This is courtesy of the always entertaining and enlightening Mental Indigestion blog. It seems like everytime I see something interesting in mainstream media, the reality of the alleged research isn't as definitive as they would have you believe. But the reality of the reseach is also vastly more interesting, nuanced and ultimately enlightening. No wonder it doesn't make it into the pablum they spew into our tvs and all over our internets.

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These are the most cogent, accurate and thoughtful websites I've found that deal with the H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak. The most important thing you can do for yourself and your household is to prepare yourself with knowledge. Epidemics don't work in the real world like they do in fiction (see The Stand, for example). Just because most patients recover and the bodies aren't piling up on your street does not mean this is "just another flu".

The Flu Wiki - A wiki brought to you by leaders in virology, epidemiology and health care
Wiki: http://www.fluwikie.com/
Forum: http://www.newfluwiki2.com

Effect Measure - A blog by an epidemiologist involved with federal efforts to track and prepare for pandemics
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure

CDC swine flu information site
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu

How to prepare your household for pandemic flu
http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/individual/index.html
http://www.getpandemicready.org
http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Consequences.HomeAlone

Homeopathic "Medicine" Scam Alert - Print a copy and distribute widely
http://www.youngausskeptics.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/swine-flu-scam-alert.pdf

WHO - What "level 5 pandemic" means
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en

CDC - pandemics occur in waves, don't be lulled by a reduction of new cases
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no01/05-0979.htm

Tips and strategies for your workplace
http://www.uschamber.com/issues/index/defense/pandemic_influenza.htm

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You've no doubt heard about the latest swine flu outbreak. If you're like me, you found yourself curious why this particular outbreak is worth so much attention. I poked around teh intertubes for awhile, and found out why swine flu is such a big deal.

Swine flu is a generic name for a class of viri that was responsible for the 1918-1919 pandemic that killed 2.5% of the world's known population. This latest variety of H1N1 is believed to have killed anywhere from 60 to 100 people in Mexico already, and cases have been reported around the globe already. This variant includes some proteins also found on the SARS virus H5N1. It is unclear at this time if this has any effects on it's communicability or lethality. The death rate in Mexico is not definitively known, but reports indicate it's about 7%, plus or minus a point or two. This, I believe, is an inflated rate, as it only counts the number of diagnosed survivors. No doubt quite a number of people got sick but did not seek hospitilization.

While "normal" flu viri kill less than one half of one percent of flu patients a year, these pandemic flus kill several orders of magnitude more. Being healthy is somewhat of a liablity, as the stronger the immunological response you can muster, the more phlegm is developed, which can drown the patient or invite massive secondary bacterial infections. Of course, immunocomprimised patients are always at risk.

Fifteen percent of the diagnosed patients in the US had taken the flu vaccine. The vaccine is tailored every year to strains that are expected to spread, but these projections are made months before flu season and prognosticating plague is a less than exact science. Personally, I wound up in the hospital with life-threatening intestinal flu the year I tried the vaccine, so I haven't touched it since.

This flu is probably more dangerous than H5N1, the famous avian flu. It's spreading faster, and has at least the same lethality if not more. Fortunately, we have drugs to combat it. Or rather, some people do:

The article went on to state that only up to a quarter of a given Western nation population (except Great Britain at fifty percent) can be treated with antiviral drugs from government stockpiles during the first pandemic wave. This would mean, as Australia's Dr. Buddhima Lokuge et.al. states (see eMJA article), Australian government stockpiled antivirals "will be limited and reserved for those on a confidential rationing list." The United States public are in the same boat and face an identical government policy situation -- selective rationing:*)

In economic news, analysts indicate that for the most part the scare has had a negative impact on the markets, but Roche (the manufacturer of Tamifil, manufacturer of the drug that the flu responds to the best) has gone up.

Will 2009 be remembered as the year the epidemic started? Will history's recollection overshadow the first non-white president for a submicroscopic sliver of protein and RNA? Will the wildly disparate availability of medicine and medical care be the catalyst for worldwide revolution? Hopefully not the former, hopefully the latter.

EDIT 4/29/2009
It appears the H1N1 swine flu has arrived in Seattle.

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You've probably seen the headlines saying that wild male chimpanzees have been observed sharing meat with females in exchange for sexual favors. While certainly appealing to the sexist "common sense" endemic to our culture, the reality doesn't show this at all. Research by Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute show that males who share meat with females aren't any more likely to get some action when the females go into estrus. Instead, as The Primate Diaries explains:

Rather than such hackneyed cliches as “Sex sells, even in the rainforest” (Cosmos) or “The way to a chimp’s heart is through her stomach” (both Wired and the Chicago Sun-Times) the real story was that female chimpanzees demonstrate flexible and opportunistic strategies to maximize reproductive success. Furthermore, because the sharing of meat was primarily with anestrous females, and because there was no relationship between the amount of meat provided and the number of copulations, suggesting that this had any connection to prostitution or buying someone an expensive meal in order to “get lucky” was to completely miss the point. In all likelihood, females were using these exchanges to determine who would be the best potential father for her offspring over the long term.

Oddly enough, these conclusions don't make it into the popular press. Personally, I think the idea that women may be wired not just to be attracted to males of high status, but also to males who are more likely to share their resources makes more sense. Is it better to get a fraction of more food, or all of a smaller total? I believe western ideals tend toward the latter.

Additionally, the study clearly showed that males shared way more meat with their hunting partners than with females. Where were the "bromance" jokes?

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In line with the recent post about the validity of online polling, NASA is sponsoring a poll celebrating Earth Day where we get to vote for the 3 most important advances in terrestrial observation that NASA has provided in the last 50 years. At the landing page is a list of major achievements, complete with links to spectacular imagery. Vote on the second page. Javascript required to vote.

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There's very, very little I miss about living in the midwest. I was born, not raised, a west coast kind of guy. Besides proper thunderstorms, decent BBQ, and lazy float trips down warm rivers the only thing I miss are fireflies. Lightening bugs, as we called them as kids, don't live on this side of the Rockies in North America and when I decided to move out here I didn't think I'd miss them.

I was wrong. I miss fireflies terribly. Not the insects themselves per se, but all the good times that happened along with them. Fireflies came out during the last grainy minutes of daylight, as the temperature dropped from "searing" to "merely uncomfortable", and the evening breeze would come up and finally provide some relief from the broiling humidity. Emerging from underneath shade, out of doors and willing to venture a few feet away from sources of fresh water, people kids would emerge and congregate as they are wont to do at those ages.

Embued with the cruelty common to all children, I was the undispusted master Firefly Swatter as a young lad. This was a competion the neighborhood kids would do every few nights or so. We'd get our trusty wiffle bats and see how much glowy guts we could smear on them, one bug at a time. The winner had the glowiest bat by the time the fireflies settled down for the night.

Later, fireflies became synonomous with hanging out with girls, clumsily fumbling through the rituals of attraction: signal and response, just like the insects floating around us. Cool damp air, the warm earth, the drone of countless insects, fireflies twinkling about, and the soft moans of pleasure are and forever will be indelibly inked upon some primitive part of my brain.

Shortly after the wonderfulness that is girls became known to me, so did booze. Drinking with my friends, picking up on girls, listening to music out at the edge of the county are about the only parts of my highschool years that I remember fondly. Then I grew up, and got my own place to live, and a job, and suddenly there just wasn't time for sitting around for a few hours doing almost nothing.

Why the sudden melancholic introspection? Because I missed firefly day. Not that I have a lot to contribute to this study headed by the Boston Museum of Science, but if you live in a firefly zone you can still sign up to participate. It appears, that like bats, frogs and several other creatures of the summer night, their numbers are inexplicably dropping. Thanks to Bug Girl for the headsup and brief trip down memory lane.

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First, they started siphoning gas out of cars. Then they started stealing copper cables and plumbing. Let's hope they don't get a chance to see this chart: (all cred to Science Punk)

from http://www.sciencepunk.com/v5/gallery/bodyfluids_log.png

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You just have to see it to believe it.

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ScienceDaily (2008-10-04) -- The world's largest computing grid is ready to tackle mankind's biggest data challenge from the earth's most powerful accelerator. The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centers from 33 countries to analyze and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year.

So they expect this thing to chew up 15 million gigabytes a year and spit out 6cds worth of results a second. A tiered system connected by dedicated fiberoptic, it's run by the Open Science Grid.

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Forget 9-volts, AAs, AAAs or D batteries: The energy for tomorrow's miniature electronic devices could come from MIT-developed microbatteries that are about half the size of a human cell and built with viruses. Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST jump

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