You know what would be REALLY nice? If I could just swap phones as needed during the course of the day. For example - walking the dogs, or shopping, or driving - take a flip-phone. At the office? Move my "identity" into a smartphone. This way I don't have to decide between something small that fits in a pocket and won't break if I drop it, and something that has more functionality.
Maybe the games are so rife with typos that players don't care how fun it is. I have seen more than one game out that showing my 'High Scoe' or that I am on 'Level Too'.
I have a day job as a game programmer, so my iPhone diversions are merely a fun hobby, I'm not really looking to get rich from it.
MEMO
FROM: YOUR BOSS
SUBJECT: YOUR NON-COMPETE AGREEMENT
You forgot that we own all inventions, code, ideas, and your soul, even if it was done entirely off the clock. Thank you for developing the game for us. Now give us *our* money and *our* source code.
Well, the alternative is Windows (or Linux, I suppose). No, I'll stick to the Mac for now, as I'm most familiar with it. Honestly though, if Windows 7 turns me on,, I'm ready to jump
ship.
If *any* operating system "turns you on", you need to step away from the keyboard and get a life.
In Soviet Russia, Windows 7 turns on YOU! Oh, wait... that's Vista!
Who cares, I'm waiting to pirate the games. Fuck you nintendo.
me@slashdot > --gamemode
SLASHGAME: YOU ARE STANDING IN A FIELD
SLASHGAME: LOOK NORTH
SLASHGAME: YOU SEE AN ANONYMOUS COWARD
SLASHGAME: WALK NORTH
SLASHGAME: THE ANONYMOUS COWARD GREETS YOU BY SAYING "FUCK YOU NINTENDO"
SLASHGAME: INVENTORY
SLASHGAME: YOU HAVE 2 COOKIES
SLASHGAME: QUERY COOKIES
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #1 IS COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #2 IS COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: DROP COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: YOU DROP THE COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD PICKS UP COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: IN SOVIET UNION, COOKIE EATS ANONYMOUS COWARD
SLASHGAME: EXIT
me@slashdot >
If you read what I wrote, I never said that the shot used the so-called "live virus".
However, even with the so-called "killed virus" (so-called, because viruses are not living things. They do not eat, grow, divide, etc. There's nothing going on inside that protein coating), you may experience the symptoms of an infection, since your body WILL be marshalling its' defenses.
The CDC lists the following side-effects for the shot: Soreness, redness, or swelling where the shot was given, fever (low grade), aches, rare but severe allergic reactions.
For the nasal vaccine: runny nose, wheezing, headache, vomiting, muscle aches, fever, sore throat, cough - in other words, the flu. Also, transmission of the virus to people around you is possible, same as the flu. Because it gives you the flu (though hopefully just a mild case).
Every single time you reboot your system clock has changed.
My battery is dead, you ignorant clod!
Actually, something like that happened at the Montreal Casino. The machines were shut down every day, so they would end up generating the same sequence of numbers. A guy named Daniel Corriveau noticed, played the numbers, won $600,000.
He initially claimed that he used chaos theory, and the casino claimed it was a bad random number generator. The reality was that the cmos batteries had been removed during development to make testing easier, and nobody put them back in, so every day, they started with the same seed. Simple incompetence. They paid the money after 2 weeks.
might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."
Every place that instituted a trave embargo avoided anyone coming down with the flu in 1918. Sure, a virulent and lethal disease can still spread through the population if they don't take measures to prevent it - but the measures to prevent the transmission of both colds and flu are simple - the problem is that people don't even want to do the simple things. The majority of adults (77% of men, 49% of women) still pick their boogers. If they can't master something as simple and obvious as "don't pick your nose and then touch something - you'll contaminate it", it's partly because there's a taboo surrounding talking about it. It's the same as when there was an outbreak of shigella among Jewish children here - doctors felt they had to be careful not to offend the jewish community by saying "your kids need to learn to (1) learn how to wipe their asses properly and (2) wash their hands afterwards.
It's also why sinestrance survives - right-handed people mostly eat with the same hand they wipe with, left-handed ones, tending to be more ambidextrous, often wipe with the non-dominant hand. That must have come in handy back in the leaves and pine-cone days:-)
Then there's the whole reactive arthritis problem - more infections, more chance of arthritis. So aside from the inconvenience of dealing with a bout of shigella, they're also now higher-risk for arthritis, simply because they failed basic hygiene.
We really need to get the message out that, just because we have all sorts of fancy anti-bacterial house-cleaning sprays doesn't mean we can abdicate practicing and teaching proper basic hygiene. The problem being that those who can't be arsed to wash their hands properly after going to the bathroom aren't just putting themselves at risk, as we saw with the shigella outbreak, and as we see every cold and flu season when people cough into their hands, or pick their noses, or use the same soggy contaminated wadded-up kleenex or hanky a second time. etc.
But we don't, because that would offend the 3/4 of the population who pick their noses, don't wash their hands, etc. And then they have the nerve to want to use my keyboard. They can have my keyboard when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
3 people is statistically the same as none. More people dies getting hit by lightning with "no underlying conditions." Also, they don't consider obesity an underlying condition unless you're morbidly obese, but we know that this bug has a predilection for people who are overweight, and being significantly overweight, but not morbidly obese, should be counted as an underlying condition.
The Canadian study is in the process of peer review, but so far the data looks good. It's significant because of the completeness of the numbers in the sampling population - pretty much the whole population in several provinces, so not much chance of "sampling bias".
The H1N1 vaccine is just a normal flu vaccine except that it is targeted to a particular strain. I see no reason not to get it.
... and I see no reason to get it. My immune system works fine, I'm immune to this particular strain, I've only had the flu once in my life (and that's pretty much been the experience of everyone I've talked to who refuses to get flu shots. "How many times have you had the flu?" "I *might* have had it once, I think." or "Once, I was sick as a dog for a week, and that's been it". Sure, one data point is anecdotal, but when it's pretty much everyone I know, it's strains mere coincidence.
Also, how do you think those so-called "live vaccines*" that are al the rage nowadays work? You get a mild case of the flu. So you're still shedding viral particles. Why do you think they say not to give it to people who are immuno-compromised? It'll give them a full-blown case of the flu, and make them more easy prey to pneumonia, etc.
Also, transmission is mitigated by simple hygiene. Unfortunately, people still cough into their hands, then touch things; they still pick their noeses, then touch things, they still don't wash their hands after touching doorknobs, other people's phones, etc., and then they wonder why they get colds and flus. They go to work hacking up a lung because they don't want to "waste a sick day". They smoke... and the tar and particulates makes it more likely that the virus particles will "stick around", not just in smokers, but in anyone exposed to second-hand smoke. Smoking around children is child abuse.
The living conditions are a lot different from 1918. We don't have as many people sharing communal toilets, or using outhouses; we don't have 10 million people sitting in trenches every day fighting trench warfare, waist-deep in mud for weeks at a time; we don't have homes that are as poorly ventilated; we don't have workplaces that have as many dust and other particulates in the air to scar the lungs. We don't have that many places where everyone in the tenement uses the same washroom and the same toilets. We have such modern stuff as refrigerators. We no longer believe that turpentine or coca-cola are "remedies for what ails you." We know that simple things, like washing your hands, makes a difference. We don't have as many people using the same cloth handkerchief over and over all day, accumulating and dispersing the little buggies.
Even if we didn't also have antibiotics, 1918 can't happen today, for the simple reason that people are in a healthier environment, and most of us eat better than people in a World War.
It's the same as a bunch of dogs in an overcrowded puppy mill with poor ventilation, lousy sanitation, and the same bunch of dogs dispersed into many homes, with good food and ventilation. Diseases that will decimate the first group won't make much headway in the second, because of the different environmental conditions.
Try "if your respiratory system is messed up from a bout of the flu" rather than a bogus "cytokine storm" and you're right.
Everyone going on about 1918 seems to forget that things were a lot different a century ago. Most jobs were dusty, "doctors" would prescribe "cures" that were worse than the disease (like prescribing turpentine for lung problems and cancer...), heating and lighting often also were semi-toxic due to poor ventilation and bad design, living quarters were often cramped and didn't have adequate ventilation (or too much ventilation - drafty and cold), people often shared "the facilities" in tenements - ideal conditions for sickness to spread from person to person, refrigerators - rare, patent medicines flourished (including those that claimed snake-oil as a curative agent - hence the term snake-oil salesmen).
This was the time when
1913 the quack John R. Brinkley, calling himself an "Electro Medic Doctor," began injecting men with colored water as a virility cure, claiming it was "electric medicine from Germany." (Brinkley would go on to even greater infamy through transplanting goat testicles into mens' scrotums as a virility treatment.)
Towards the end of the period, a number of radioactive medicines, containing uranium or radium, were marketed. These apparently actually contained the ingredients promised, and there were a number of tragedies among their devotees. Most notoriously, steel heir Eben McBurney Byers was a supporter of the popular radium water Radithor, developed by the medical con artist William J. A. Bailey. Byers contracted fatal radium poisoning and had to have his jaw removed in an unsuccessful attempt to save him from bone cancer after drinking nearly 1400 bottles of Bailey's "radium water." Water irradiators were sold that promised to infuse water placed within them with radon, which was thought to be healthy at the time.
It didn't stop... it continued right up to the 2nd world war. Heck, Coca-cola, 7-Up and Hires Root Beer were all supposed to be "good for what ails ya."
Also, what good would washing your hands do in those days when you wiped them on a contaminated towel...
Tuberculosis, "consumption", etc., poor living and working conditions, and quacks prescribing quick-buck "cures." Of course disease and death would be higher than today.
Problem is that your proposed cytokine storm model has zero to do with bacterial pneumonia - and that's what killed them, not pneumonia from a viral infection, but from a bacterial infection due to a weakened immune system.
The flu weakened them, they caught pneumonia, they died. No "cytokine storm" can cause bacteria to spontaneously be generated and infect the lungs. People sick with the flu, poor ventilation trying to keep warm, sharing blankets, etc.... and yes, bacterial pneumonia typically is caught when the immune system is already under assault from flu or even a really nasty cold.
The same goes for the people in the US - a new virus, lots of people going from place to place so the virus continues to find fresh populations to infect (the car was just starting to be popular then), and wartime privations domestically all attributed to the flu of 1918 being worse than average. Also (1) places that introduced a quarantine didn't get infected, and (2) statistically, not every flu season will be average. There HAVE to be worse-than-average, to balance out the not-so-bad, or the average would change. (3) It's cyclical for the same reason that forest fires are cyclical - eventually enough dead material accumulates in a forest, and you have a major fire, just as eventually you have enough people who lack exposure to a particular strain of flu and a lot of them will get sick at the same time. It's entirely natural and normal.
Kids learn from their parents. Look how many adults still pick their noses at traffic lights. I've even honked my horn to let them know I'm taking pictures with my cell phone, just to see the expression on their faces when they know they've been caught.
It's pretty bad when you're talking to a grown adult, and all of a sudden, with no warning, their finger just disappears up their snout. I have to wonder, do they even realize what they're doing? Is it *that* ingrained?
It might be unpopular to say it, but people have to take some responsibility for being over-weight.
For starters, that isn't your viewpoint
Really, now you're going to tell me what my viewpoint is? Look, you're not Kreskin, and even if you were, you still couldn't read minds, so lay off with trying to tell me what my viewpoint is,, when it clearly contradicts what I've written.
Also, yes, I use derogatory terms like lardo and fat slob, for those who refuse to help themselves and REFUSE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY. Like the guy in the local newspaper who was complaining that he couldn't get gastric bypass surgery fast enough - while he's standing there with his lunch - a 2 litre of pop and a foot-long sub and a May West for desert. Blaming "the system". Fuck that. He should look in the mirror. This is exactly the type of stinking pile of Crisco who deserves to be publicly mocked, if only to serve as an object lesson to everyone else. Some peoples' lives are like the Titanic - they're an object warning to everyone else. If they won't help themselves, wtf should anyone else?
You say they're free to do so? Sure, but don't ask me to help pay for it because they're "disabled". And don't defend their freedom to eat like pigs while trying to cut down my freedom to call them pigs. They're human garburators.
Contrast that to people who are trying to quit over-eating, or quit smoking. I won't call the people who are making an honest effort to lose weight lardo or fat slob - they don't merit it, and need all the encouragement they can get, because people like you refuse to punish the ones who profit most from this - the producers of HFCS, tobacco companies, etc.
Don't like it? Gets your hackles up? Tough shit, lardo.
am I the only one who went to facebook and was disappointed when the "filter by location" thing returned on results on Sharon Jackson from tennessee?
That's because it's Shannon D Jackson, not Sharon.
Create account with similar name (maybe use a unicode character that looks like a regular letter, put an extra space between the letters, etc) so that the screen name looks identical
"Poke" Dana M. Hannah, the judge, the prosecutor, etc.
Creae account with name of Dana M. Hannah (the victim)
"Poke" the judge, the prosecutor, etc.
Create account with name of judge, lather, rinse, repeat...
Sell your "proof" that it's possible to fake someone else on facebook to the defendant.
PROFIT: Get hired by legal defense teams in future cases.
Seriously, WTF did they publish the victims' name for?
It might be unpopular to say it, but people have to take some responsibility for being over-weight. Don't want to be more prone to sickness because you're morbidly obese? Then stop eating so much! Don't want to be more prone to cancer from smoking? Then quit smoking! Don't want to pick up an opportunistic infection when you can reduce your risk by simple hygiene? Then teach your kids to wash their hands and stop picking their noses!
It's not a question of "obsessing over fatties" - it's pointing out that the stats are skewed, and that if you're not overweight, you have a much lower risk profile. This means that a lot of people who are panicking, shouldn't be. H1N1 is like any other opportunistic virus. Don't want to be a target? Reduce your profile - in this case, literally.
This is all stuff that should be obvious, but instead we have people going in a panic and making uninformed decisions - like the "everyone MUST get a shot" one, when there's lots of evidence that people who were around during the 1957 epidemic don't need one, can't benefit from one, and shouldn't have to be put in such a position.
The fat epidemic kills more people every year. We can solve it by banning HFCS in soft drinks and processed foods, and ending agricultural subsidies that make junk cheaper than real food. Tobacco kills more people every year, and we can prevent that too, but no, we won't. That would require people to *gasp* get a fucking clue and exercise some self-control. Any politician who recommends that course of action will be out of office really quick.
Doesn't make it any less true. Which begs the question - who are the ones who really have their heads screwed on crooked? The people advocating personal responsibility and better health? I don't think so.
As for "killing all the fatties and smokers" - they've already volunteered to do the job themselves. What are YOU doing to warn them?
The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza,
And in both cases, it's in the same paragraph as the speculation about "cytokine storms". Word-for-word, both articles agree that bacterial pneumonia was not just the #1, but the majority, cause of death. Not some theoretical "cytokine storm", which even the WHO has no basis other than speculation, as in this article.
The theory doesn't fit the facts that we know, just like your claim that Wikipedia doesn't say that bacterial pneumonia caused most deaths. People died mostly of bacterial pneumonia in the middle of a flu epidemic in the middle of a world war that caused many to be malnourished, and exposed tens of millions to local diseases that they would never have encountered before - and most would have survived with antibiotics, which just hadn't been discovered yet.
What should the government do if a high mortality rate disease breaks out for which a vaccine exists?
Considering that they won't know that it's high-mortality until it actually kills of tons of people, by which time it's too late to get it into production and distribution, nothing beyond encouraging quarantines and proper hygiene to prevent transmission.
Places that put quarantines into effect in time in 1918 didn't get sick.
So - what could the government do that would actually be effective?
ground most passenger airplanes for the duration
run lots of ads stressing the importance of not sharing keyboards, mice, etc., and to get people to stop picking their noses and wiping it on stuff,
get students to wash their hands on entry to school, and between classes
employees stay home if they're sick (and no more "but I don't want to lose a sick day to SICKNESS - I'm saving it for a trip to...")
The last three should have been done months ago, if you're serious about dealing with this or any similar infection. If you read through the thread, you'll see that there are still people who don't believe that simple things like washing your hands can be effective, even though both the WHO and the CDC recommend it. The message isn't getting out, because people have placed too much emphasis on a "cure", and not on prevention.
Which is why I *also* said that people who are trying to lose weight have my sympathy and support, and that both the food companies who over-use HFCS, and the tobacco companies, should also be held accountable.
How can I make it plainer that my beef is with the lazy fat self-indulgent slobs who refuse to take any responsibility for their current state, want to blame it all on anyone and everyone else, and even actively sabotage efforts by others to get healthier.
Those people deserve whatever they get. Whether it's the flu or any other opportunistic virus, we're better off without them trying to play the blame game. Not the ones trying to fight the good fight against the flab.
It's the same as smokers who can't be arsed to quit, offering cigarettes to those who are trying, or who have already quit. Or crack-heads trying to keep their friends hooked so they can sponge more crack money off them. Or parents who feed their kids 4 helpings to make up for the lack of attention they otherwise give, which is just insidious in its' long-term effects. Or the alkie who keeps trying to get their now-sober buddies to have "just one drink."
In all these cases, there's a victim, and an victimizer. I simply don't have any patience or sympathy for the victimizers whatsoever, who are undermining the people around them. The "lazy fat slobs" who are dying of H1N1 are not the same people who trying to lose the weight, so this disease, while opportunistic, seems to be culling mostly the "right" targets more often than not (though there are always exceptions).
Sure, its not PC to say such things, but it's also not PC to say that homeowners who lied on their mortgages applications deserve jail time. And yet, how is their fraud any different? They're just as much criminals as the guy who passes a phony check. Both let their greed get the better of them, and both committed fraud.
The wikipedia article is total bullshit. We know, contrary to the wiki article, that the majority of deaths from the 1918 flu were caused by bacterial pneumonia. They didn't have antibiotics then, and it's hard to observe simple hygiene when the whole world is at war, and tens of millions are engaged in trench warfare.
Your "cytokine storm" is nothing but an urban legend. Same as "spinach is good for you because it has lots of iron" is also totally false, and was propagated for decades because of a misplaced decimal point in one government chart.
But thanks for playing, and showing how easy people buy into the hype.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what would be REALLY nice? If I could just swap phones as needed during the course of the day. For example - walking the dogs, or shopping, or driving - take a flip-phone. At the office? Move my "identity" into a smartphone. This way I don't have to decide between something small that fits in a pocket and won't break if I drop it, and something that has more functionality.
Maybe someone set them up the bomb?
MEMO
FROM: YOUR BOSS
SUBJECT: YOUR NON-COMPETE AGREEMENT
You forgot that we own all inventions, code, ideas, and your soul, even if it was done entirely off the clock. Thank you for developing the game for us. Now give us *our* money and *our* source code.
If *any* operating system "turns you on", you need to step away from the keyboard and get a life.
In Soviet Russia, Windows 7 turns on YOU! Oh, wait ... that's Vista!
See, THERE's the problem ... it it were called "iPhone FLESH-light" it would be selling lik, well, like fleshlights.
Well done!
me@slashdot > --gamemode
SLASHGAME: YOU ARE STANDING IN A FIELD
SLASHGAME: LOOK NORTH
SLASHGAME: YOU SEE AN ANONYMOUS COWARD
SLASHGAME: WALK NORTH
SLASHGAME: THE ANONYMOUS COWARD GREETS YOU BY SAYING "FUCK YOU NINTENDO"
SLASHGAME: INVENTORY
SLASHGAME: YOU HAVE 2 COOKIES
SLASHGAME: QUERY COOKIES
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #1 IS COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #2 IS COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: DROP COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: YOU DROP THE COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD PICKS UP COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: IN SOVIET UNION, COOKIE EATS ANONYMOUS COWARD
SLASHGAME: EXIT
me@slashdot >
That's the *real* question. 1080p makes a bigger difference when hooked up to a big-screen TV than it will in a tiny hand-held.
If you read what I wrote, I never said that the shot used the so-called "live virus".
However, even with the so-called "killed virus" (so-called, because viruses are not living things. They do not eat, grow, divide, etc. There's nothing going on inside that protein coating), you may experience the symptoms of an infection, since your body WILL be marshalling its' defenses.
The CDC lists the following side-effects for the shot: Soreness, redness, or swelling where the shot was given, fever (low grade), aches, rare but severe allergic reactions.
For the nasal vaccine: runny nose, wheezing, headache, vomiting, muscle aches, fever, sore throat, cough - in other words, the flu. Also, transmission of the virus to people around you is possible, same as the flu. Because it gives you the flu (though hopefully just a mild case).
My battery is dead, you ignorant clod!
Actually, something like that happened at the Montreal Casino. The machines were shut down every day, so they would end up generating the same sequence of numbers. A guy named Daniel Corriveau noticed, played the numbers, won $600,000.
He initially claimed that he used chaos theory, and the casino claimed it was a bad random number generator. The reality was that the cmos batteries had been removed during development to make testing easier, and nobody put them back in, so every day, they started with the same seed. Simple incompetence. They paid the money after 2 weeks.
Been there, did that, and I'm still (POP!) ...
Every place that instituted a trave embargo avoided anyone coming down with the flu in 1918. Sure, a virulent and lethal disease can still spread through the population if they don't take measures to prevent it - but the measures to prevent the transmission of both colds and flu are simple - the problem is that people don't even want to do the simple things. The majority of adults (77% of men, 49% of women) still pick their boogers. If they can't master something as simple and obvious as "don't pick your nose and then touch something - you'll contaminate it", it's partly because there's a taboo surrounding talking about it. It's the same as when there was an outbreak of shigella among Jewish children here - doctors felt they had to be careful not to offend the jewish community by saying "your kids need to learn to (1) learn how to wipe their asses properly and (2) wash their hands afterwards.
It's also why sinestrance survives - right-handed people mostly eat with the same hand they wipe with, left-handed ones, tending to be more ambidextrous, often wipe with the non-dominant hand. That must have come in handy back in the leaves and pine-cone days :-)
Then there's the whole reactive arthritis problem - more infections, more chance of arthritis. So aside from the inconvenience of dealing with a bout of shigella, they're also now higher-risk for arthritis, simply because they failed basic hygiene.
We really need to get the message out that, just because we have all sorts of fancy anti-bacterial house-cleaning sprays doesn't mean we can abdicate practicing and teaching proper basic hygiene. The problem being that those who can't be arsed to wash their hands properly after going to the bathroom aren't just putting themselves at risk, as we saw with the shigella outbreak, and as we see every cold and flu season when people cough into their hands, or pick their noses, or use the same soggy contaminated wadded-up kleenex or hanky a second time. etc.
But we don't, because that would offend the 3/4 of the population who pick their noses, don't wash their hands, etc. And then they have the nerve to want to use my keyboard. They can have my keyboard when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
3 people is statistically the same as none. More people dies getting hit by lightning with "no underlying conditions." Also, they don't consider obesity an underlying condition unless you're morbidly obese, but we know that this bug has a predilection for people who are overweight, and being significantly overweight, but not morbidly obese, should be counted as an underlying condition.
The Canadian study is in the process of peer review, but so far the data looks good. It's significant because of the completeness of the numbers in the sampling population - pretty much the whole population in several provinces, so not much chance of "sampling bias".
Also, how do you think those so-called "live vaccines*" that are al the rage nowadays work? You get a mild case of the flu. So you're still shedding viral particles. Why do you think they say not to give it to people who are immuno-compromised? It'll give them a full-blown case of the flu, and make them more easy prey to pneumonia, etc.
Also, transmission is mitigated by simple hygiene. Unfortunately, people still cough into their hands, then touch things; they still pick their noeses, then touch things, they still don't wash their hands after touching doorknobs, other people's phones, etc., and then they wonder why they get colds and flus. They go to work hacking up a lung because they don't want to "waste a sick day". They smoke ... and the tar and particulates makes it more likely that the virus particles will "stick around", not just in smokers, but in anyone exposed to second-hand smoke. Smoking around children is child abuse.
The living conditions are a lot different from 1918. We don't have as many people sharing communal toilets, or using outhouses; we don't have 10 million people sitting in trenches every day fighting trench warfare, waist-deep in mud for weeks at a time; we don't have homes that are as poorly ventilated; we don't have workplaces that have as many dust and other particulates in the air to scar the lungs. We don't have that many places where everyone in the tenement uses the same washroom and the same toilets. We have such modern stuff as refrigerators. We no longer believe that turpentine or coca-cola are "remedies for what ails you." We know that simple things, like washing your hands, makes a difference. We don't have as many people using the same cloth handkerchief over and over all day, accumulating and dispersing the little buggies.
Even if we didn't also have antibiotics, 1918 can't happen today, for the simple reason that people are in a healthier environment, and most of us eat better than people in a World War.
It's the same as a bunch of dogs in an overcrowded puppy mill with poor ventilation, lousy sanitation, and the same bunch of dogs dispersed into many homes, with good food and ventilation. Diseases that will decimate the first group won't make much headway in the second, because of the different environmental conditions.
Try "if your respiratory system is messed up from a bout of the flu" rather than a bogus "cytokine storm" and you're right.
Everyone going on about 1918 seems to forget that things were a lot different a century ago. Most jobs were dusty, "doctors" would prescribe "cures" that were worse than the disease (like prescribing turpentine for lung problems and cancer...), heating and lighting often also were semi-toxic due to poor ventilation and bad design, living quarters were often cramped and didn't have adequate ventilation (or too much ventilation - drafty and cold), people often shared "the facilities" in tenements - ideal conditions for sickness to spread from person to person, refrigerators - rare, patent medicines flourished (including those that claimed snake-oil as a curative agent - hence the term snake-oil salesmen).
This was the time when
It didn't stop ... it continued right up to the 2nd world war. Heck, Coca-cola, 7-Up and Hires Root Beer were all supposed to be "good for what ails ya."
Also, what good would washing your hands do in those days when you wiped them on a contaminated towel ...
Tuberculosis, "consumption", etc., poor living and working conditions, and quacks prescribing quick-buck "cures." Of course disease and death would be higher than today.
Problem is that your proposed cytokine storm model has zero to do with bacterial pneumonia - and that's what killed them, not pneumonia from a viral infection, but from a bacterial infection due to a weakened immune system.
The flu weakened them, they caught pneumonia, they died. No "cytokine storm" can cause bacteria to spontaneously be generated and infect the lungs. People sick with the flu, poor ventilation trying to keep warm, sharing blankets, etc. ... and yes, bacterial pneumonia typically is caught when the immune system is already under assault from flu or even a really nasty cold.
The same goes for the people in the US - a new virus, lots of people going from place to place so the virus continues to find fresh populations to infect (the car was just starting to be popular then), and wartime privations domestically all attributed to the flu of 1918 being worse than average. Also (1) places that introduced a quarantine didn't get infected, and (2) statistically, not every flu season will be average. There HAVE to be worse-than-average, to balance out the not-so-bad, or the average would change. (3) It's cyclical for the same reason that forest fires are cyclical - eventually enough dead material accumulates in a forest, and you have a major fire, just as eventually you have enough people who lack exposure to a particular strain of flu and a lot of them will get sick at the same time. It's entirely natural and normal.
Kids learn from their parents. Look how many adults still pick their noses at traffic lights. I've even honked my horn to let them know I'm taking pictures with my cell phone, just to see the expression on their faces when they know they've been caught.
It's pretty bad when you're talking to a grown adult, and all of a sudden, with no warning, their finger just disappears up their snout. I have to wonder, do they even realize what they're doing? Is it *that* ingrained?
Really, now you're going to tell me what my viewpoint is? Look, you're not Kreskin, and even if you were, you still couldn't read minds, so lay off with trying to tell me what my viewpoint is,, when it clearly contradicts what I've written.
Also, yes, I use derogatory terms like lardo and fat slob, for those who refuse to help themselves and REFUSE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY. Like the guy in the local newspaper who was complaining that he couldn't get gastric bypass surgery fast enough - while he's standing there with his lunch - a 2 litre of pop and a foot-long sub and a May West for desert. Blaming "the system". Fuck that. He should look in the mirror. This is exactly the type of stinking pile of Crisco who deserves to be publicly mocked, if only to serve as an object lesson to everyone else. Some peoples' lives are like the Titanic - they're an object warning to everyone else. If they won't help themselves, wtf should anyone else?
You say they're free to do so? Sure, but don't ask me to help pay for it because they're "disabled". And don't defend their freedom to eat like pigs while trying to cut down my freedom to call them pigs. They're human garburators.
Contrast that to people who are trying to quit over-eating, or quit smoking. I won't call the people who are making an honest effort to lose weight lardo or fat slob - they don't merit it, and need all the encouragement they can get, because people like you refuse to punish the ones who profit most from this - the producers of HFCS, tobacco companies, etc.
Don't like it? Gets your hackles up? Tough shit, lardo.
That's because it's Shannon D Jackson, not Sharon.
Seriously, WTF did they publish the victims' name for?
Ah, yes, kill the messenger.
It might be unpopular to say it, but people have to take some responsibility for being over-weight. Don't want to be more prone to sickness because you're morbidly obese? Then stop eating so much! Don't want to be more prone to cancer from smoking? Then quit smoking! Don't want to pick up an opportunistic infection when you can reduce your risk by simple hygiene? Then teach your kids to wash their hands and stop picking their noses!
It's not a question of "obsessing over fatties" - it's pointing out that the stats are skewed, and that if you're not overweight, you have a much lower risk profile. This means that a lot of people who are panicking, shouldn't be. H1N1 is like any other opportunistic virus. Don't want to be a target? Reduce your profile - in this case, literally.
This is all stuff that should be obvious, but instead we have people going in a panic and making uninformed decisions - like the "everyone MUST get a shot" one, when there's lots of evidence that people who were around during the 1957 epidemic don't need one, can't benefit from one, and shouldn't have to be put in such a position.
The fat epidemic kills more people every year. We can solve it by banning HFCS in soft drinks and processed foods, and ending agricultural subsidies that make junk cheaper than real food. Tobacco kills more people every year, and we can prevent that too, but no, we won't. That would require people to *gasp* get a fucking clue and exercise some self-control. Any politician who recommends that course of action will be out of office really quick.
Doesn't make it any less true. Which begs the question - who are the ones who really have their heads screwed on crooked? The people advocating personal responsibility and better health? I don't think so.
As for "killing all the fatties and smokers" - they've already volunteered to do the job themselves. What are YOU doing to warn them?
Oh, com off it, that's an outright lie - Wikipedia DOES say exactly that exactly that, both in the article about the 1918 flue:
and in the general article about influenza pandemics
And in both cases, it's in the same paragraph as the speculation about "cytokine storms". Word-for-word, both articles agree that bacterial pneumonia was not just the #1, but the majority, cause of death. Not some theoretical "cytokine storm", which even the WHO has no basis other than speculation, as in this article.
The theory doesn't fit the facts that we know, just like your claim that Wikipedia doesn't say that bacterial pneumonia caused most deaths. People died mostly of bacterial pneumonia in the middle of a flu epidemic in the middle of a world war that caused many to be malnourished, and exposed tens of millions to local diseases that they would never have encountered before - and most would have survived with antibiotics, which just hadn't been discovered yet.
In David Letterman's bedroom, this is above room temperature.
Fixed.
Considering that they won't know that it's high-mortality until it actually kills of tons of people, by which time it's too late to get it into production and distribution, nothing beyond encouraging quarantines and proper hygiene to prevent transmission.
Places that put quarantines into effect in time in 1918 didn't get sick.
So - what could the government do that would actually be effective?
The last three should have been done months ago, if you're serious about dealing with this or any similar infection. If you read through the thread, you'll see that there are still people who don't believe that simple things like washing your hands can be effective, even though both the WHO and the CDC recommend it. The message isn't getting out, because people have placed too much emphasis on a "cure", and not on prevention.
That's a major policy failure.
Which is why I *also* said that people who are trying to lose weight have my sympathy and support, and that both the food companies who over-use HFCS, and the tobacco companies, should also be held accountable.
How can I make it plainer that my beef is with the lazy fat self-indulgent slobs who refuse to take any responsibility for their current state, want to blame it all on anyone and everyone else, and even actively sabotage efforts by others to get healthier.
Those people deserve whatever they get. Whether it's the flu or any other opportunistic virus, we're better off without them trying to play the blame game. Not the ones trying to fight the good fight against the flab.
It's the same as smokers who can't be arsed to quit, offering cigarettes to those who are trying, or who have already quit. Or crack-heads trying to keep their friends hooked so they can sponge more crack money off them. Or parents who feed their kids 4 helpings to make up for the lack of attention they otherwise give, which is just insidious in its' long-term effects. Or the alkie who keeps trying to get their now-sober buddies to have "just one drink."
In all these cases, there's a victim, and an victimizer. I simply don't have any patience or sympathy for the victimizers whatsoever, who are undermining the people around them. The "lazy fat slobs" who are dying of H1N1 are not the same people who trying to lose the weight, so this disease, while opportunistic, seems to be culling mostly the "right" targets more often than not (though there are always exceptions).
Sure, its not PC to say such things, but it's also not PC to say that homeowners who lied on their mortgages applications deserve jail time. And yet, how is their fraud any different? They're just as much criminals as the guy who passes a phony check. Both let their greed get the better of them, and both committed fraud.
The wikipedia article is total bullshit. We know, contrary to the wiki article, that the majority of deaths from the 1918 flu were caused by bacterial pneumonia. They didn't have antibiotics then, and it's hard to observe simple hygiene when the whole world is at war, and tens of millions are engaged in trench warfare.
Your "cytokine storm" is nothing but an urban legend. Same as "spinach is good for you because it has lots of iron" is also totally false, and was propagated for decades because of a misplaced decimal point in one government chart.
But thanks for playing, and showing how easy people buy into the hype.