The Use of Tamiflu to Combat the H1N1 09 Virus

In these two short clips from The Ohio State University Youtube Channel - OhioStateExperts, "Dr. Daniel Janies, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics talks about the use of Tamiflu to combat the H1N109 virus and also describes his (state of the art) mapping process."

In both videos - in little snippets that almost go by with out you noticing - he says "don't get Tamiflu unless you need it". What he means by 'need it', is that a policy should be put in place by government on who gets it - because if you have flu symptoms it's too late for the vaccine, it will do nothing - or inhibit your natural immune response. Who gets it then, should be decided by a panel of experts on the 'morphology of the disease' (how diseases spread in specific cultures and through specific demographics.

All in all, what this is saying to me is that this yearly flu injection psychosis is bad science and always has been. I don't get the yearly flu shot - I get the odd flu and build an immunity to it, your welcome. You should too.



In this second video Dr. Janies shows us his awesome mapping technology; which may just be the reason he's offering such sage advise.



The science around infectious disease control is extremely complex and there is a spectrum of opinion in the scientific community about the effectiveness of the steps your government is now taking . Get informed and join the public discourse
on these issues.

The Health and Swine Flu Tags at this blog offer a multitude of links. Information is power.
(Tags are at the bottom of each post.)



mh

The Atlantic Monthly Answers Questions about Swine Flu - You Need to Know

• What are Tamiflu and Relenza?
• Do Tamiflu and Relenza have a positive impact on seasonal, avian, or pandemic influenza?
• Is the H1N1-specific vaccine effective? What are the side effects?
• Does taking Flu vaccines result in 'resistant strains' of the virus?
• Does vaccinating healthy people protect society from pandemics?
• Does stockpiling of doses of antivirals make sense?
• Are randomized placebo-controlled trials of the antiviral drugs “unethical”?

This is a conversation I had in Facebook with a friend of mine. She posted a link to an AtlanticWire piece on vaccinations for the Pandemic H1N1 virus or Swine Flu - back in mid-October.

The AtlanticWire piece is a brilliant balance to the uninformed opining and spectacle news reporting going on still in our always-on electronic culture. It's a great resource for people worried about the questions posed above.

As usual, I was racing by, too busy to ingest the content the first time round.

In my opinion, this should be required reading.

Lauras' Facebook post:

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Does the Vaccine Matter? - The Atlantic (November 2009)
Source: www.theatlantic.com



Whether this season’s swine flu turns out to be deadly or mild, most experts agree that it’s only a matter of time before we’re hit by a truly devastating flu pandemic—one that might kill more people worldwide than have died of the plague and aids combined. In the U.S., the main lines of defense are pharmaceutical—vaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread of flu and prevent people from dying from it. Yet now some flu experts are challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none. So where does that leave us if a bad pandemic strikes?

October 14 at 7:41pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (4) · Hide Feedback (3) · Share

Facebook Comments (4)

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Paul:

Indeed, sometimes Darwinism is inevitable.

October 14 at 10:43pm

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Michael Holloway:

Hey Laura, check out this post, January 27, 2007 @ my blog FilterBlogs: It lays out the case against panic.
It is my opinion the last pandemic, the so called Spanish Flu was a result of the returning soldiers from WW l - who spent years hip-deep in cold sewage, corpses and rats - under-nourished and injured. That is the kind of petri dish needed to again result a flu pandemic.
Factory farming is the great threat to human health today; Swine Flu is the first indication of the problem; see FilterBlogs December 28, 2006

October 15 at 2:47am

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Laura:

Thanks Michael - I'll check it out when I have proper access again.

October 20 at 11:45am

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Michael Holloway:

Laura, I owe you an apology on this one.

My earlier comment was dismissive. I scanned the bi-line and the first paragraph of the piece and jumped to conclusions.

I'm sorry....

The article you point to is excellent!

When I saw your post I immediately checked it out. It's a topic that interests me greatly.

The first paragraph introduces Dr. David Newman. My adrenaline spiked,'I know that name', I said to myself, 'that’s the rat-bastard who I believe is bio-engineering bird-flu pathogens at Recominomics Lab!' (Dr. Henry L Niman)

I was Wrong! Now that I've Made the time to READ the article it turns out Dr. Newman is a free thinker, a hero, speaking against power.

Keep up the good fight! The truth will out - eventually.

Michael Holloway

November 8, 2009 11:05pm

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Further Links:

Authors of the AtlanticWire piece are:
Shannon Brownlee, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Overtreated (2007).
Jeanne Lenzer, an investigative journalist and a frequent contributor to the British medical journal BMJ.

Sinclair Lewis's book Arrowsmith
Daniel Janies, an associate professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University.



mh

Stop Vaccine Que Jumpers Using Social Networking Sites

I've set up a Twitter List #QueJumper where, if you know something, you can post a Tweet and out people in positions of power who have gotten and/or distributed Swine Flu Vaccine illegally.

m_holloway Health minister says outing vaccine Que jumpers is for after, why not now - here? If you know tweet it - it will spread quickly #QueJumper.



mh

Hysteria around Swine Flu Pandemic 2009 not very Different from 1918

Earlier today I listened to Swine Flu: Mixed Messages and Public Anxiety, a podcast of KCRWs' "To The Point" created, written and hosted by Warren Olney. The lack of perspective by many of the experts reminded me of a piece I read earlier this year at one of my favourite Blogs - "Edge of the American West" - which foreshadowed the current stupidness around the yet-to-be-Pandemic Swine flu.

I copied and pasted the whole thing because it's succinct, and important.

Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman, January 2009.


The Edge of the American West

Doing some quick searches in response to our co-blogger’s co-blogger’s post about the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, I came across the following chart detailing the ratio of reported cases to deaths in San Fransisco. Not only is it a priceless statistical representation of panic, it also captures the malleability of even professional opinion.

To wit:


I’ve highlighted the number of cases in red because blood is the color of riot—and for legibility. With certainty, we can say the author of this study, W.H. Kellogg, captured something of cultural significance when he rocketed his data up and off the y-axis. But the convergence of the incidence and death rates between the 23rd and 30th of November may be even more interesting. How do we account for the fact that, for one short week, everyone who caught the disease died from it? Easy:



According to the 21 November article, because public health officials claimed that “the influenza epidemic had been stamped out,” at noon “[t]he shrieking of every siren in San Fransisco, blowing of whistles, clanging of gongs and the ringing of bells will . . . signal for throwing away the gauze face coverings” (9). Why were there no more new cases reported than there were deaths the next week?

Because someone said there wouldn’t be. So there weren’t. People caught colds and had the sniffles, but it wasn’t Spanish flu. Couldn’t be. The epidemic was over. Did you somehow sleep through the infernal cacophany last Tuesday? The city has no more need for mass-prophylaxis. Everyone who catches the bug now brought it with them on the boat, and everyone knows you can’t catch flu from boat-people. Wait—what do you mean, “How do I think it got here in the first place?” What? How come nobody told us—quick! Everyone! En masque en masse!


So said the San Fransisco Chronicle on 4 December, and back up the panic-axis we go . . .



I couldn't have said it any better.

Thanks, Edge of the American West.


In the bio section of "Edge of the American West" Scott Eric Kaufman is described:

"Scott Eric Kaufman earned a doctorate in English at a fine public university at the western edge of the American West."

Please check out the Health and Swine Flu labels in FilterBlogs - and the latest piece I published on this topic, Swine Flu Inoculations Probably Useless.



mh

Swine Flu Inoculations Probably Useless

The best defence against the flu is plenty of rest, some chicken soup and plenty of fluids. Flu kills people every year, this year is no exception.

I don't get the yearly flu injection because I think the wide spread inoculation of the population is a bad idea, it leaves the culture in question open to a out-of-left-field virus. I do my part by being one of those who will get the odd flu and build an immunity to it, your welcome.

I know the new swine flu vaccine being circulated now is a Tami-flu type and is unlikely to be effective against the new round of H5N1, as it has mutated around the world in the interim.

In fact (and - this is entirely my take - I haven't seen anyone suggest this possibility) the inoculation of farm-workers with this Tami-flu type vaccine may introduce the morphed disease back into the swine population - resulting in the next round - being a truly pandemic version. I am of the opinion that the source of the swine flu is the inhuman conditions in which we raise livestock - in the current industrial farming model the flu jumps from swine to human farmer-worker and back to swine and so on until it morphs enough to jump from human to human. The key though, I reiterate is the in-human conditions animals are subjected to in factory farms.

Last years events that resulted in the WTO declaring a Pandemic, and the Bird flu hysteria a few years back, have taught me the experts don't know how to predict the coarse virus's will take over generations - there are too many variables. The impetus towards researching and distributing these vaccines isn't therefore good science - but rather the private profit and the funding of the process. Don't get me wrong I believe we need the infrastructure to create vaccines, and this may be one of the reasons we're going through the process - those in positions of power realize that a vaccine for a true pandemic will take months to produce and months more to produce widely enough to have effect - the result will be 1000's of deaths and injury. With out this hysteria the funding for the process's we're going to need Someday will fall idle and become necrotic.

Finally, President Obama is surrounded by advisors who are telling him scary things - but if I have gleaned these ideas surely he must be aware of these other perspectives as well - he therefore must be aware when he talks to his close advisors on health care he is looking into the eye-ball of the private medical colossus. He thus has to choose which fight to fight first.

The public consultation process which is leading to a health reform bill in in it's final phases, he knows this same attempt by the Clinton administration resulted in it's neutering (yes, my allusion is intentional). I expect President Obama has chosen to put this to one side; by calling this an emergency he on the one hand shows the benefit of a centralized health care system and on the other, satisfies the greedy beast with the subsequent cash flow in the near term. Win Win.

This from GlobalReasearch.ca who's article entitled "Obama Administration Launches Deceptive Swine Flu Propaganda Blitz" is slightly hysterical - in the opposite direction to the spectacle media - but has some data to back up their assertions:

"The recent CBS Investigative Report, published on October 21, is one example. After the CDC refused to honor CBS’s Freedom of Information request to receive flu infection data for each individual state, the network performed independent outreach to all fifty states to get their statistics. Their report contradicts dramatically the CDC’s public relations blitz. For example, in California, among the approximate 13,000 flu-like cases, 86 percent tested negative for any flu strain. In Florida, out of 8,853 cases, 83 percent were negative. In Georgia and Alaska, only 2.4 percent and 1 percent respectively tested positive for flu virus among all reported flu-like cases. If the infectious-rate ratios obtained by CBS are accurate, the CDC’s figures are significantly reduced and agree with earlier predictions that the H1N1 virus will be simply an unwelcomed annoyance. So we are in the midst of an enormous medical hoax, a design and purpose that has yet to unfold completely, that will nevertheless reap huge revenues for the vaccine industrial complex."

Good sum up of the science, with out so much hysteria at GlobalReasearch.ca.

CBS News Investigates - October 21, 2009.



mh

Feeling Sick All The Time? Here's Why

Originally Posted in Michael Holloway's ScienceBlogs, 12/28/06

"As a result of this unhealthy environment the animals we eat are adapting to pathogens faster than we, in our healthy evirons are. Add to this the fact that the global trade in livestock is also a global trade in pathogens, and one can say without qualification: this state of affairs will eventually lead to a mass death epidemic."

Photo link

Zoonotic is defined as a disease which can be passed from animal to human. All humans at any given time have a variety of these pathogens and defenses against them(antigens) with-in our stomachs, as a part of our immune system; both can cause deteriorating health and death.

Over time the whole of human civilization individually build defences to these pathogens; but at a price, sometimes taking the form of a mass death epidemic.

The rate of increase in the incidence and variety of zoonotic pathogens in our food supply at the present time is alarming the experts.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concludes with respect to the new abundance of these zoonotic pathogens, "...public health concerns must now include the safety of what food animals themselves eat and drink." This suggests a return to an old standard of how we husband livestock.

The standard inspection regime right now is, if the animal appeares healthy at the slaughter house door - if it can stand steady, has a normal temperature, is not showing outward signs of ill health - it is considered fit to eat by humans. But with the help of antivirals, antibiotics, and Antimicrobials, Livestock are adapting to pathogens in unsanitary conditions; so they look healthy while the diseases they harbour are deadly.

So the old way of ensuring public health, including these casual 'check-up' style inspections and line inspections to ensure no fecal matter comes in contact with slaughtered meat - is now insufficient. Even Kosur or Halal type slaughter regimes will not protect us from these new emerging pathogens that are developing in the barnyard.

Livestock are adapting to new pathogens at a rate faster than humans are adapting to new pathogens in their diet. This is due the inhuman conditions in which we raise livestock, in cattle barns and feed lots; to global food distribution, which introduces new pathogens to new populations of animals and humans; and to underfunded health networks, which undermine our ability to cope with crisis.

As we've seen this summer and fall, the effluent running off these production sites into our waterways are funneling new pathogens into produce growers water supplies and then into the produce food chain as well.

Animal husbandry is a term you don't hear alot today - it's a term from the era of the family farm. Farmers who run large scale family farms unexpectedly prefer the phrase 'livestock production' to descibe what they do. For corporate farms managed by boards of directors and run by waged workers the term 'livestock production line' is entirely appropriate and where the term originates. For both kinds of production entities the new phrase is integral to a mindset that produces profit. The scale of new farming demands a new mindset. Yet the choice of the term 'animal husbandry' says volumes about the way we treat our livestock.

The continuing industrialization of our food production and the global distribution model is a critical new health threat. The mass production model must include animal Care. The result of ignoring so called 'animal rights' could be an epidemic spread through the global food supply chain.

If we permit the animals we eat to live their lives in feed lots, regularly up to their bellies in their own excrement, we get what we get; we reap what we sow. Poultry for example get no exercise, living the vast majority of their lives in cages - only big enough for the full grown bird. In the case of pigs they also live their lives immobile, inhaling high levels of ammonia that eminate from their stool.

As a result of this unhealthy environment the animals we eat are adapting to pathogens faster than we, in our healthy evirons are. Add to this the fact that the global trade in livestock is also a global trade in pathogens, and one can say without qualification: this state of affairs will eventually lead to a mass death epidemic.

What we're seeing in industrial food production amounts to abuse. So the moral imperative groups like PETA are acting upon in the spiritual dimention can now be seen in a larger sence; choosing not to eat meat is not essencially a moral choice, but a health safety issue.

This clairity demands an expansion of the moral imperative; not eating meat is now a Hedonistic Reaction - choosing not to eat meat that is produced in this industrial manner is a Moral Imperative.

These new findings by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others are the canary in the coal mine - a warning; our food production/distribution model must change.



LINKS TO THIS POST


THE RAMS HORN - a monthly journal of food systems analysis.

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal


CANADIAN FOOD INSPECTION AGENCY - Food Recalls and Allergy Alerts

THE LANCET.COM - "Europe set to tackle zoonotic infections"

MED-VET-NET - a vitual journal working for the prevention and control of zoonoses...

Indonesian Government Creating Panic Over N5N1 Virus

Why is the Indonesian Government sending out the troops and culling poultry across the island nation?

Indonesia asks troops to fight bird flu
January 27, 2007

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the military chief to deploy soldiers to help fight the disease, Cabinet Secretary Sudi Silalahi told reporters.

The sense of alarm was highlighted by the country's welfare minister earlier in the day.

"Even though our continued effort is giving some significant progress, we are still on highest alert," Aburizal Bakrie, said at a ceremony to receive 100,000 sets of protective equipment donated by the United States.

Later in the article:

Experts fear the more the virus spreads in birds, the greater the chances it might mutate into a form that causes a flu pandemic in humans. Millions of people could die.
© 2007 Reuters

And from Yahoo! News.com, a little more on the level of anxiety;


Indonesia on highest alert over bird flu: minister

JAKARTA (Reuters) After a spike in cases this year, Indonesia moved to ban backyard poultry in the capital and surrounding provinces...

Millions of backyard fowl live in close proximity to humans and keeping backyard chickens is ingrained in Indonesia's culture...

The bold highlights are added.

The "100,000 sets of protective equipment donated by the United States" seems to be the impetus for all the head lines this week. To this date there is no evidence that the Bird Flu can jump to humans except through direct and prolonged contact with infected birds.

So the specific, donating of protective equipment, which created the media interest, hides the broader context; Why all the Hoopla over Bird Flu in the first place?


From the UN body, the WTO which is studying the outbreaks World Wide notes in this Question and Answer format, that there is no evidence of human to human transmission;

What is the significance of limited human-to-human transmission?

Though rare, instances of limited human-to-human transmission of H5N1 and other avian influenza viruses have occurred in association with outbreaks in poultry and should not be a cause for alarm. In no instance has the virus spread beyond a first generation of close contacts or caused illness in the general community. Data from these incidents suggest that transmission requires very close contact with an ill person. Such incidents must be thoroughly investigated but – provided the investigation indicates that transmission from person to person is very limited – such incidents will not change the WHO overall assessment of the pandemic risk. There have been a number of instances of avian influenza infection occurring among close family members. It is often impossible to determine if human-to-human transmission has occurred since the family members are exposed to the same animal and environmental sources as well as to one another.

Here's a different point of view from The Guardian Unlimited

So who's really to blame for bird flu?

A stream of statements and strategy documents from august bodies such as the World Health Organisation reinforce the "wild birds and backyard poultry are the problem" plot-line. This must come as music to the ears of the intensive poultry producers, who heartily resent the good press that organic and free-range poultry generally receive. For once it is free-range birds that everyone is worried about, not the caged laying hens and tightly packed broiler birds...

The fear mongering going on in the 'Hit and Run' media is predictable; it sells copy and is a distraction from real problems, as the Gaurdian points out, like industrial animal production.


Real Problems like these ones; pointed out in a good sum up of the current Science and Business interests at play around this thing;

From:
Signs of the Times


Dr. Pushkar Kulkarni
Bachelor of Veterinary Science & Animal Husbandry (Bombay Veterinary College)
M.Sc. (Toxicology),
Contact: India (Res.): 91-251-2489216
E.mail: kk_pushkar@yahoo.com, kk_pushk


Hi everyone,

First of all, I would like to tell every one that bird flu is nothing but money generating gimmick of certain companies/politicians. So far only 55 people have died of so-called bird flu (7000 died by lighting last year alone) so are we having a lighting epidemic, rubbish? These death were due to Respiratory sym, but not confirmed for H5N1. How many people handling birds have died because of diarrhea? Must be more than 55 in the last few years then we can say we are in a Salmonella epidemic???

Next, who stand to gain by all this? Roche by selling --Tamiflu. Who has the patent for Tamiflu: lesser known company Gilead. Who is the major shareholder of this company??? Can any one guess??? Donald H. Rumsfeld was chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became defense secretary in Bush's Cabinet. The model suggests the parallel to the brazen corruption of Halliburton Corporation who's former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's company has so far gotten billions worth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere.

Who else stands to benefit? Bush campaign funders, Bilderberger spokesman Etienne F. Davignon and Reagan-Bush former secretary of state George P. Shultz, both of who are also on the board of directors of Gilead. Another member of the Bush circle is Lodewijk J.R. de Vink, who sits on the board of Hoffman-La Roche, Gilead's partner.

! In other words, bird flu will generate outrageous profits for insiders like Shultz, Rumsfled, Davignon and de Vink.

By the way what is Tamiflu (Generic name: oseltamivir phosphate)??? It's a extract from star aniseed (our very own Garam masala – curry powder) and each dose is $ 100 so even if 15% of the world have one dose then the total sale will be just $100 billion.

Since last year media started this "Tamasha" by highlighting the news! from other countries. Our Poultry Industry suffered losses due to those rumors during that year and now millions of farmers will loose their jobs & be bankrupt but only a few people will make money. I know it is going to be late & millions are going to loose their livelihood in India, Chicken is being sold at Rs 4/kg in some places. Think of the state of the Farmer & unlike other countries he is not going to be compensated (only farmers in Navapur, Nandurbar are being compensated).

So, it my sincere request to all of you that spread this information to everyone, buy, cook and eat poultry products (chicken & egg) without hesitation and try to save the livelihood of millions of poultry farmers in India. Remember that anything cooked over 70 degrees is safe.

Those who need more information are welcome to mail me at: dr_pushkar_bvc@yahoo.com.

Regards,
Pushkar

Some people* don't think Dr. Pushkar Kulkarnis' corporate greed observations go far enough.
They are afraid this is either the early stages of a Biological Attack on Asia; or the pretext necessary to launch such an attack, without getting caught in the world of domestic public opinion.

*(This link was obtained by two search perameters on MY google: Bird Flu + Bio-war. There's lots more - including juxtaposed submissions.)

Viewers would see a natural progression of the crisis; resulting in an unending holocaust; with deniability intact.

China must be aware of this possibility but for now, they are playing along in the interests of free trade despite the exstreme end game the idea postulates. After all, they control domestic health management, and will continue to; weighing as they must, the advanced genetic science information they are recieving from the west; verses the political and economic verticies.

I'm watching with no opinion either way. Noting who benefits; Who's in a position to engineer this kind of play; Who loses.

It's good to see some qualified experts coming forward, pointing out the facts.


Dr. Henry Niman PhD. is a geneticist and owner of several money making patents and an apparently brilliant thinker, has an unorthodox way of seeing the whole thing.

A view that may be confirmed by events on the ground this year.

But not everyone agrees with Dr. Niman even though Nationaly recognized bodies such as NIAID and the WTO seem to be acting upon the good doctors suppositions.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Reviews' Jennifer Bails writes;

But Henry Niman's warnings -- sounded to the international press -- have not convinced fellow researchers. Niman's detractors refer to him as a "prophet of doom" who stands to profit from his overzealous penchant for crying "Pandemic!" without proof or proper qualifications.

Dr. Henry Niman is convinced that specific parts of the DNA in viruses can mutate independantly of the whole; and as such speed the evolution of the chemical 'keys' in the virus, increasing the liklihood of the development of 'human receptor specificity'.

A "quick leap forward" hypothesis.

His peers point out that the only segmented mutations that appear in nature are the result of human engineering, or Gene Splicing. The intensive nature of present day farming would suggest a possible vector for such a 'great leap forward'. But Genetisists point out that any such mutation towards human receptor specificity would take time, and a lot of luck.


Here are some skeptical voices in the scientific community as concerns Dr. Niman's thoeries:


Wendy Orent Bio anthropologist with a Ph.D from the University of Michigan from an article published in the New Republic Online

The expert predictions don't take into account the evolutionary events necessary to turn an avian flu virus into a mass human killer. In ignoring the evolution of infectious disease, flu experts, science writers, and public health officials are leading us down the same path we've followed too many times before...

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) M.D. Cornell University Medical College

One migratory bird does not a pandemic make.

Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist and associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine.

The fear is out of proportion to the current risk.

Flu virologist Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a microbiology professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. A part of the team of scientists who recreated the deadly 1918 flu strain

Focusing only on H5N1 ... I think is a little bit shortsighted.

Daniel Perez, an assistant professor at Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine

The chances of getting hit by avian influenza from wild birds is the same as getting hit by a lightning bolt.

Dr. Richard Schabas, Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario:

Those pundits who have been predicting disaster all this time, I think it's time for them to take a good hard look at what has happened and what hasn't happened, and maybe re-evaluate their assessment.

mh