What Not To Get Me

This is a novel gift idea. Give the virus (and not the vaccine). Thanks to my friend Diane for snapping this picture.

I'll Have the H1N1 Omelet

I'm starting to feel a little guilty about my light-hearted swine flu posts earlier this year. I'm afraid that karma is going to bite me in the ass and it's really going to hurt this time.

In case you missed it last Sunday, 60 Minutes did an informative piece on the manufacture, distribution and safety of the H1N1 flu vaccine:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

The H1N1 vaccine -- just like the seasonal flu vaccine -- is produced by growing the virus inside eggs which come from secret farms. These farms are considered so important to national security that among the first to get the vaccine are the egg farmers themselves. I assume they don't object to the privilege.

Which reminds me, I'd like to thank 60 Minutes for not interviewing a single moronic celebrity for their report. Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius put it bluntly, "I tend to like to get my health advice from doctors and scientists. And that's what we would urge people to do."

Yes, I agree with her, but a lot of people don't. Fear and skepticism about the vaccine is being fueled by the likes of Glenn Beck, Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher. It was almost funny watching Bill Maher attempting to backpedal and debunk himself on the Realtime season finale two weeks ago. I wonder if his feelings were hurt by that open letter from the editor of Skeptic magazine.

Indeed it's not a laughing matter. A recent and excellent article in Wired explained how the antivaccinationists are creating a panic that is endangering us all:

The [Los Angeles] Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk.

This is the key to a public health catastrophe. People want the right to make individual choices, but the greatest protection comes from herd immunity: "in diseases passed from person to person, it is more difficult to maintain a chain of infection when large numbers of a population are immune. The higher the proportion of individuals who are immune, the lower the likelihood that a susceptible person will come into contact with an infected individual."

It's ironic that the parents who cavalierly refuse to get their children vaccinated never experienced the tragedy of a real epidemic because their own generation was vaccinated!

So when more H1N1 vaccines become available, I will try to get one, if that bad karma doesn't get to me first.

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

Everybody is still talking about the Swine Flu. Authorities in Mexico say they have identified a latter-day "Typhoid Mary." Of course, I'm aware of the term "Typhoid Mary" to describe a carrier of a contagious disease, but I wanted to know the full scoop. I wanted to know the real story of Mary. Wikipedia to the rescue:

Typhoid Mary was Mary Mallon. She was the first person in the United States to be identified as a healthy carrier of Typhoid Fever. The concept that a person could spread disease and remain healthy was not well known at the time. She was eventually taken into custody and held in isolation for three years at a hospital located on North Brother Island. Eventually a new health inspector freed Mallon under the condition she agreed to no longer work as a cook. However, she did return to her previous occupation, and in 1915 infected 25 more people. She was quarantined on the island again where she lived out the rest of her life. She died in 1938.

I've never heard of this North Brother Island. I guess I've seen too many horror and sci-fi movies, and the idea of an island hospital to quarantine sick people sounds creepy. I clicked the Wikipedia link and was not disappointed. North Brother Island is in New York City's East River. Years after the hospital closed, the island housed a center to treat adolescent drug users, but widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close. However, the island is more famous for the wreck of the SS General Slocum which burned on June 15, 1904.

Ah, my itchy clicky finger twitches! The SS General Slocum was a steamship launched in 1891. The passenger ship suffered a series of unfortunate mishaps including the time it was carrying 900 intoxicated Paterson Anarchists who decided to riot! Imagine that? But the final disaster likely started with a discarded cigarette or match. Fire! The passengers' rescue was complicated by the fact that the dryrotted hoses fell apart, the lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible (How could they know? Titanic wouldn't be released for another 93 years!), and the life preservers had iron bars inside them! More than 1,000 people died in the accident.

Who would want this clusterfuck of a ship named after them? And is Slocum really pronounced the way I think it's pronounced? Clicky clicky. Henry Warner Slocum was a Union general during the American Civil War and later served in the United States House of Representatives from New York. He earned the derogatory nickname "Slow Come" because he was indecisive on the battlefield.

And that is a Six Degrees of Wikipedia dead end. Nothing about Henry Warner Slocum inspires me to click ahead. But didn't we learn something today? And more importantly, isn't Swine Flu fun?

No Cause for Alarm

I wish I could completely remember this witticism or even who's famous for it, but it went something like this: when I was a baby I'd lie in my crib looking up at the mobile dangling above and think "that thing's gonna fall."

I admit I can be fearful like that even without the help of the Internet. Isn't the Internet supposed to help us with facts and... um... make us smarter? I'm talking about this swine flu scare.

Here are some facts. The CDC tells me that typically 36,000 people die of flu symptoms in the US every year. The World Health Organization has raised its alert level from three to four. That governor who a week ago wanted Texas to secede is now begging the feds for flu help. Here's a handy Google map showing all confirmed cases of the swine flu. Here's a 1976 swine flu awareness commercial. Here's a brief history of the 1918 flu pandemic which killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide. Here's a sampling of swine flu messages popping up on that wellspring of misinformation known as Twitter:

Webcomic via xkcd.

Yeah, that would be pretty funny if it wasn't exactly like the real swine flu tweets on Twitter!

So when is the right time to panic? Well, I'd say not yet, and that must mean something coming from somebody who thinks a baby mobile is the sword of Damocles. But, still, be sure to wash your hands.