How to Cover a Health Crisis – or Make One
A post by revere at Effect Measure reminded us that the pandemic preparedness initiative had an intrinsic ineptitude to it. “CDC had been training state labs to make the differentiation between the...
View ArticleRisk, Opportunity, and Care
We’re off this evening to Ukraine and Poland, for a trip involving family heritage and some literary-historical exploration (as well as visiting with friends). The CDC’s travelers’ health website...
View ArticleMass Flu Immunization: What’s the Bail-out Point?
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has released its report on H1N1 flu. We’ll have something to say soon about the report’s specific “scenarios,” its sometimes-mystifying...
View ArticleCouncil of Advisors’ Flu Report: Does the Narrative Precede the Facts?
Reading this week’s report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on swine flu preparations… The PCAST’s 2009-H1N1 Working Group has some illustrious names, and some...
View ArticleNo Meeting of Minds on Flu
As the story of the flu pandemic of 2009 matures, it brings out the characteristic traits of each of the many spheres of interest that it touches. The physicians are certain that the news is bad, the...
View ArticleAlready Apologizing…
It looks like the Preparedness crusaders, anticipating flak on the swine flu immunization, are already preparing their defense. In this week’s Lancet, Dr. Steven Black, from Cincinnati Children’s...
View ArticleAvoiding Panic: The Imagined Crisis
The Global e-Forum, a Japanese site interested in world issues, posed this question to a number of professionals in the public health and public policy field: In dealing with the issue of a pandemic,...
View ArticleNew Year’s Wishes for Public Health
May 2010 be the year when health officials return to the business of alleviating suffering and stop promoting panic. (Don’t miss Nathalie Rothschild’s “Ten Years of Fear” in Spiked!’s Farewell to the...
View ArticleDHHS: Grasping at Straws
What makes us feel that the once-estimable Department of Health and Human Services is drowning in a big pond of unused flu vaccine? Is it the Advertisement? A full-page ad taken out by DHHS in the main...
View ArticleTransparency on Pandemics
How bad would it be for officials to be more open about how they make decisions on “preparedness”? Should the public know more about how so-called experts forecast coming danger? What’s the influence...
View ArticlePublic Health Priorities: Follow the Money
Thanks to Crof at H5N1 for bringing to our attention a strong editorial in yesterday’s Bangkok Post. The editorialists note that H1N1 preparedness efforts were not always successful and that WHO,...
View ArticleA Blog Worth Following
If you haven’t already, put Crawford Kilian’s H5N1 blog on your regular reading list. There, while you’ll still get updates on the H5N1 avian flu virus and occasional pieces on H1N1 flu (and you can...
View ArticleIn the mouth of death
The Miami Herald‘s article yesterday on cholera reaching Port-au-Prince quotes a homeless resident of the Haitian capital, fearful at the approach of the disease: “Of course I’m scared — we’re in the...
View ArticleBed Bug Worry, Mosquito Mayhem
You hear a lot about bed bugs these days, here in New York City. The bed bug infestation has become part of New York angst, the newest of our plagues. The NY Times had its top infectious disease...
View ArticleCholera: A Shame, Not a Whodunit
Titling Maggie Fox’s article on the source of the Haitian cholera outbreak “Whodunnit?,” Reuters makes distraction the main attraction. Finger pointing about the “cause” of the outbreak — finger...
View ArticleVaccine Crusaders Arm for Battle
I’m not sure I want to feel sorry for Andrew Wakefield — a nudnik, possibly even a charlatan. And although I worry that MMR vaccine, especially as part of the intense dosing schedule for childhood...
View ArticleProfiting from Preparedness
Don’t miss Helen Epstein’s brilliant exposé in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. She shows how the profit motive shapes the “preparedness” industry — worth $10 billion worldwide in 2009...
View ArticleCholera: Problem Solved?
Once again I’m grateful to H5N1 for bringing cholera news to my attention. This week, epidemiologists from France have presented evidence suggesting that the Haitian cholera outbreak began when the...
View ArticleCensoring Science
Crof’s H5N1 blog is the place to watch for coverage of this week’s controversy over censorship of scientific findings. A few words here about the controversy and the rush to censor science. As Martin...
View ArticleInfluenza, Epidemics, and Science
Back in March, thinking about the controversy over Gain of Function (GOF) research on influenza viruses, I suggested that the debate isn’t really about science, nor about morals, no matter what some...
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