Swine Flu - An Emerging Pandemic?

Swine Flu is spreading.

Tests show that eight students at a Queens high school are likely to have contracted the human swine flu virus that has struck Mexico and a small number of other people in the United States, health officials in New York City said yesterday. The students were among about 100 at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows who became sick in the last few days, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York City’s health commissioner.

Why has Swine Flu been classified as a potential pandemic by the CDC and WHO (World Health Organization)?

First here is some background on viral pandemic. A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through populations across a large region; E.g. a continent, or even worldwide. Here are a few infamous pandemics you might recall:

• Black death (bubonic plague): killed 20-30 million in 6 years; at that time a third of the total world population.
• Spansih Influenza, 1918-1919: First cases documented in March 1918. By October that fall, it had affected 20% or more of the world population. Aftermath: 50 million dead.
• AIDS: 37 million dead in twenty years.
• Typhus killed ~5 million in Russia from 1918 to 1922

Why is Swine Flu so potentially dangerous?
You might remember Avian flu (H5N1) a few years which caused quite a stir in Asisa. This virus was unable to achieve sustained and efficient human-to-human transmission. Most cases thus far have been transmitted from bird-to-human. A pandemic erupts once a virus evolves the ability to efficiently spread human to human via transmission by air .

Swine Flu is not new. (1) It can be found it persons who are in regular contact with pigs. Like Avian flu it is caused by strains of the Influenza virus (H1N1, H3N2, and H1N2). There was an outbreak in the US in 1976 at Fort Dix which infected several soldiers and in the end claimed the life of one soldier. By contrast, here are the startling numbers of the current Swine Flu outbreak:

• 1000 cases detected in Mexic with more than 80 deaths
• 11 laboratory confirmed cases in the southwestern US and in Kansas, with several suspected cases in NYC.
• 22 confirmed cases in New Zealand

Fortunately, the cases in the US have been mild and have not caused deaths unlike the cases in Mexico. In an interview on April 24, acting CDC director Richard Bessar said that it was still not known why the American cases were primarily mild disease while the Mexican cases had led to multiple deaths. Differences between the viruses or co-infection are reasons being considered.


1) Richard Besser in article More cases of swine flu reported; WHO warns of 'health emergency by Mayra Cuevas, Ann Curley, Caleb Hellerman, Elaine Quijano and Susan Candiotti dated 25 April 2009

FYI - Leading Causes of Death

Leading Causes of Death in 2001

Developing Countries	Number of Deaths	Developed Countries	Number of Deaths
1. HIV/AIDS	2 678 000	1. Ischaemic heart disease	3 512 000
2. Lower respiratory infections	2 643 000	2. Cerebrovascular disease	3 346 000
3. Ischaemic heart disease	2 484 000	3. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	1 829 000
4. Diarrhoeal diseases	1 793 000	4. Lower respiratory infections	1 180 000
5. Cerebrovascular disease	1 381 000	5. Trachea/bronchus/lung cancers	938 000
6. Childhood diseases	1 217 000	6. Road traffic accidents	669 000
7. Malaria	1 103 000	7. Stomach cancer	657 000
8. Tuberculosis	1 021 000	8. Hypertensive heart disease	635 000
9. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	748 000	9. Tuberculosis	571 000
10. Measles	674 000	10. Self-inflicted	499 000

Source: WHO World Health Report 2002. Countries grouped by WHO Mortality Stratum, with Developing Countries representing regions with High and Very High Mortality, and Developed Countries representing regions with Low and Very Low Mortality.

more info here: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/cause.php.

Darfur

A Handy Guide To What the Hell Just Happened in Darfur.

GObama

To celebrate our new prez, the best rendition of the national anthem of all time...

Khoda

"What if you watch a film and whenever you pause it, you face a painting? This idea inspired Reza Dolatabadi to make Khoda. Over 6000 paintings were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minutes film."

What is money?

Ever wondered what gives money its value? or where your loan or mortgage money comes from?

In this 47-minute video, Paul Grignon lays out the inner workings of how banks work in simple terms and nifty animations...



Take the vid with a grain of salt however b/c there seem to be a few non-sensical moments and possible inaccuracies, especially when he hints at conspiracies by cherry-picking quotations bashing banking from Lincoln and Garfield, both cited as having been assassinated.

Although it's a cynical, biased view of the financial system, for anyone interested in trying to wrap their head around the financial system, this vid is a sure way learn some of the basics on how our money masters operate. Knowledge is power right?

Yes We Did

At 14th and V Streets NW, in my hood in Washington, DC, a raucous of celebration has ensued.

Yes We Did.


At 14th & U St NW


Folks climbed up on the roof of the bus stop and started dancing


It's hard to see, but the dude on the left is wearing a Hebrew skullcap, and he was dancing with the brown-skinned, Latino guy on the right


Also hard to see, but a drum/conga line in front of the tent


Bananas for Obama?


In front of Busboys and Poets

I have to admit that I haven't been excited by the election for the last few months. Maybe my faith that Obama would win was so strong I felt no need to follow day-to-day news; or maybe I've read so much news that apathy has set in as I've become yet again bewildered by all the nuances of all the issues facing us.

Obama wins North Carolina!

As Brian Williams has been stating all night, tonights winner faces an un-enviable, daunting task of two wars and a giant, stinking, global economic mess, plus health care, social security, huge national debt, rising and competing powers in China and Russia... and the list goes on.

But I guess that's why Barack Hussein Obama will be President, and I will not.

Still, I can't help but feel that us Obama supporters are a little too hopeful, a little too naive - that we are heaping far too many expectations on this man. How much can Obama really affect change in this country over the next four years? Will he really bring our troops home, fix health care and shore up our economy? Or will his failure to live up to our perhaps unreasonable expectations make us just as disillusioned with politics as many of us were before the name Obama became a synonym for change?

What may be more important than achievements, though, is Obama's potential to not polarize folks the way Clinton and W. Bush did, and even more importantly, to get more Americans involved in politics again. The way Obama won this election is a testament to the importance of grass-roots organization, of the average man and woman feeling that they are empowered enough to have their voices heard on even the national stage, so much so that they are willing to wait 6 hours in line just to cast one vote that by itself will not tip an election either way, to post in their Facebooks and MySpaces and Xanga blogs the new facts they've learned, the latest biased slants from Fox News, or the latest Youtube exposé. This mastery of ground-up support is proof of Obama's shrewdness, his intelligence, his ability to run a campaign. Beyond that, I can only hope that it indicates more, not just smarts, not just the siezing of opportunity, but a real change - politics as our grade school teachers tell us ought to be; politics of, by, and for the people.

Bringing it home...

via fivethirtyeight.com

Barack Obama. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Simple, but powerful photos of Barack Obama. Callie Shell really captures the inspiration that surrounds Barack Obama and has led to the energy that is driving his campaign. Some highlights include two little kids transfixed to him, Barack napping, waiting in a stairway, and the worn soles of his shoes.

Obama is Batman!

"Who is the Batman?"



"Batman's been hob-nobbing around with crooks"
"Batman rubs elbows with the worst elements of this city and is undoubtedly himself"...

sound familiar?

Wall St. Crisis Explained on NPR

NPR's "This American Life" gives a very insightful, easy-to-understand program about the whole financial mess... Another Frightening Show About the Economy..

It discusses the role that credit default swaps and the commercial paper market freeze-up played in the Wall St. meltdown so well a third-grader could grasp it.

The US-China Trade Deficit

"Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China."

James Fallows discusses how the trade deficit between China and America works and its implications for the future.

Sound Familiar? Bush's Bailout Speech = Iraq Speech

John Stuart points out the eerie similarities between Bush's Iraq war speech and his speech on the bailout. Again, his speech writers are using shock and awe psychology to brainwash America into believing Wall St. needs an immediate $700 bailout with no oversight.

This bailout = hyperinflation. The word on Wall St. is that "the US government intends to fire up the printing press is a desperate attempt to inflate our way out of this deflationary spiral that we have been in over the last several months." (Jerry Slusiewicz, Bailout = Inflation) US purchasing power will decline steeply over the next few years, and many top investors and economists like Jim Rogers are predicting up to 20% inflation compounded annually. America shouldn't have to pay for the trillions of dollars of debt of the few incompetent crooks of failed investment banks and Fannie and Freddie.

Wall St. Meltdown: Dems push back against Bush's bailout

"We will not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall St..."
- Nancy Pelosi

Finallllllly... the Dems are showing some spine regarding Bush's $700. Let's hope they don't cave in to Bush and Paulson's "economy is in its last throes" chatter like they did to Bush's "Shock and Awe" Iraq tactics. The Washington Post reports:

Congressional Democrats considering the Bush administration's emergency plan to shore up the U.S. financial system yesterday countered with their own demands, presenting draft legislation giving the government power to cut salaries of chief executives at firms that participate in the bailout and slash severance packages for their top management...

...Democrats sought to add oversight provisions and taxpayer protections to the proposal, which amounts to the largest government intervention in the private markets since the Great Depression. "We will not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

Under the proposal drafted by House Democrats, the Treasury would be required to force faltering firms that want to sell their troubled assets to the government to "meet appropriate standards for executive compensation." Those standards would include a ban on incentives that encourage chief executives to take "inappropriate or excessive" risks, a mechanism to rescind bonuses paid for earnings that never materialize and limits on severance pay

This fiasco developed over the last 5 years, and many people (e.g., Warren Buffett) predicted it accurately at least 5 years ago. Paulson, while he was CEO at Goldman-Sachs, successfully steered his company away from it, however when he got to Washington back in June of 2006, he DID NOT take steps to avert the financial mess we are in now. That's right, what we're seeing now could have been avoided 2-3 years ago, at the expense of the big cats at Lehman who are now being rewarded for their massive failings with a nice fat $2.5 billion bonus. I don't see how anyone in their right mind could hand this guy Paulson a blank check for $700 billion with hardly any oversight. Let's not condone the mistakes of the reckless, greedy few who brought us into this mess.

Dilbert Finds Economists Support Obama

The Dilbert comic author hired a polling firm to survey 523 economists to ask which candidate they thought would be best for the economy. They found that economists support Obama over McCain slightly more than 2 to 1. Economists as a group have better insight into which candidate's policy would be better for the economy so I hope Republicans start listening to their advice. I wonder how the economists who support McCain's plan to continue Bush's failed borrow-and-spend policies can call themselves respectable economists.

Why off-shore drilling won't help.

(from Achitecture 2030 ... )

According to the US Energy Information Administration, oil production from drilling offshore in the outer continental shelf wouldn't begin until around the year 2017. Once begun, it wouldn't reach peak production until about 2030 when it would produce only 200,000 barrels of oil per day (in yellow above). This would supply a meager 1.2% of total US annual oil consumption (just 0.6% of total US energy consumption). And, the offshore oil would be sold back to the US at the international rate, which today is $106 a barrel. So, the oil produced by offshore drilling would not only be a "drop in the bucket", it would be expensive, which translates to "no relief at the pump".

Uh-oh! Wall Street Meltdown for Dummies

There was alotta finanical FAIL going on this weekend. Lehman Brothers is expected to file for bankruptcy tomorrow. Bank of America just bought out Merrill Lynch at $44 billion (a paltry $29.35 a share). AIG appears to be next...

"A.I.G. became one of the focuses at an emergency gathering of Wall Street executives over the weekend, and was trying to arrange a capital infusion in the face of possible credit downgrades."

What do we learn after dozens of Wall Street’s finest cram into a single room to discuss the meltdown of the financial system? With a Category 5 disaster brewing, the Masters of the Universe can still agree to act out of their own self-interest.

Two of the biggest dogs on Wall Street went down over the weekend, how'd this happen? From the blog Self-evident...

Lehman Brothers: $640 billion in assets, $613B in liabilities, counter party to $729 billion in derivatives trades.
Merrill Lynch: $996B assets, $972B liabilities, $4.2 trillion in derivative trades
AIG: $1T in assets, $972B liabilities, $447B in CDO swaps.
Bear Stearns: $339B assets, $387B liabilities, $2.7T derivative trades.

It's all in these numbers... but what do these numbers mean? In order understand this mess, we need an understanding of the sub-prime crisis and its repercussions. NPR has a great primer on what the sub-prime crisis is all about. We also need to understand the more complex topic of derivatives and that they are BAD, ... from Business 2.0's Web Guide

Derivatives is a generic term for a variety of financial instruments. Unlike financial instruments such as stocks and bonds, a derivative is usually a contract rather than an asset. Essentially, this means you buy a promise to convey ownership of the asset, rather than the asset itself. The legal terms of a contract are much more varied and flexible than the terms of property ownership. In fact, it's this flexibility that appeals to investors. "A good toolbox of derivatives allows the modern investor the full range of investment strategy" and "the sophisticated management of risk," according to the derivatives specialists at NumaWeb.

Futures and options are two commonly traded types of derivatives. An options contract gives the owner the right to buy or sell an asset at a set price on or before a given date. On the other hand, the owner of a futures contract is obligated to buy or sell the asset. The option-shunning experts at the Motley Fool pointed us to their Options FAQ, complete with warnings and reminders that 80% of all options traders lose money.

Okay, so how are derivatives bad? Understanding how derivatives are bad is too complex and boring to tackle in one post, so simply take it from the Wall Street guru who predicted this insanity SIX years ago. Way back in 2002, the man Warren Buffet warned us...

"The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear....[They] are financial weapon of mass destruction carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."

Despite Buffett's compelling warnings, a massive derivatives bubble arose, and in parallel with the subprime bubble helped to drive the domestic and global economies. In other words, there is boatloads of crap on everyones' books. The banks that are lending LB and ML money have lost confidence in LB and ML's balance sheet or liquidity and are no longer lending banks the money they need need to finance their toxic $hit.

Still don't get it? Well, if you're a pessimist, consider this the beginning of a complete meltdown of the financial system. If you're an optimist with a bunch of cash on hand, happy hunting :)

How Obama can reclaim his mojo.

Every passing day, the Obama campaign is beginning to look more like the Gore and Kerry campaigns, both of which fell short. Obama has hit a slump and though the race is still to close to call, nay-sayers are stating that he needs to ditch his current failing campaign strategy and start fighting tooth and nail... start playing gutter politics.

I disagree. Obama rose to power because his positivity. He exemplified an optimism in our nation that many of us had lost. Obama's rise was an expression of the people's will to challenge the pervailing political dogma - that Washington is out of touch and can't be fixed. Let's not forget that...

"Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again"
--Sarah Ban Breathnach

McCain on Palin's Experience

"I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time." - John McCain

Poll Trackers

On May 6, expectations were high for Hillary Clinton. After all, the latest polls suggested the former First Lady had built up a 5-point cushion in Indiana and slashed Barack Obama's 20-point lead in North Carolina to 8. But over at FiveThirty Eight.com, an anonymous blogger (nom d'écran: "Poblano") wasn't convinced.

...the mysterious upstart projected that Clinton would win Indiana by 2 percent and lose North Carolina by 17—a far-less favorable outcome. When the results finally rolled in—1 in Indiana, 15 in North Carolina—Poblano had outperformed every established pollster. Clinton never recovered, but with the National Journal, the Guardian and the New York Post suddenly dissecting or demanding the secrets of his success...

Nate Silver the mysterious upstart and baseball stats prodigy, maintains www.fivethirtyeight.com, which is definitely worth a look. What makes his site different? From his FAQ page:

Firstly, we assign each poll a weighting based on that pollster's historical track record, the poll's sample size, and the recentness of the poll. More reliable polls are weighted more heavily in our averages.

Secondly, we include a regression estimate based on the demographics in each state among our 'polls', which helps to account for outlier polls and to keep the polling in its proper context.

Thirdly, we use an inferential process to compute a rolling trendline that allows us to adjust results in states that have not been polled recently and make them ‘current’.

Fourthly, we simulate the election 10,000 times for each site update in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes based on a historical analysis of polling data since 1952. The simulation further accounts for the fact that similar states are likely to move together, e.g. future polling movement in states like Michigan and Ohio, or North and South Carolina, is likely to be in the same direction.

Other notable alternatives to 538 for keeping track of the running election include Pollster.com and Electoral-vote.com.