Filed under: Climate Change, Daily Kos, Flu, Flu Wiki, Government, Health, movies, NYT, Pandemic, Predictions, Press, Richard Matheson, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
It’s been a little while since I’ve written about our old friend H5N1 – the “Avian Flu” virus. Partly this is because I like to keep my posts varied according to topic (which is a nice way of saying my attention wanders a lot these days). Partly, though, is because the mainstream media pays little attention to the threat of this flu virus as a general rule. Which is curious, given the potential threat it presents and the amount of governmental effort going into tracking and preparation for a possible epidemic/pandemic. Even if you take the cynical view that our news is event/entertainment-driven, you’d think with the release of I am Legend, the latest adaptation of Richard Matheson‘s SF novel of the same name, would be a natural tie-in to news about the flu.
Because yes, there is indeed news about the flu:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – International health experts have been dispatched to Pakistan to help investigate the cause of South Asia’s first outbreak of bird flu in people and determine if the virus could have been transmitted through human contact, officials said Sunday.
Four brothers — two of whom died — and two cousins from Abbotabad, a small city about 30 miles north of Islamabad, were suspected of being infected by the H5N1 virus, said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl in Geneva. A man and his niece from the same area who had slaughtered chickens were also suspected of having the virus.
Another person in a separate case who slaughtered poultry in nearby Mansehra, 15 miles away, also tested positive for the disease, he said.
And if you saw either this diary on the front page of Daily Kos yesterday or check out the Flu Wiki, then you’d know that the situation is even potentially more troubling. From the Daily Kos diary:
See Flu Wiki’s Sunday wrap-up for the week’s documented human and bird cases, courtesy of the wiki volunteers who track cases around the world – helpful to CDC and WHO and other public health officials as they do their work (more than a few have written me that they stop there to get the morning news – this is netroots activism applied to public health!). Not only are there new human cases scattered throughout Asia (including Pakistan, Burma, China and Indonesia, all of whom are less than than transparent about internal news), there are also new bird cases of H5N1 in Germany, Poland, Russia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia (and the hadj is soon, 1.5 million pilgrims expected).
Now, I’m not claiming that it’s the end of the world. Or even the end of what passes for civilization. But I do find it somewhat curious that this reality gets so little press attention, even when there is an obvious entertainment tie-in that can be made to the latest big-budget post-apocalyptic movie. Odd.
Well, when I do get back around to trying to find an agent or publisher for Communion of Dreams, at least I’ll be able to point to the ongoing threat of a pandemic flu that exists. Provided, of course, that the pandemic isn’t already underway.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Constitution, Flu, General Musings, Government, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, Violence, Writing stuff, YouTube
OK, I realize that I am probably the last person on the planet to hear of this, but nonetheless I want to rant about it. What it? The YouTube vid of the Utah HP Officer using his Taser on a guy pulled over for speeding which has been getting a fair amount of press and blog attention. Before I say any more, here’s the clip:
OK, first thing – my dad was a cop, and I’ve known cops all my life. I generally like cops, and respect the job they do – it’s dangerous, grim, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Next thing – it’s stupid to do anything other than smile nice and comply with what a cop tells you. Yeah, stupid. Because in that situation, out in the real world, the cop (or his buddy cops) is gonna win any argument. You got a problem, save it for your trial or a lawsuit against the cop/department/government.
Last thing – because we give cops this much power over us, we *have* to insure that they exercise their authority properly and appropriately. That’s the trade-off, the contract we make with the government.
And this HP Officer did not properly exercise his authority. I think any fair viewing of the video leaked out to YouTube pretty clearly indicates just exactly what happened: for whatever reason, this cop did not like having his power challenged, and escalated the situation in a completely inappropriate manner, endangering the man he’d pulled over, the man’s family, himself, and just about anyone else who was traveling that stretch of highway at that time. It was in violation of the HP guidelines:
Troopers that carry Tasers must take a four-hour certification course outlining how and when to use the devices, according to UHP’s nine-page policy. They are taught to use them in three circumstances:
* When a person is a threat to themselves, an officer or another person.
* In cases where the physical use of force would endanger the person or someone else.
* When other means of lesser or equal force by the officer has been ineffective and a threat still exists.
Now, will the internal review of the use of the Taser in this instance show that the cop behaved in compliance with the rules? Will the cop be disciplined? Will the victim see justice in court? I don’t know, I suppose we’ll have to see. And we’ll have to see whether the social contract we make with the government in this case is honored, or whether it is yet again broken by a system in which the government and its officials are seen to be our rulers rather than our employees.
What does all of this have to do with Communion of Dreams? Not a lot, directly. But a whole lot, indirectly. Because I see this abuse kind of power by the government today as part of the reason why, when in the ‘history’ of the novel things break down following the first fire-flu, there’s a lot of civil unrest leading to something akin to a second civil war. Because if people do not trust their government or its officers, then when there is a catastrophe they will not trust it to act on their behalf, and will seek to protect and defend themselves even from their own government. It is a throw-away line early in the book, but the post-flu US I see is largely libertarian in nature for this very reason.
Jim Downey
(A slightly different version of this rant has been cross-posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Global Warming, Habanero, Migraine, movies, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
Umberto Eco, when asked why he wrote The Name of the Rose, famously replied: “I wanted to poison a monk.”
I can sympathize.
There are times when I’m a little grumpy, or have just had a little too much exposure to my fellow monkeys, when I’d like to kill a few people myself. In fact, catch me when I’m feeling more than a bit honest, and I’ll admit that part of the backstory of Communion of Dreams is because I think that the world really would be better off with about 2/3 of the population gone, as traumatic and painful as that might be. No, I am not advocating it – I can just see the benefit of some pandemic flu or plague, in terms of the carrying capacity of the planet.
And of course I see plenty of ways in which we’re well on the road to having this happen, as I write about here upon occasion. Take your pick: war, terrorism, global warming, disease, or even just eating ourselves to death. I just came from the store, where I needed to get some frozen raspberries for a habanero jelly recipe I want to make. There in my neighborhood supermarket were 120 feet of freezers carrying various ice creams and other dessert treats. One aisle over was 60 feet of frozen pizzas. I looked and looked for frozen fruits, and found one narrow little rack, about half the width of one 10′ wide freezer unit, containing a small selection of fruits. Think there’s something wrong there?
*Gah.*
OK, I am a little grumpy. I’m in a cycle of migraines, it seems, having had two in the last week. Still living with the echoes of the one yesterday. But still, sometimes I feel very pessimistic about our future . . . and take a certain perverse pleasure in it.
Well, this is the 200th post. Woo-hoo. I’ll be a little more upbeat later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Flu, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science, Society, Space, tech, Writing stuff
Couple of items of interest from the news.
First, researchers have figured out a way to produce what I called “plasteel” in Communion of Dreams, and used as the basis for a lot of the architecture of the future. From PhysOrg.com:
New plastic strong as steel, transparent.
By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that’s as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.
It’s made of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer that shares chemistry with white glue.
Engineering professor Nicholas Kotov almost dubbed it “plastic steel,” but the new material isn’t quite stretchy enough to earn that name. Nevertheless, he says its further development could lead to lighter, stronger armor for soldiers or police and their vehicles. It could also be used in microelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, biomedical sensors and valves and unmanned aircraft.
Ah, I love to see my predictions actually coming true. (Not that I knew exactly how this would be achieved, but it was clear that materials science will reap a huge benefit from nanotech advancements.)
Now for the bad news:
Bird flu virus mutating into human-unfriendly form.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on Thursday.
The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans,” said Kawaoka, who led the study. “The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus,” Kawaoka said.
This is unbelievably bad news. The thing which has kept H5N1 from becoming a real threat is that it is difficult for it to move from one human to another – almost all the deaths attributable to the virus so far have come in animal to human transfers. Part of this is due to the fact that the virus just doesn’t find us all that good a place to set up shop. But once it does, it will only be a matter of time before you start to see human-to-human transfers. And then it’ll be “hello, pandemic!” And depending on how virulent that strain is, it may or may not precipitate the sort of global catastrophe I envision as the basis for Communion.
That’s one prediction I’d really love to have completely wrong.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Failure, Flu, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Politics, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Terrorism
[This post contains spoiler information about Communion of Dreams.]
Twin news items to make you nervous:
Well, it makes me nervous, anyway. First we have a report on how with the increased accreditation of so-called high security labs has seen an increased incident rate for those labs. In the last 4 years, more than 100 incidents involving very dangerous biologic materials have occurred. From the first news article:
The mishaps include workers bitten or scratched by infected animals, skin cuts, needle sticks and more, according to a review by The Associated Press of confidential reports submitted to federal regulators. They describe accidents involving anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria at 44 labs in 24 states. More than two-dozen incidents were still under investigation.
The number of accidents has risen steadily. Through August, the most recent period covered in the reports obtained by the AP, labs reported 36 accidents and lost shipments during 2007 — nearly double the number reported during all of 2004.
And the second one involves cattle ranchers who are concerned about the DHS plans for a new animal disease research lab, and how the proximity of such a lab near livestock operations poses a threat. (Disclosure note: my hometown of Columbia was recently removed from a list of potential sites, in part thanks to efforts of friends of mine who opposed such a facility being placed here.) The threat is not theoretical – it is little known in this country, but recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain have been tied to a similar research lab in that country. Yet this is what we hear from the government:
“No matter where we put it it’s going to be safe and secure,” said James Johnson, Homeland Security‘s director of national labs and the program manager for the planned lab.
I’m sure it will be, Jim. Just like all those other high-security labs around the country.
See, the problem is that people being people, mistakes happen. Under the best of conditions. And when you’re messing around with really dangerous shit, the potential harm of an error goes way up. And that is only being concerned with mistakes.
[Spoiler alert.]
Because what happens when some one or group decides to exploit the system in place to redirect something really nasty for their own purposes? This is what I use as the source of the original ‘Fire Flu’ for Communion, though that isn’t revealed until late in the book. Impossible? Oh? Remember the 2001 Anthrax attacks which killed five people and shut down the Senate’s postal facility? That whole episode is still unsolved.
I don’t know about you, but when the same people who let New Orleans die tell me that I should trust them to secure biologic agents which have the potential to wipe out our (overly concentrated) livestock, cause widespread crop failure, or even start a pandemic plague of some variety, I shudder.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Climate Change, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Global Warming, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Science, Society
You’ve probably seen it – the media is filled with reports of the brain-eating amoeba which has killed six. Here’s a sample:
PHOENIX – It sounds like science fiction but it’s true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it’s killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
“This is definitely something we need to track,” said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better,” Beach said. “In future decades, as temperatures rise, we’d expect to see more cases.”
Scary, eh? And tying it to climate change makes it even moreso.
But explain to me why this is more frightening than the 8 new cases of Ebola reported in Congo. The Ebola hemorrhagic fever family of viruses have no treatment, no vaccine, a mortality rate up to 90%, and are easily passed from person to person.
Or why six people dying from swimming in lakes is worse than the 65 people who have died already this year from H5N1, according to the FluWiki. This influenza virus (and related variants) is considered to be the most likely cause of the next global pandemic.
Oh, never mind. I know why – because it’s here in the US. And it eats brains. And it is an easy connection to the effects of climate change. And because it is new. Fear sells, as I discussed in comments in this post a couple of weeks back.
But really, either Ebola or H5N1 are a much greater threat, as any public health official or doctor will tell you. They just don’t have the cool name of “Zombie Amoeba.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space
Fulfilling about 2/3 of all Science Fiction tropes ever created, it seems that there may be a connection with the impact of a meteorite and a mystery illness in a rural Peruvian village:
LIMA (AFP) – Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said Monday.
Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a “strange odor,” local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
It wasn’t a little thing, either – it left an impact crater reported to be about 100′ wide and 20′ deep.
Now, it remains to be seen whether this is anything more than a simple case of mass hysteria. I mean, if you’re some llama herder and a big damn fireball lands outside your village, it’d be pretty easy to get a case of the vapours over it.
But that don’t mean that it isn’t possible that there’s actually something to this. Panspermia (or more narrowly, exogenesis) has some fairly solid evidence behind it, enough to suggest that it is possible that there is some form of life capable of surviving coming to Earth on a meteor. And, if that form of life is similar enough to us, it could become a problem. A problem our biology might not be able to handle. One that would make a pandemic flu look like a nice little summer cold. One that generations of SF writers have speculated about. Except that in this case, it might actually be true.
Frightened yet?
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing.)
Filed under: Flu, Flu Wiki, Government, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society
Another post today – there’s a Flu Wiki which may be of interest to folks who read this blog. From the site:
The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies. Our goal is to be:
- a reliable source of information, as neutral as possible, about important facts useful for a public health approach to pandemic influenza
- a venue for anticipating the vast range of problems that may arise if a pandemic does occur
- a venue for thinking about implementable solutions to foreseeable problems
Looks like a great resource, and since someone on the related forum was kind enough to post a link to Communion of Dreams as a “SF novel about post-pandemic world”, I thought the least I could do is return the favor. Because sure as hell, we’re going to get hit by a pandemic flu one of these days, and the more resources people have available about how to cope, the better.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Bipolar, Carl Zimmer, Cosmic Variance, Fermi's Paradox, Flu, Genetic Testing, Health, Music, Pandemic, Pharyngula, Phil Plait, Plague, Predictions, Saturn, Science, Science Fiction, The Loom, Writing stuff
They’re mixing with the population
A virus wearing pumps and pearls
Lord help the lonely guys
Hooked by those hungry eyes
Here come Tomorrow’s Girls
Tomorrow’s Girls
Donald Fagan, “Tomorrow’s Girls” from Kamakiriad
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I can always tell when I’m feeling better, or have gotten a bit of sleep and am able to think (somewhat) again: I get that little rush of energy, mind jumping and drawing connections between ostensibly divergent topics. It is a shadow of the way I feel when my bipolar condition swings to the manic phase, and all things seem clear and possible.
Such is the case this morning.
I read a lot of science blogs. Pharyngula. Cosmic Variance. Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy. The Angry Toxicologist. But even before he started blogging at The Loom, I was aware of the science reporting of Carl Zimmer. And recently Carl posted a link to his Seed Magazine cover story “The Meaning of Life.” It’s not terribly long, and you should just go read the whole thing.
But among the entire very interesting article is this wonderful idea: that it is a mistake to try and define what life is right now. Philosopher Carol Cleland of NASA’s Institute for Astrobiology is very much in the thick of this, saying that we do not have the necessary perspective. As Zimmer puts it:
Instead of trying to formulate a definition of life, Cleland and Chyba argue, we need to develop a theory of life—an overarching explanation of nature that joins together a myriad of seemingly random phenomena. Biologists have discovered a number of theories–the germ theory of disease and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, for example—yet they have no full-fledged theory of life itself. The underlying uniformity of life is one of the great discoveries of modern biology, but it’s also an obstacle. It represents only a single data point, and blinds us to the possibilities of “weird life.” We have no idea exactly which features of life as we know it are essential to life as we don’t know it.
A theory of life would allow us to understand what matters to life, what possible forms it can take, and why. It would let us see connections that we might otherwise miss, just as chemists can see the hidden unity between a cloud in the sky and a block of ice. Scientists are already trying to build a theory of life. A number of researchers have been developing a theory in which life is a self-organized system that can be described using the same principles physicists use to describe hurricanes or galaxies. As biologists learn more and more about how the millions of molecules in a cell work together, these theorists can put their ideas to more precise tests.
For Cleland, the most promising way to build a theory of life is to look for alien life. In 2013, the European Space Agency plans to put a rover back on Mars. Called Exomars, it will drill into the Martian crust to seek out signs of life. NASA has plans of its own on the drawing board, including one possible mission that would bring Martian soil back to Earth for intense study. Meanwhile, other promising habitats for life, such as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, beckon. Cleland argues that finding alien life would allow us to start figuring out what is truly universal about life, rather than just generalizing from life as we know it. Only when we have more data, she reasons, will we have a basis for comparison. As it stands now, says Cleland, “we have no grist for the theoretical mill.”
Brilliant. This is not unlike the revolution in perspective which occurred with the transition to a heliocentric model of the solar system. It necessarily moves us from the bias that our version of life is the only possible model. I’ve written about this previously, but it is good to see such a complete treatment of the topic as Zimmer gives it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
It looks like scientists have discovered the likely culprit in the collapse of the honey bee populations in the US: a virus.
Virus implicated in bee decline
A virus has emerged as a strong suspect in the hunt for the mystery disease killing off North American honeybees.
Genetic research showed that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) turned up regularly in hives affected by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Over the last three years, between 50% and 90% of commercial bee colonies in the US have been affected by CCD.
And from the same source:
Also open is the question of how the virus arrived in the US. One finger of suspicion points to Australia, from where the US began importing honeybees in 2004 – the very year that CCD appeared in US hives.
The researchers found IAPV in Australian bees, and they are now planning to go back through historical US samples to see if the Antipodean imports really were the first carriers.
If they were, the US might consider closing its borders to Australian bees.
The way the researchers determined that a virus was involved is also interesting. Since the honey bee genome has been ‘solved’ (completely mapped), they were able to assay the entire genetic contents of a hive and then remove the known components. What was left included some bacterial agents which are probably in symbiotic harmony with the bees, and various fungi and other items. By comparing a healthy hive’s genetic assay with one suffering from CCD, they were able to identify possible culprits – in this case, the IAPV.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Communion of Dreams is set in a post-pandemic Earth, where a viral agent was responsible for widespread death and sterility some 40 years prior to the time of the novel. One good model of exactly how that could happen is CCD with the honey bees, though that has occurred in the time since I first wrote the book.
Now, how does this all tie together? Well, only because the researchers looking into the honey bee problem had the tools of genetic mapping available to them were they able to understand what was (likely) going on. Something similar happens in Communion on two fronts – resolving the riddle of the orphan girl and understanding the threat of the new virus. But perhaps more importantly, there is the mystery of the alien artifact and its connection the the superconducting gel, which I describe as “more alive than not” – this gets to the very heart of the issue of understanding the true nature of the universe, and discarding our previous biases.
Oh, and lastly, I’m sure we’ll see something from Zimmer about the IAPV discovery. Why? Because one of his specialties is the nightmare-inducing world of parasites, and looking at the evolutionary struggle between hosts and diseases.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Climate Change, Failure, Flu, General Musings, Global Warming, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Press, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
GENEVA (AFP) – The World Health Organisation on Thursday warned that a new deadly infectious disease like AIDS or Ebola is bound to appear in the 21st century, in a report urging more global solidarity to tackle an expanding array of health threats.
“It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like AIDS, another Ebola, another SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), sooner or later,” the 2007 World Health Report said.
It’s news like this, resulting from extensive scientific research into pandemics and potential threats from the development of infectious diseases thanks to climate change and further penetration of population into heretofore ‘remote’ areas, which lead me to use a pandemic flu as the basis for the history of Communion of Dreams. And I first started thinking about this about 10 years ago. In other words, nothing’s changed – but the science is consistent, and we’re likely overdue for a major global pandemic.
Comforting thought, isn’t it?
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 