Britian has a swine flu epidemic

Yesterday there were more than 7,400 confirmed cases of swine flu in the UK. If the number of cases continues to grow at the current pace, the UK could have 100,000 new cases every day by the end of August.

So far, most swine flu patients have suffered only mild symptoms. However, they are still be urged to stay away from GP surgeries or hospitals if they suspect they have the flu.

[snip]

Under the Government's pandemic action plan, there are three levels of alert for a serious flu outbreak. Earlier this week the Health Secretary announced the UK would now enter the third, most serious, phase.

The first stage is Containment, which Britain entered when the first cases, a honeymoon couple, were confirmed in Scotland on April 27.

The priority is to stop the disease spreading as much as possible. Everyone with suspected swine flu has their diagnosis confirmed by a lab report, and is given the anti-viral drug Tamiflu. All recent contacts of infected people are traced and also given Tamiflu. Schools are closed if teachers or pupils contract the disease.

The second stage is Outbreak Management, which the country entered on June 25.

Action against swine flu was stepped up in three 'hot spot' areas - London, Glasgow and the West Midlands - where it was no longer possible to contain its spread.

In the hot spots, suspected cases were no longer sent for lab testing, with GPs doing the diagnosis, and people with swine flu got Tamiflu, but contacts did not as a matter of course. Schools in the hotspots were no longer automatically closed.

The third stage, which the whole country has now entered, is called Treatment.

GPs will be given the discretion to hold back Tamiflu to those with minor symptoms - and in a few weeks it may be rationed to at-risk groups. Vaccines will begin to be delivered once the first batches arrive in August.

And the weirdest thing... this flu could have been caused by a leak from a lab. Really nice.

Pharmaceutical companies hope you will not read this

The best efforts of the scientific community to prove the health benefits of vitamins keep falling short.

[snip]

Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare in the United States. That said, some extra vitamins have proven benefits, such as vitamin B12 supplements for the elderly and folic acid for women of child-bearing age. And calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect bone health.

But many people gobble down large doses of vitamins believing that they boost the body’s ability to mop up damaging free radicals that lead to cancer and heart disease. In addition to the more recent research, several reports in recent years have challenged the notion that megadoses of vitamins are good for you.

The Bush administration is spreading freedoms and democracy

By bringing in cholera to Iraqis, poisoning their environment, ruining their infrastructure. Perhaps even building nuclear bases in the country...

By an uptick in violence in Afghanistan.

By breaking the world's economies.

Heckuva job, Georgie!

What is John McCain hiding by not releasing his medical records?

Update 9/28: DaveV at Daily Kos notes the noticeable droop of the left side of McCain's face.

Update 10/1: Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat notes the various stages of melanoma that McCain has had and what the survival rate is.

Just what is wrong with John McCain's health?

That he pulls a 'now you see it, now you don't' Rovian style stunt? The man is 72 years old, for god's sakes! There will be things clearly going wrong with him and all this stupidity does is focus even more closely on him: (my bold)

After a long delay, John McCain finally allowed a hand-picked group of journalists very limited access to a small portion of his medical records. The campaign is spinning the event as a release, but it's no such thing. McCain hosting a game of telephone and congratulating himself for transparency.

The LA Times got the real story behind the so-called release: all the strings attached. Campaign staffers told the paper that the chosen reporters would be given only three hours to view about 400 pages of documents from 2000 to 2008. They wouldn't even allowed to make photocopies for their own reference, or to show to experts.

Curiously, this year's crop of journalists were not given access to the records that McCain released to an equally select group during his last presidential bid. The last batch of records covered McCain's lifetime medical history through 1999.

The favored news outlets are the Washington Post, the Arizona Republic, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press. All other media will have to make due with a pool report generated by the elect, a 90-minute conference call with McCain's doctors and campaign-produced summaries to be posted online.

McCain let a group of hand picked lay-people view an incomplete set of medical records for a ridiculously short period of time. Their access was so limited as to render their opinions worthless.

This so-called release was a clever bit of media manipulation. The campaign made its hand-picked journos complicit in the records charade. Friendly media got a scoop. With that scoop came a vested interest in downplaying the ridiculous restrictions placed on them. If the public understood the conditions under which their were reporting, their coverage wouldn't seem impressive at all.

Does he have Alzheimer's? He's getting kinda confused. Did the few reporters get to that page? Did they call any recognizable disease by another more obscure name so they can say they told us? How will we know? Just how many cancers have they found in him? Can we ever actually know?

This is stupid. Why on earth would anyone vote for someone who clearly has something to hide? Or, maybe, McCain can let the reporters actually do their job and assure the American people that McCain is really and truly healthy rather than just guessing.

Is China hiding a new epidemic?

Will we get to hear the truth before it affects all of us?:

HONG KONG, May 7 — A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that the Chinese government was providing little information about it or the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused death and illness in pets in the United States.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications.

[snip]

Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the W.H.O. and F.A.O. maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.

Hong Kong television and newspapers were full of lurid accounts on Monday of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down a river.

The disease reportedly started killing pigs after Chinese New Year celebrations in February, but is now spreading. The state-controlled news media in China have had a few reports on the wheat gluten problem and almost nothing on the pig deaths.

Gingrich's family values

Do not cover illness or death, and the value of a wife drops dramatically after five years or so....