry says.

The episode has not yet been broadcast in Australia.

It doesn't matter whether the episode has been 'broadcast' in Australia or not, tens of thousands of Australians have already downloaded the torrent of this episode from The Pirate Bay or other file sharing sites. If SBS isn't prepared to air these new episodes on the same day as American viewers get them, they've only got themselves to blame for decreased ratings.

The Promotion Only Dead Tree Edition

This is one of the best, recent, examples of the changing times, and fates, of newspapers in Australia. A newspaper is being printed solely to act as promotion for an online news site :

In a move which the company is describing as a “one-off promotion”, it will distribute a free 24-page tabloid under the brisbanetimes.com.au and WAtoday.com.au mastheads. Each have 15,000 print runs and are being distributed at key points in Brisbane and Perth.

His First Word Was "Change"

With the introduction of MP3 Players For Pregnant Women, an important question needs to be asked :

When is it too soon to start in pumping Obama speeches, around the clock, through those belly-attached speakers?

And what happens if the mother prefers the music of Slayer and Napalm Death to Brahms and Beethoven?

More Here

Dozens Of Police Harass Old Hippies, Young Stoners For Minimal Result

By Darryl Mason

At least 25 police and four sniffer dogs were used to seize "a small amount" of cannabis from punters hanging around the Enmore Theatre for a Sydney gig last week by Cheech & Chong.

That's more than $70,000 of police resources to seize what was probably less than a half ounce of cannabis, by searching some 50 people and delaying the start of the show :

A New South Wales Police spokeswoman confirmed the drug operation was conducted in an area that included a nearby railway station and licensed premises near the theatre.

...six people were caught in possession of small amounts of cannabis.

The six were issued with caution notices. They were not fined nor charged.

Police like searching stoners. They rarely put up a fight, the intense paranoidia in those they pat down is good for giggles with other cops later, and stoners all but never pull knives or guns or start screaming and spitting in their faces.

Two dozen cops, four drug dogs? Thank Christ, crime has dropped in Sydney to the point where police have nothing better to do than to go searching for small amounts of cannabis amongst Cheech & Chong fans in Newtown and Enmore bars. The most surprising result would be if they found nothing at all.

Anyway, what Cheech & Chong fan would go out in public carrying large amounts of cannabis, or any other drug for that matter? If they learned anything from C & C albums and movies, it's do your drugs before you go out.

A grumbly, but also excellent, four word review of the Cheech & Chong show from The Australian :

Their material is appalling....

That's why the audience made so much noise, and laughed so loud. Cheech & Chong should add that line on their tour poster.

More from The Australian :

Sure, I remember when a poster of a larger-than-life spliff was revolutionary and fun. But now a new young audience hoots and sings along, and takes pictures of each other in front of the tour logo, and queues at the end to buy the merchandise. What is going on here?

They think Cheech & Chong are funny? They understand it's a joke? They know the difference between bitterly dreamed-out, rapidly aging ex-hippie boomers and two very successful stoners who sold millions of albums and crafted some of the most successful comedy movies in history?

Should these young Cheech & Chong fans be out binge-drinking instead of sitting in a theatre watching two brilliant satirists?

The people issued with caution notices for carrying small amounts of cannabis should keep them as mementos. They might be worth something one day, on eBay at least, when cannabis prohibitions joins all the rest of the stupid, wasteful, tragic and ultimately rejected ideas of the 20th century.

Oh Really, You Think You've Tried Everything?

It makes me damn proud to know that Australians are out there in the world coming up with such incredibly wild shit like this :

I had heard of a tour offered by Bigfoot Hostel, which Darryn Webb, a tour guide from Australia, founded in 2005, when he was developing the sport on Cerro Negro.

He’d grown up sandboarding in Queensland, and once he visited the volcano (in Nicaragua) he realized its boarding potential. Here was a dunelike slope, only bigger and blacker, and with the added thrill of a potential eruption.

After a lot of trial and error with sledding vessels — he tried boogie boards, mattresses and even a minibar fridge — he settled on plywood reinforced with metal and augmented with Formica under the seat.

He rode a mini-bar fridge down the side of a live volcano and then came up with a successful tourism business.

Now that's Orstrahyun.

Still Not Available

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot has a bit of a whiny squirt here about bookshop owners, who clearly think he's an arsehole, refusing to stock a copy of his 2006 book that his publishers apparently refuse to reprint. A reader writes to tell him of his long, arduous search for The Professional Idiot's collection of old columns, through second hand book shops in Melbourne, Cooper Pedy, Adelaide, Brisbane, coming face to face with shockingly sarcastic second hand bookshop owners (are there any other kind?) who think The Professional Idiot is. quote, "a rabid right wing demon!!". Yeah, that sounds realistic. It was only when this reader returned home to France that it occurred to him to try and buy The Professional Idiot's old book online.

The Professional Idiot doesn't appear to know that if his book publisher refuses to print more copies, he can, himself, order a reprint of his old book, say a thousand copies, for only a chunk of what it would cost to take a family holiday in Italy, and he can sell his own book through his "one million hits a month" blog direct to his brethren, without having to worry about rotten old sarcastic second hand bookshop owners supplying "ideological" instant book reviews, through guffaws of laughter, to the occasional customer interested enough to ask for a copy.

Or, seeing how the book is a collection of old columns from the Herald Sun anyway, The Professional Idiot could simply just republish the intro and contents of his book on his blog, on a separate dedicated page, for free, for all readers, so they don't have to face the crushing horror of sarcastic second hand bookshop owners anymore.

The Professional Idiot takes a moment to lay out the foundation stones for a possible Anti-Conservative Big Lefty BookShop Conspiracy blog post franchise :

I’ve published this not to fluff my own feathers, but to further illustrate the stultifying group-think of the “intelligentsia”, and the institutional hurdles facing anyone who might challenge its favored myths and prejudices. Smug complacency rules too often, I’m afraid.

People running second-hand bookshops are part of the "intelligentsia"? Really?

I helped run a second-hand bookshop once, so maybe I should start claiming that "I have now retired from the intelligentsia".

And I want that t-shirt : Smug Complacency Rules.

It sure does.

In the below video, The Professional Idiot would, by his reckoning, be represented by the mud farmers, while the Institutional Group Think Anti-Conservative Second Hand BookShop Intelligentsia is King Arthur. Help, Help, I'm Being Repressed! :



UPDATE : A respected polling analyst has had enough of The Professional Idiot's mutilating of statistical data and announces that The Professional Idiot should be sodomised with a calculator.

"Yeah, You Should Try Nationalising Some Oil Companies, It's Fun"

Of course you know all about the Terrorist Fist Jab.

But did you notice the Socialist Thumb Squeeze between Obama and Hugo Chavez?

Definitely one of the funniest scenes in an Australian movie, just about ever. David Wenham in Gettin' Square :

Irish comedian and surly bookshop owner, Dylan Moran, on Australia and tall poppy syndrome :

"This...is a real thing isn't it, still? That's a really big part of the culture, that if anybody seems to be getting above themselves, you cut them down to size really quick. It's very similar in Ireland. The old saying there was that it was the only place in the world where somebody would spend 20 minutes crossing a crowded room to come over and tell you you were a cunt."