This is a link to a virulently (pun intended) anti-vaccine blog. I've moved this to opinion since it doesn't really fit anywhere else until and unless there is reason to believe this has any element of truth in it.
The first batch of 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine, to be shipped the first week of October, will likely be in the form of intranasal spray containing the live attenuated virus, CDC officials said in a press briefing Friday.
The CDC anticipates at least 3.4 million doses of the nasal spray vaccine being shipped to states that first week. Children younger than 2 years, pregnant women, and people with underlying conditions such as lung disease and diabetes — although they are at high risk for H1N1 complications — should not receive vaccines with the live attenuated virus. Instead, they should wait until inactivated injectable vaccines become available. Officials said that there may be some injectable vaccines in the first shipment, but it is not certain.
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You can get a mild form form of the vaccinated against disease (eg polio) from live attenuated vaccines. There are recorded cases of onward transmission of flu from people given live attenuate vaccine.
But that doesn't account for this. This would be a massive screwup by the vaccine manufacturer.
The only other explanation is they managed to create a multiple wave flu pandemic in microcosm on the ship.
I'm not a medical or biosciences professional, so I'm not qualified to comment on that side of the story. What I am is an ex-squid (6 yrs. regular & 7 reserve) who knows that CO of a surface warship with a 347-person crew is a full Commander (O-5) or Captain (O-6) billet. A LCDR would be the XO or one of the department heads.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
10/01/2009 1:16 Comments ||
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Australia's major infectious disease society is questioning the safety of the country's novel H1N1 vaccination plans, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported today. In a letter to the government, the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases cited a risk of cross-contamination when using multidose vials and said the flu epidemic has subsided, so the campaign needn't be rushed. A spokeswoman for vaccine maker CSL countered that the single-dose approach would be slower and more expensive. [Aug 20 Australian Broadcasting Corp. News story]
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I assume cross contamination means transmitting one persons flu infection to a second along with the vaccine.
A recipe for novel mutations as I have noted before.
#7
FYI, the CDC specifically says not to administer H1N1 and seasonal live attenuated flu vaccines at the same time, because of the novel mutation/combination problem.
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Can seasonal vaccine and novel H1N1 vaccine be administered at the same time?
Live 2009 H1N1 vaccine can be administered at the same visit as any other live or inactivated vaccine EXCEPT seasonal live attenuated influenza vaccine
I assume cross contamination means transmitting one persons flu infection to a second along with the vaccine.
Cross contamination through using multi-dose vials is referring to some other germ getting into a common volume of vaccine through unsterile techniques and then infecting others. This germ would most likely be hepatitis B or C, less likely HIV. It would not be the flu.
#11
I've left this on the Burg but moved it to the opinion section and removed the text. If you want to go dip into that website it's your choice.
My own opinion - worth the less than $.02 you pay for it - is that there is no reason to assume that a vaccine for H1N1 is any more dangerous than one for other influenza strains, and good reason to believe that it's important to vaccinate most people against it.
H1N1 viruses rarely emerge but when they do they have the potential to take forms that are much more deadly than the usual seasonal flus.
Vaccination will almost certainly be the only way to stop the spread of a mutated H1N1. There are three predictive models developed by different research teams I know, using very different modeling/simulation methods, which show the same thing:
the only way to prevent a full pandemic of a novel flu strain (one that a lot of the population doesn't have antibodies for) is early vaccination, especially of highly vulnerable segments of the population.
That's because the transmission characteristics of influenza viruses, the dormancy periods when you might be a carrier but don't have major symptoms yet, and our highly mobile society mean that by the time you try other methods such as social distancing (keeping people home, away from jobs and schools; shutting down airports etc) it's too late. Those measures can slow the spread of a flu virus (any flu virus) but not stop it. Without a major vaccination program we are simply rolling the dice and hoping the virus doesn't mutate to a lethal form like the one that killed millions of people in 1918.
BTW, one of the models I mentioned above was used this past Spring to predict the spread of the early, not very virulent version of H1N1 that has been circulating. It proved to be highly accurate ... as the CDC got better data their data converged to its predictions.
Vaccines can have side effects in a few people. But if you refuse vaccination and if the virus does mutate to really lethal form, you're gambling not only with your own life but with those of your children, your loved ones and everyone around you IMO.
The problem is that by the time we know if the new strain - and there will be a new strain, viruses are constantly combining and changing - by the time we know that a new strain is lethal, it will be too late to stop it.
Pre-emption is the only effective defense in this case, where we haven't seen an avian/swine combined flu in generations.
Maybe the mild form that's been circulating will give enough people enough immunity to prevent massive deaths. Or maybe the virus won't make the 2 - only 2 - genetic changes needed to become lethal.
But if H1N1 does mutate to the fully lethal form seen in 1918 and people are NOT vaccinated it will be impossible to prevent the sort of massive deaths that occurred during its last appearance in the early 1900s. 26 million people died in that pandemic, and that was before the world population was anywhere near as large as it is today and before most people had cars, flew across the country or the ocean etc.
#12
BTW if the above sounds passionate, well .... I sat on the pandemic influenza planning group for a military installation. The military involved are pretty sober people, some with battlefield experience. Not prone to exageration or panic, in other words.
They are taking the potential of a deadly H1N1 strain very very seriously. So I do too.
They're aware that in 1918 the flu vectored through military training camps because the young adults in those camps were the most vulnerable to that strain. The same thing is true today ... those age groups are the ones most likely to be hit especially hard by a lethal new strain of H1N1 this time around, too. But NO ONE has real immunity against some potential H1N1 strains. That means things could get nasty really fast if at least partial immunity isn't induced via vaccination.
I know commanders who have asked for course of action evaluation in the event that 40-50% of a base/post are seriously ill or dead. If those 40-50% include people with key specialties things could unravel very quickly.
May not happen. If all goes well the virus won't mutate to that form. But if it does .....
To me, this is personal. I will be "at risk" due to a (temporarily) nuked immune system. I will be getting the H1N1 (one of the "fully dead" versions), and have already gotten the pneumonia and normal A virus inoculations as soon as they were available
If you are in the slightest way at risk (diabetes, heart condition, asthmatic, cancer treatment, etc), you are an idiot if you do not ge treated.
If you are otherwise healthy, you re putting the res of the population around you at risk if you "take a chance" on not getting inoculated.
If you do not interact with much anyone and are not at risk, then maybe skipping this would be an acceptable risk -- but for those around you at risk, and those who are at risk, GO GET YOUR INNOCULATION!
Beware of idiots on the internet with all kinds of paranoid crazy theories about the H1N1. Here are the "Big 3 BS" going around:
1) cross contamination? Not going to happen unless you are in the third world where they re-use needles. Doesn't happen in the US unless someone really screws up then you have more to worry about than the flu (Hep, HIV, etc). Also, thimerosal, a preservative, is in most of the multi-dose vaccines, and it prevents cross-contamination in other scenarios.
2) Adjuvants - specifically MF56, which contains squalene (which is linked to GW syndrome). Not happening in the US _ squalene is not approved, therefore MF59 is not approved, therefore the Novartis formulation of the vaccine is not legal for use in the US. The Glaxo-Smith-Kline formulation uses a non-squalene adjuvant ASO3, which is approved and has long been in use in the US.
3) Mercury - it comes from a preservative, thimerosal (of which merciry is a small component), NOT an adjuvant - as mentioned above, its a preservative and prevents cross contamination. And there are thimerosal-free (mercury-free) formulations available for the H1N1 vaccine. This issue comes form a massive misinterpretation of Washington Stat health department suspending the ban on thimerosal in vaccines for small children and pregnant women to allow them to CHOOSE to take such vaccines rahter than wait for mercury-free ones if they run into limited availability. FYI: the mercury in the thimerosal such an innoculation is less than you get by eating wild-caught tuna. There have been many large, thorough studies that show no harm caused by thimerosal in vaccines.
This is more fringe nutjob stuff who couple it to interment camps, stocking up on burial crypts (long ago debunked), and the Bilderbergers taking over the world.
So get the facts, and beware of the kooks; they are coming out of the woodwork on this one.
#17
A few bits. First of all, H1N1 is no biggie. However it is being used as a dress rehearsal for Avian flu H5N1, which right now is just shy of nuclear war for being the biggest threat to the US.
By this, I mean that worldwide, the medical systems are adjusting to get ready to fight a plague estimated to be deadlier than either of the great Black Plagues (14th and 17th Centuries). And that plague is the Avian flu. Estimated mortality of 60% of those infected.
In the US, this means that the government has poured enormous amounts of money into vaccine production by all the major pharma companies, whereas before only one or two companies had done it.
Already we know that when the H5N1 flu emerges, it will be brutal, and there is no possible way to prevent the death of millions of Americans, because we cannot make the vaccine in time. But we're going to try.
So H1N1, though mild, is a dress rehearsal. Among other things, they are adding "adjuvants" to the vaccine, extra ingredients to stimulate the immune system to make more antibodies, faster. But this has never been done on a wide scale before. Nor has production and distribution of vaccine at this scale.
So it's a great test. As far as the antiviral drugs like Tamiflu go, don't bet the farm on them. With just some use in Asia, within a few months the ordinary flu in the US had already adapted a resistance to Tamiflu.
For its part, H1N1 has just had a noticed mutation that would be critical to H5N1. Some people have been detected with two different strains of H1N1 in their system. The primary strain is like a typical flu, with most of the virus in the upper trachea and sinuses.
But the new strain is appearing in the lower trachea. So these people have two different flus at the same time.
Now the primary reason that H5N1 hasn't started killing people like a lawnmower cuts grass, is that it is limited to the lower trachea. This makes it much harder for people to spread to each other. As soon as it figures out how to reproduce in the upper trachea and sinuses, we have a plague on our hands.
And the zinger is that H1N1 and H5N1 can exchange this information with each other, and all other influenza types.
But if you don't know this background, a lot of what is happening with the Swine flu vaccine seems, with some justification, to be unnecessary or even stupid.
The bottom line is that it is just a big test. So if you want to play along, fine. The only exceptions are children and people with other medical conditions that may make them more susceptible to secondary diseases like pneumonia. Hispanics, too, seem to be at greater risk for becoming seriously ill.
#18
It's true that H5N1 "Asian/avian flu" is far more lethal than the current H1N1. However, the ability of current strains of H5N1 for human to human transmission appears to be limited.
OTOH, the current H1N1 "swine flu" has the potential to open that door since it blends human, swine and bird flu elements. H1N1 can swap traits with H5N1 fairly easily due to the avian elements in this variant.
That's why it's important to get vaccinated for H1N1 now. As H1N1 mutates rapidly it gets closer to H5N1 ... and it is human transmissible. The concern is that H5N1 will pick up that trait from the current H1N1 strain as the latter spreads and changes this year.
So the current vaccination push is more than a dry run - it's a preemptive attempt to significantly limit the opportunities for these two strains to interchange traits in dangerous ways.
#19
It wouldn't take much of a hit from either H1N1 or H5N1 (or another virulent, airborne vector that can cause serious respiratory infection) to overwhelm the American medical system.
We have little extra capacity for ICU beds. We have even less extra capacity for respiratory ventilators. We have some extra general hospital bed capacity but not enough nurses to staff all of them unless we draw nurses from other duties.
Remember how the 1918-1919 flu was treated -- large open wards in converted schools, etc with minimal nursing and medical care? That's the next flu fatal/serious pandemic here, not because we don't know better, but because we'll be overwhelmed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/01/2009 17:42 Comments ||
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#20
lotp,
Live attenuated vaccines cause co-infections, such as with H5N1, that risk development of new strains.
There is anecdotal evidence from 1918 that partial immunity from infection with a previous strain caused rapid death from hemmorhagic type symptoms. This is a know problem with at least one other viral disease - dengue, and the reason there is no vaccine against dengue.
Vaccines have never stopped the spread of the flu. To think they will in the future is wishful thinking.
#21
Question for the professors at Rantburg U:
Last time I got a flu shot, I had a ten-alarm headache and couldn't lift my head off the pillow for three days. What causes this? Do side effects vary from vaccine to vaccine?
If you had a live attenuated flu vaccine then you would have had a mild (relatively speaking) flu infection from the vaccine.
A killed flu vaccine would give you milder symptoms (the vaccine doesn't cause a infection), but would be less effective at stimulating the necessary immune response.
It isn't a side effect. It's how all vaccines work.
#24
Mom, there is some concern from recent testing that some types of influenza might be responsible for neurological damage.
"Influenza-associated neurological complications may account for up to 5% of cases of acute childhood encephalitis or encephalopathy; they were reported in 6% of influenza-associated deaths among children during the 2003 to 2004 influenza season in the United States."
However this varies tremendously based on the influenza strain. After the Spanish flu of 1918, Europe, but not the US, experienced a "second" epidemic, called the "brain fever", mostly in young adult men. It killed many, and those that survived were prone to both severe rages and paranoia.
There is even some suggestions that the brain damage was so uniform in character, that it might have contributed to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.
That being said, depending on what you were vaccinated with, you might have had an immune response in your nervous system. This is because your symptoms of stiff neck and severe headache are associated with meningitis-type illnesses. This is not to say you had a real infection, just that your immune system might have thought you did.
Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution -- New York Times, Sept. 23 As Hurricane Season winds down where is the MMGW caused increase in frequency and severity of tropical cyclones. Score to date, six named storms, two if them Hurricanes - all fizzled out in the Atlantic.
WASHINGTON -- In this headline on a New York Times story about difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word "plateau." It dismisses the unpleasant -- to some people -- fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it.
The "difficulty" -- the "intricate challenge," the Times says -- is "building momentum" for carbon reduction "when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years." That was in the Times' first paragraph.
In the fifth paragraph, a "few years" became "the next decade or so," according to Mojib Latif, a German "prize-winning climate and ocean scientist" who campaigns constantly to promote policies combating global warming. Actually, Latif has said he anticipates "maybe even two" decades in which temperatures cool. But stay with the Times' "decade or so." By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau," not warming's apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.
The Times reported that "scientists" -- all of them? -- say the 11 years of temperature stability has "no bearing," none, on long-term warming. Some scientists say "cool stretches are inevitable." Others say there may be growth of Arctic sea ice, but the growth will be "temporary." According to the Times, however, "scientists" say that "trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public -- and to policymakers -- can be frustrating."
The Times says "a short-term trend gives ammunition to skeptics of climate change." Actually, what makes skeptics skeptical is the accumulating evidence that theories predicting catastrophe from man-made climate change are impervious to evidence. The theories are unfalsifiable, at least in the "short run." And the "short run" is defined as however many decades must pass until the evidence begins to fit the hypotheses.
The Washington Post recently reported the theory of a University of Virginia professor emeritus who thinks that, many millennia ago, primitive agriculture -- burning forests, creating methane-emitting rice paddies, etc. -- produced enough greenhouse gases to warm the planet at least a degree. The theory is interesting. Even more interesting is the reaction to it by people such as the Columbia University professor who says it makes him "really upset" because it might encourage opponents of legislation combating global warming.
Warnings about cataclysmic warming increase in stridency as evidence of warming becomes more elusive. A recent report from the United Nations Environment Program predicts an enormous 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit increase by the end of the century even if nations fulfill their most ambitious pledges concerning reduction of carbon emissions. The U.S. goal is an 80 percent reduction by 2050. But Steven Hayward of American Enterprise Institute says that would require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the 1910 level. On a per-capita basis, it would mean emissions approximately equal to those in 1875.
That will not happen. So, we are doomed. So, why try?
America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the first casualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth of consensus -- the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts the gravity of the crisis, doubt being conclusive evidence of disreputable motives or intellectual qualifications. The president, however, could support such a commission because he is sure "there's finally widespread recognition of the urgency of the challenge before us."
So he announced at the U.N. climate change summit, where he said the threat is so "serious" and "urgent" that unless all nations act "boldly, swiftly and together" -- "time ... is running out" -- we risk "irreversible catastrophe." Prince Charles agrees. In March, seven months ago, he said humanity had 100 months -- until July 2017 -- to prevent "catastrophic climate change and the unimaginable horrors that this would bring." Evidently humanity will prevent this.
Charles Moore of the Spectator notes that in July, the prince said that by 2050 the planet will be imperiled by the existence of 9 billion people, a large portion of them consuming as much as Western people now do. Environmental Cassandras must be careful with their predictions lest they commit what deniers among the climate alarmists consider the unpardonable faux pas of denying that the world is coming to an end.
You guys are coming late to the party. By 1980 we all are going to be toast due to a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion and famine. Famous authors have said so.
On a more recent note, the other day we talked about the requirement in science to both share your data and show your calculations. Over at WUWT they work the latest climate data scandal. (Warning: geekiness at the link. Can you say dendrochronology?)
Looks like the tree ring data used to generate the 'hockey stick' graphs has been ruthlessly cherry picked. If you use the full dataset, the graph ends up with the same slope as your average pancake. The money quote: "The trend is flat as road kill for the past 2000 years, though it does show an ever so slight cooling."
#2
primitive agriculture -- burning forests, creating methane-emitting rice paddies, etc. -- produced enough greenhouse gases to warm the planet at least a degree.
The archaelogical evidence says the opposite. Agriculture as the primary means of food acquisition post-dates the Holocene temperature maximum.
This is just part of the campaign to make GHGs the primary climate driver and has no scientific basis.
#3
"Global warming" is like an STD, it is hard to get rid of and keeps coming back....This Inconvenient Truth Convenient Lie was invented fabricated by Al Gore. Another achievement of Gore was to invent the internet. The hawking of snake oil made Gore a very rich man. The green car, to be manufactured in Finland and backed with taxpayer money will also make him a bundle. If cap and trade goes through, more for Gore.
The 20 shopkeepers of Green Town in Lahore have been advised to remove any Quranic verses from their shops simply to avoid bloody mayhem, given the atmosphere of extremism in the country. The shopkeepers are Ahmedis who represent the cluster of 200 houses belonging to the community in the nearby Township area. Some of them have written verses from the Quran (like the kalima) on the front of their shops and houses.
There was the absurd incident of an Ahmedi being hauled up for having written the kalima on the house that he had just bought; but he was hauled up again, for desecration, when he tried to wipe it off.
The Ahmedis complain that the Sunni shopkeepers had gone to the police in the matter out of business jealousy. They say the verses had stayed written on their houses and shops for many years. But the stark fact is that under the Constitution and the laws framed in line with an amendment made in it, the Ahmedis are not even allowed to show respect towards Islamic symbols. They have been declared non-Muslims but with the distinction that while other non-Muslims can show respect, they cannot.
Outsiders will regard this as ridiculous or even funny, but in Pakistan this is a deadly serious matter. People have died for it, and angry organisations with global connections are calling for more drastic action against the Ahmedis every day. The application to the police against the Ahmedis has been moved in the name of the International Majlis Khatm-e-Nabuwwat. The police in the area of Green Town cannot wave the affair away.
According to Section 298-B of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), the Ahmedi community cannot call its place of worship a masjid and cannot give the call to prayer (azan). According to Section 298-C of the PPC, they cannot pose as Muslims, directly or indirectly. There was this extremely absurd incident of an Ahmedi being hauled up for having written the kalima on the house that he had just bought; but he was hauled up again, for desecration, when he tried to wipe it off.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/01/2009 00:00 ||
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Amongst all the appalling clap-trap and stunning misinformation about Roman Polanski, I have found myself heartened (and slightly discombobulated) by one simple and jarring fact: plenty of left-leaning folks have laid into Polanski with gusto. . . .
Witness: the center-right (so I am told) Anne Applebaum has revealed herself to be a dishonest, slippery sort prone to blaming the (13-year-old) victim and her mom, while the voice of reason at the Washington Post has proved to be . . . Eugene Robinson?? Yes, Eugene Robinson, and a damn well-written piece it is.
On the blog front, we have numerousexcellentpieces from Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Folks, “numerous excellent pieces from Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money” is just not a phrase I ever envisioned myself tapping out on a keyboard. And, in another unlikely phrase at the Patterico blog, there was “good stuff from Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber.” (Man, this is weird.)
I don’t mean to portray the left as monolithically sane in this episode. The Hollywood types who have supported Polanski en masse all lean left politically. But this seems less about politics and more about the preservation of what Glenn Reynolds calls “a sort of droit de seigneur” — a reminder that artistes are different from the rabble and not subject to the same pedestrian laws against anal sex with children and such.
But as for these Internet lefties . . . I will lose my bearings if I start to think of these people as sensible. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
10/01/2009 12:14 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution
