Tadataka Yamada, M.D. “Poverty, Wealth, and Access to Pandemic Influenza Vaccines” in N.E.J.M.

From Dr.  Tadataka Yamada’s  “Poverty, Wealth, and Access to Pandemic Influenza Vaccines”

in N.E.J.M (link is to free full-text article):

On June 11, 2009, Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared that the status of the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic had reached phase 6 — active transmission on a global scale. Until now, the case fatality rate of this influenza has been quite low, but history teaches us that the situation could take a turn for the worse during the next wave of the pandemic. If a 1918-like pandemic were to occur today, tens of millions of people could die, the vast majority of them in the world’s poorest countries.

Fortunately, the prospects for developing an effective vaccine to prevent infection with the current H1N1 virus are excellent, and the world’s pharmaceutical companies are working diligently at this task. In contemplating equal access to such a vaccine, it is important to consider three key issues: manufacturing capacity, cost, and delivery.

Only a few countries in the world have plants for manufacturing influenza vaccine, and three companies — GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, and Novartis — account for most of the world’s manufacturing capacity. The number of doses of vaccine against H1N1 influenza that could be produced with the existing capacity is very large, but the sobering truth is that even if production were switched over completely from seasonal influenza vaccine to pandemic influenza vaccine, there would not be nearly enough for everyone in the world. The size of the gap in potential supply depends greatly on the dose that is required, and it may be possible to reduce the necessary dose by as much as 75% with the use of an adjuvant. The challenging problem is that much, if not most, of the manufacturing capacity is already spoken for through purchasing contracts held by many of the world’s wealthy countries. Continue reading →

Open Fire Academy fall classes

CERTIFICATION COURSES
We will begin opening registration for the October 2009 Classes. However, to help our sponsor maintain appropriate documentation, we must require all students to complete the Haywood Community college application. Before we can accept payment or send out enrollment keys, we must have this form. It can be sent by email to admin@openfireacademy.org or fax it to 715.479.2852. fire at night

Understand that registration is on a first come- first served basis. So act quickly.

The courses we are offering in October:
Fire Officer I10/26/200912/20/2009$60.00
Fire Officer II10/5/200911/29/2009$60.00
Fire Officer III 10/12/200912/6/2009$60.00
Fire Officer IV10/19/200912/13/2009$60.00

Fire Instructor I 10/5/200911/29/2009$60.00
Fire Instructor II 9/7/200911/1/2009$60.00
Fire Instructor III 10/5/200911/29/2009$60.00

Incident Safety Officer10/5/2009 11/29/2009$60.00

Fire and Life Safety Educator I 10/12/2009 21/6/2009 $60.00

Fire and Life Safety Educator I 10/19/2009 12/13/2009$60.00

Introduction to Visual Mind 11/2/2009 11/27/2009$50.00

Introduction to Wildland Behavior 11/2/2009 11/27/2009 $60.00

The link to download the proper registration form is:
http://openfireacademy.com/course/modedit.php?update=1723&return=0

REMEMBER: These are set up on first come/first serve, so you want to get into the class, get us the registration for ASAP as the class will fill up quickly.

TRAINING SESSIONS
We have seen many of you sign up for the openfireacademy.org email service. We hope you have found it to be helpful. But wouldn’t you like to take it further? In addition to an email and chat system, there is a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, presentations (similar to your PowerPoint,) and much much more! The key with these is that everything is run from the web… no need to store on your computer and they are accessible from any computer with an internet connection or a smart phone with web access. We will be delivering an orientation training on how to use the apps package to get you going on using it to the fullest.

The course is free and registration is simple. There is a link on the main page called “OFA Apps Orientation”. Sign up there and you are ready to go. There are no tuition costs to take the course.

If your department would like to utilize OFA Apps in your department, you are welcome to use the OFA Apps for free. However, some have said they would like a departmental version for more security. If this is something you would like, contact admin@openfireacademy.org and we will get you started.

Violence against ER nurses

Liz Borkowski

at The  Pump Handle posts on evidence of violence against ER nurses:

n a national survey by the Emergency Nurses Association, more than half of emergency-department nurses reported that they’ve been physically assaulted on the job. For many nurses, being assaulted is a recurring problem: Approximately one-fourth of the 3,465 respondents reported experiencing physical violence more than 20 times in the past three years. While all hospital staff are at risk of both physical assault and verbal abuse, the problem is particularly severe in EDs, and against ED nurses in particular.

Violence Against ER Nurses

Silent Spring: Enduring, Legendary

Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson

Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson

In 1962 with a formal background in biology, countless publications for the Bureau of Fisheries and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Rachel Carson added to her volumes of work Silent Spring

, arguably the most enduring, controversial, and legendary books of the modern Sustainability Era.

Doubting her ability to find a magazine willing to publish a single article on the pessimistic topic of the effect of chemicals on the environment, Carson decided instead to produce a full length book.  Serialized in the New Yorker (desribed at the NRDC) prior to the 1962 publication, Silent Spring

quickly became the focus of incredible public attention. Coupled with this growing attention, the chemical industry responded to Silent Spring with a focused quarter-million-dollar campaign aiming to discredit Carson.  Despite the concerted effort by the chemical industry, a Presidential commission began looking into the issues – and Congress began considering tougher restrictions on chemicals. (Carson testified before Congress.)

Poignantly, Silent Spring is essentially a survey of research on pesticides, begins artistically with a story depicting a town having suffered a series of plagues. At the end of this chapter, Carson tells us that the town is fictitious, however, she adds that each of the events recounted “has actually happened somewhere.”

Lending substance to the original story, Carson goes on to describe the source of the plagues as newly designed man-made chemicals applied in massive quantities almost everywhere.  In doing this Carson introduces the singular analogy that runs through Silent Spring: “pesticides are like atomic radiation—invisible, with deadly effects that often manifest themselves only after a long delay.” Further, she identifies the qualities that are increasing the danger of these new chemicals/pesticides over their predecessors:

  1. Greater chemical potency
  2. Slower breakdown and decomposition of the chemicals
  3. A tendency for the chemicals to become concentrated in fatty tissue.

For Carson, it is also important to note that while a toxin may not constitute a severe danger in limited exposure and dose, danger occurs with ultimate accumulation in the body, and concentration up the food chain.

Continue reading →

Michael Allen and Julie VanDusky of Quantitative Peace on Blackwater

Michael A. Allen and Julie VanDusky – both founders of the blog Quantitative Peace –  have published  Employing Force: The Decision to Use Private Actors in Inter-State Wars

. An excerpt:

The contemporary rise to infamy of Blackwater Worldwide and the private corporation’s misdeeds in the Iraq War has historical precedents. That is, it is not unheard of for a state to employ non-state actors to carry out traditional state activities such as the use of force – something the modern

state is supposed to have a monopoly over. In this paper, we build a game theoretic model that determines the prospects for using non-state actors in combat on behalf of the state. From this model, we hypothesize that despite the risk of agency loss by these private combatants, certain

conditions increases the likelihood of their use. Specifically, autocratic polities are predicted to have a positive influence on the employment of non-state combatants while their democratic peers will prefer to abstain from such activities. We test these hypotheses using a censored probit model for all bilateral wars from 1816-2002.

Separating signal from noise, or re-reading a message with the expectation of different words

Writing in the context of the discovery process in civil litigation, Anne Kershaw and Joseph Howie write in Law Technology News of the fallacy of reviewing identical copies

of electronic messages as if each were, in effect, a separate paper document.

In civil litigation, this increases delay and cost.

In the context of intelligence analysis – particularly open-source – it’s a point ignored at the risk of missing important data – or reviewing it too late. A single item duplicated in volume is still a single item – the first is signal, the others merely noise.

Health Care – Medicare for All

I have a good full-time job. I buy the health insurance my Human Resources Dept tells me to buy. (This is not, by the way, a “free market” as described by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and other neo-classical economists.) I pay enough that I could be driving a Hummer  about 2,400 miles per month (at current gas prices).

But my coverage is rationed by insurance company beancounters. When I need a doctor, I see one of their docs.  A complete physical is free once a year. It takes about two hours and 30 seconds – two hours waiting and 30 seconds in which the doctor says “You’re breathing. That’s good. You’re blood pressure is high, if it gets higher we’ll put you on meds.”

That’s ok, or what passes for ok. As long as I don’t get sick I’m ok. That’s why my blood pressure is high. I’m worried about getting sick. Or losing my job. Or losing my job and getting sick. In that case I’ll lose my house.

One thing I don’t worry about is that my father. He’s well over 80, and he has good health, and good health care. He’s on Medicare. It’s great. Efficient.  Government run. Not sexy like the Apollo Mission to the moon, but very important. And for the health care that my kids teachers get. They go to public school. The teachers are in the unions. And the health care is good. The kids too get good health care. My kids, my kids friends, even if their parents work but don’t get health care, then, thanks to Presidents Clinton and Obama, and despite the efforts and vetos of President Bush, they get health care.

But one of the things that really gets me, the thing that makes my blood boil – which is why I’ll need blood pressure meds – is that close to 50 Million Americans – one out of six – have no health insurance. And it’s people between the age of 18 and 65. People who work, or would work, if they could find jobs.  This is wrong on many levels. It’s not just that I have friends in that position, and that I was in that situation – working hard, falling backwards, no health insurance – barely able to afford food. According to Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, “many of the protesters who don’t want “Government Run Health Care” are on Medicare.” While that’s almost funny, it’s also very sad.

Robert Baer on Brian Lehrer/WNYC

A conversation worth listening to: Robert Baer, former CIA officer, interviewed by Brian Lehrer. Link to WNYC archive here .

Baer – we’ll try to update later with links to his books – I’ve read all but the most recent – is also a columnist for Time . Here’s a link to his latest piece, The CIA Is Keeping Secrets. Hello?

I’ve found Baer to be thoughtful, incisive and unpretentious. Agree with him or not (I confess that I do, for the most part), his contribution to the public discussion about terrorism/counter-terrorism is invaluable.

Bottled Water is Safe Yet Bottled Tap Water is Unsafe?

The idea that bottled water is safe but that bottled tap water is unsafe doesn’t hold water. The basic fear of refilling bottles with tap water is that molecules of plastic from the bottle, which is no longer “brand new” can leach into the water.  While it may be true that molecules of the plastic can dissolve into the water, if I fill a bottle at 8:00 AM, take it with me to drink that morning, and drink the water by 10:00 AM, the water has only been in the bottle for two hours. If I buy a case of bottled of water on a Monday at 8:00 PM, put it in my refrigerator at 8:30 PM, grab a bottle on Tuesday morning at 8:00 AM, then the water has been in the bottle in my possession for 12 hours.  It probably was in the store for at least since Monday morning. If it’s the store’s house brand then it was bottled at the latest Friday, so the water was in the bottle for at least 72 hours. If molecules of the plastic dissolve into the water at a steady rate over time there will be SIX times the amount of plastic in the store bought bottled water.

In Rethink What You Drink, on Readers’ Digest Online, Janet Majeski Jemmott gives an overview of the regulations, or lack thereof that govern bottled water, and what can go into the bottles with the water.   The National Resources Defense Council, NRDC, put a comprehensive discussion. on their Environmental Health and Safety Online pages.

The thing is, many brands of bottled water – Dasani for example – contain bottled TAP water. This is actually good news, because while the purity of bottled water is regulated by the FDA, the purity of tap water is regulated by the EPA, and the EPA rules are much stricter for tap water in big cities – disinfecting, testing for bacteria, including E. coli and fecal coliform. So if the water going into the bottle comes from a big municipal tap, then you know it’s pure.

There is no question that disposable water bottles are bad for the environment (NY Times, Pocono Record , Tappening). Of all the “disposable” bottles sold, 85% become litter or are stored in landfills. Only 15% are recycled. Vive le tap!

On The Road From Walden to The Sierra

By Matt Smith.

Cathedral Peak, Tolumne, by Matt Smith

“It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur.”

“My notes and pictures, the best of them printed in my mind as dreams.”

“I scrambled home through the Indian Canyon gate, rejoicing, pitying the poor Professor and General, bound by clocks, almanacs, orders, duties, etc., and compelled to dwell with lowland care and dust and din, where Nature is covered and her voice smothered, while the poor, insignificant wanderer enjoys the freedom and glory of God’s wilderness.”

John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra,

My First Summer In The Sierra, by John Muir reads like On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. It is however, calm, serene, and enlightened. A sequel and companion piece to Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Kerouac, the “Beat Hipster” had Muir’s joy and focus on the here and now, but focused on the characters: Neal Cassady, Alan Ginsberg, himself; their mad rushes between New York and San Francisco. Muir, the naturalist, focuses on the Sierra; the trees, flowers, brush, insects, lizards, bears, dear, dogs, humans, and on the rocks, mountains, and waterfalls that more than set the stage are players in the drama. The only mad rushes in My First Summer In The Sierra are those of the sheep into and out of streams, and Muir has little  use for sheep, shepherds, or even the money shepherding can bring. While the beat hipster wrote about meditating, he lacked the naturalist’s serenity, perspective, and comfort in the wilderness.  Kerouac’s pursuit of intoxicants and stimuli may have indicated a lack of comfort in his own skin, his own self. Muir’s intoxicant was life and the Sierra. He was comfortable in his own skin – as comfortable editing it in 1904 as he was writing it in 1869.

Continue reading →

HOW WE WILL READ IN 100 YEARS

Google asked “How will we read in 100 years?”

Here’s what I think.

If we reinvent our economy to run on solar, geothermal, and kinetic energy, we will get our news and technical information electronically. We will still read classics on paper and mount on our walls images of loved ones and special places. If we don’t those left will struggle for survival.

Human-Powered Monorail

This has many of the advantages of bicycles – and several more:

  • resistant to weather –
  • because they’re on a predefined, car-free path, bicycle/vehicle accidents seem highly unlikely (assuming the routes are planned reasonably);
  • the bicycle theft problem which plagues bicycle-friendly cities like Amsterdam seems unlikely to be a problem.

– Via Inhabitat

– and in turn via TreeHugger.

schweeb-ed02

From Jorge Chapa’s post on Inhabitat

What could be more fun than gliding along on an eco-chic bicycle

? How about shooting through the skies in a pedal-powered monorail capsule! A bunch of entrepreneuring New Zealanders has created just such a human-powered monorail system, known as the Shweeb. Their creation does double duty, acting not just as an innovative transportation system, but also an amusement ride. Are our cities the next step?

The technology behind the Shweeb is remarkably simple – the only infrastructure required is a network of interconnected single rails. A number of pods are hung from this these lines, which are powered by the people sitting inside them. In principle, these pods are no different than recumbent bicycles – they can achieve close to 25 mph, are comfortable to use, and can be used by nearly anyone.

Although we don’t expect to see cities connected by pedal-powered monorail systems anytime soon, there are a number of applications where they could be useful. Think of guided tours through natural parks, scenic routes, adventure camps, and developments that require large pieces of land and a reasonable amount of population.

For now the system is in use on Schweeb’s grounds in New Zealand. If you are feeling adventurous, feel free to visit them at Ngongotha, New Zealand.

+ The Schweeb

As noted above, Via Inhabitat – and in turn via TreeHugger.