Monkey Pox Update

What to know about monkeypox

symptoms, treatments and protection

WHO: 14,000 monkeypox cases worldwide, 7 deaths - CIDRAP

WaPo: (pay wall)

First monkeypox deaths outside Africa are reported in Spain and Brazil

Three people have died of monkeypox in Brazil and Spain, marking the first known fatalities outside Africa in the current outbreak.

In Brazil, a 41-year-old man with lymphoma and weakened immunity died in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, health officials said Friday. The country has confirmed at least 1,259 cases.

Hours later, Spain announced the first death in Europe, although no information about the individual has been released. The health ministry confirmed a second death Saturday. Spain has been one of the worst-affected countries, with 4,298 confirmed cases and at least 120 patients hospitalized.

At least five people have died in Africa.

On July 23, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, its highest-level warning. Globally 22,485 cases have been confirmed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the overwhelming majority outside of countries in central and western Africa where the virus is normally found.

The WHO says the risk from the virus is high in Europe and moderate elsewhere. Cases normally begin with flu-like symptoms, and a rash that appears days later, according to the CDC. Infections usually last between two and four weeks.

Most cases have so far been reported among men who have sex with men, with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus suggesting earlier this week that they should consider temporarily reducing sexual partners as cases rise. Global health authorities have grappled with the risk of stigmatizing members of the community or downplaying the risk to the wider population.

Case Count by State (none reported for MT & WY)

No dead Americans to report yet.

Alabama                     16
Alaska                          1
Arizona                       50
Arkansas                      4
California                  799
Colorado                     53
Connecticut                33
Delaware                      4
District Of Columbia 218
Florida                      373
Georgia                    351
Hawaii                        10
Idaho                            4
Illinois                       419
Indiana                       49
Iowa                           10
Kansas                         1
Kentucky                      8
Louisiana                   38
Maine                          1
Maryland                 117
Massachusetts        116
Michigan                   28
Minnesota                 33
Mississippi                  3
Missouri                      9
Nebraska                  10
Nevada                     14
New Hampshire          9
New Jersey             118
New Mexico                7
New York              1345
North Carolina          53
North Dakota              1
Ohio                          23
Oklahoma                   9
Oregon                     58
Pennsylvania          125
Puerto Rico              14
Rhode Island            19
South Carolina         16
South Dakota             1
Tennessee               26
Texas                     351
Utah                        27
Virginia                    76
Washington           120
West Virginia             3
Wisconsin                13

(as of July 29, 2022 at 2pm EDT)

COVID-19 Update

WaPo: (pay wall)

Biden covid symptoms continue to improve, White House says

The president has completed his third full day of a new antiviral drug, his physician said in a letter released Sunday

President Biden, who tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, probably has the BA.5 variant and continues to experience mild symptoms that are improving, the White House said Sunday.

His physician, Kevin O’Connor, wrote in a letter that the president’s pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature all remain normal, and he doesn’t have any shortness of breath.

“His predominant symptom now is sore throat,” O’Connor wrote, adding that it was an indication that his body is clearing the virus, which is “encouraging.”

The president has taken the antiviral Paxlovid for three days and will continue treatment, O’Connor said. He is also taking Tylenol and using an albuterol inhaler a few times a day for cough.

“The President is responding to therapy as expected,” O’Connor wrote in his latest letter. “The BA5 variant is particularly transmissible and he will continue to isolate in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations.”

The White House said last week that it would go beyond CDC guidance and ensure that Biden remained in isolation until he tested negative. That goes beyond the CDC’s guidelines from December, which cut its recommended isolation time to five days if a patient’s symptoms were gone or were resolving and then said to wear masks for an additional five days. Some public health experts have criticized the revised CDC guidelines as insufficient, warning that many people who contract the coronavirus remain infectious after the first five days.

What is Paxlovid?

Biden, 79, who has been vaccinated and received two boosters, is the second U.S. president to test positive for the coronavirus. His symptoms have so far been much milder than they were for President Donald Trump, who spent three days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October 2020 after he contracted the virus before the first vaccinations were rolled out.

Ashish Jha, the White House covid-19 response coordinator, said that the president has had 17 close contacts, including with members of Congress and the White House staff. All were being tracked by the White House medical unit, he added.

“None of them have tested positive as of late yesterday,” Jha said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “They are following CDC protocol, and we’ll continue to follow them.”

Asked if masking and distancing protocols were being rethought, Jha said that CDC guidelines were being adhered to.

“Protocols around the president I think have been very tight, but this is a president who likes to get out there, meet Americans, spend time with people,” he said.

Biden, in covid isolation, aims to show that presidential work goes on

In recent months, Biden has stressed that Americans who are fully vaccinated can begin resuming their normal routines.

“Thanks to the progress we’ve made in the last year, covid-19 no longer need control our lives,” he said during his State of the Union address in March.

But new strains — including the highly transmissible BA.5 omicron subvariant, which is responsible for up to 80 percent of current infections in the United States — have continued to infect millions of Americans, although hospitalization and death rates are significantly lower than they were in the winter, when infections were also soaring. The virus is responsible for 125,000 new cases and more than 400 deaths each day, according to seven-day averages on The Washington Post’s coronavirus tracker.

Biden has continued to work while sick, meeting virtually with his economic team and speaking with staffers on FaceTime on Friday.

Journalists, including several television hosts on Sunday morning, have pressed the White House about why O’Connor, the president’s personal physician, has not directly briefed reporters about Biden’s infection.

“Dr. O’Connor and I are speaking multiple times a day,” Jha said Sunday. Jha said O’Connor is also speaking with Anthony S. Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser. He added: “We are being very transparent, probably giving updates several times a day about how the president is doing.”

World

Cases: 569,972,041

Deaths: 6,383,840

USA

Cases: 90,396,675

Deaths: 1,026,940

Related - WaPo: (pay wall)

Monkeypox is the latest global health emergency

Here's what to know.

The World Health Organization has declared monkeypox a global health emergency, as the once-rare virus spreads rapidly in Europe and other parts of the globe.

More than 16,800 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 74 countries this year. Many of those are in places that have never reported monkeypox infections before. In the United States, at least 2,890 cases have been identified, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the WHO has said the global risk of monkeypox is moderate, the virus is concerning health officials because it is transmitting in new ways about which they say they have little understanding. Where previous cases, including a 2003 U.S. outbreak, spread through human contact with animals such as rodents or primates, the current outbreak is concentrated among men who have sex with men.

The decision to place monkeypox on the highest alert level means the world is now confronting two viral diseases that have crossed that threshold. The coronavirus, which causes covid-19, was given the same label in January 2020. Monkeypox is far less transmissible, however, and global health officials are hopeful the current outbreak can be brought under control.

What is monkeypox?

Monkeypox is named for the animals in which it was discovered, but the WHO intends to rename it after scientists deemed the current name “discriminatory and stigmatizing.” The disease cropped up in 1958 among monkeys kept for research, according to the CDC — more than a decade before a human case was identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WHO to rename monkeypox after scientists call it ‘discriminatory’

Mass vaccination against smallpox “presumably” curbed monkeypox infections for a time among humans, researchers wrote in a 2005 article. But cases resurged, partly because of a lack of immunity in later generations, they say.

Monkeypox infections typically last two to four weeks, the CDC says, and begin with flu-like symptoms and swelling of the lymph nodes. Eventually, fluid-filled bumps — or “pox” — spread across the skin. Health officials have noted that the latest monkeypox cases often involve genital rashes that can be confused with syphilis or herpes.

The disease can spread through contact with animals, infected people and materials used by infected people, health authorities say. Examples listed by the CDC include contact with bodily fluids, contact with monkeypox sores and infection through “respiratory droplets” in a “close setting,” such as a shared household. CDC officials say lesions are the most significant source of spread, such as skin-to-skin contact with a person with rashes, or sharing bedding or clothing exposed to lesions, and that respiratory spread happens during prolonged face-to-face contact when a person has lesions in the mouth or throat.

Monkeypox can be deadly, but two major strains of the virus pose different risks. About 1 in 10 people infected with a Congo Basin strain have been found to die, according to the WHO, while a West African strain appeared to be fatal for about 1 in 100 infected people.

That milder strain is the one infecting people who were hospitalized in Britain, health authorities said.

Five people have died in the current outbreak, according to the WHO, all of them in Africa.

What happens now that monkeypox has been declared a global emergency?

The WHO labeled monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on July 23, in a move expected to marshal new funding and spur governments into action. The global health agency’s announcement included recommendations to intensify surveillance, accelerate research into vaccines and therapeutics, and strengthen infection control in hospitals.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that because the outbreak is concentrated at the moment among men who have sex with men, health officials believe it “can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.” He stressed that any containment measures should respect the “human rights and dignity” of gay and bisexual men, saying: “Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus.”

How does monkeypox compare with the coronavirus?

Experts stress that monkeypox is different from the coronavirus that has infected millions.

Monkeypox is highly visible, making contact tracing and isolation easier. An existing smallpox vaccine could help protect the public if needed, said Aris Katzourakis, a professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford. And “we don’t have the potential for something spreading through the globe at anything like the kind of rate that we saw with covid,” he said, because monkeypox transmits less easily between humans.

Still, the latest spate of cases stands out, Katzourakis said. The longer it continues, the more chance the virus has to mutate and improve its transmissibility.

“It’s either a lot of bad luck or something quite unusual happening here,” Katzourakis said.

“We don’t really have the sense yet of what’s driving it. … There isn’t a travel link that’s identified that brings these cases all together,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Monkeypox is known to spread through human contact with animals such as rodents or primates, but the virus has spread further this year through human-to-human transmission than previously reported.The risk to the public remains low, authorities say.

Is the smallpox vaccine effective against monkeypox?

Data suggests that the smallpox vaccine is about 85 percent effective against monkeypox, according to the CDC.

Although the smallpox vaccine stopped being administered to the U.S. general public in the 1970s — years after the disease was eliminated in North America — a supply was kept on hand. A new vaccine, ACAM2000, replaced the old one in the mid-2000s. In 2019, Jynneos was approved to prevent smallpox and monkeypox in high-risk adults 18 and older.

To control the spreading virus, the United States bought doses of the Jynneos vaccine, the only one specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent monkeypox, to allocate based on the number of people at risk for monkeypox who also have preexisting conditions, such as HIV. But officials in New York and D.C. have said they do not have enough supply to meet the demand.

People in the general population who have been exposed to monkeypox should get one of the vaccines, said Ruth Karron, a professor and director of the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. And, she said, because the incubation period for monkeypox is long — up to two weeks — some data suggests that people who get vaccinated after exposure or infection may be able to avoid illness or experience a milder case.

The CDC recommends that people get vaccinated within four days of exposure to prevent infection, but there may still be benefits up to 14 days. People in this situation should contact their doctor for guidance.

As for people who received the smallpox vaccine decades ago, health experts say they may still have some protection against monkeypox, but probably not enough. According to the CDC, those who have not had a smallpox vaccine within the past three years should consider getting one if they are exposed to monkeypox.

“We should also bear in mind that we are still trying to figure out what’s going on with monkeypox because this pattern of infection is not one we’ve seen before,” Karron told The Washington Post. “But still, we have very, very, very few cases, and I don’t think we are going to see a large outbreak.”

The WHO is discouraging mass vaccination for the virus, which can be treated with antiviral medicines and vaccines stockpiled in the event of a smallpox outbreak, because there is limited clinical data and an insufficient global supply. The U.N. health agency is developing a plan to make vaccines and treatments more accessible.

Has monkeypox made it to the United States before?

Monkeypox made its way to the United States for the first time in 2003, researchers say. That outbreak was the first time that human monkeypox was reported outside of Africa, according to the CDC.

At the time, dozens of cases were reported in the Midwest, mostly among people who were exposed to prairie dogs apparently infected by rodents from Ghana, according to the CDC. Two children fell seriously ill and recovered, the CDC said.

An infection reported May 18 in Massachusetts was the first case of monkeypox identified in the United States this year, health officials said.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Following up - WCVB-Boston:

Massachusetts State Police aware of only 1 possible resignation over vaccine mandate, source says

There is conflicting information about the accuracy of the claims made by the union representing members of the Massachusetts State Police regarding resignations over the state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Gov. Charlie Baker and his administration are requiring state workers, including state troopers, to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by Oct. 17. If they cannot show proof of vaccination or receive approval for an exemption, those executive branch employees will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

The State Police Association of Massachusetts is standing by a statement that it made last week, which reads, "To date, dozens of troopers have already submitted their resignation paperwork."

However, a source within the Massachusetts State Police told 5 Investigates that the department is only aware of one person who has submitted paperwork to resign as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The union will not provide a specific number of troopers that it claims are planning to resign beyond saying dozens.

On Monday, Baker said the state will hire new troopers to fill the ranks of retiring troopers, regardless of the reason for their retirement.

"I think it's really important for public officials who deal directly with the public on a regular basis — who have no idea whether the people they're dealing with are vaccinated or not, and those people who are dealing with them ought to be able to believe that they are vaccinated — I think it's critically important for those folks to get vaccinated," the governor said.

The conflicting numbers from SPAM and MSP come after the union unsuccessfully attempted to fight the mandate in court.

It is possible for state troopers to file retirement papers directly with the Massachusetts State Retirement Board, but the source said the department is not aware of that happening.

Nerds-A-Poppin'

It pays to know your shit.

NYT: (pay wall)

A Changing Gut Microbiome May Predict How Well You Age

People whose gut bacteria transformed over the decades tended to be healthier and live longer.

The secret to successful aging may lie in part in your gut, according to a new report. The study found that it may be possible to predict your likelihood of living a long and healthy life by analyzing the trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that inhabit your intestinal tract.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Metabolism, found that as people get older, the composition of this complex community of microbes, collectively known as the gut microbiome, tends to change. And the greater the change, the better, it appears.

In healthy people, the kinds of microbes that dominate the gut in early adulthood make up a smaller and smaller proportion of the microbiome over the ensuing decades, while the percentage of other, less prevalent species rises. But in people who are less healthy, the study found, the opposite occurs: The composition of their microbiomes remains relatively static and they tend to die earlier.

The new findings suggest that a gut microbiome that continually transforms as you get older is a sign of healthy aging, said a co-author of the study, Sean Gibbons, a microbiome specialist and assistant professor at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, a nonprofit biomedical research organization.

“A lot of aging research is obsessed with returning people to a younger state or turning back the clock,” he said. “But here the conclusion is very different. Maybe a microbiome that’s healthy for a 20-year-old is not at all healthy for an 80-year-old. It seems that it’s good to have a changing microbiome when you’re old. It means that the bugs that are in your system are adjusting appropriately to an aging body.”

The researchers could not be certain whether changes in the gut microbiome helped to drive healthy aging or vice versa. But they did see signs that what happens in people’s guts may directly improve their health. They found, for example, that people whose microbiomes shifted toward a unique profile as they aged also had higher levels of health-promoting compounds in their blood, including compounds produced by gut microbes that fight chronic disease.

Scientists have suspected for some time that the microbiome plays a role in aging. Studies have found, for example, that people 65 and older who are relatively lean and physically active have a higher abundance of certain microbes in their guts compared to seniors who are less fit and healthy. People who develop early signs of frailty also have less microbial diversity in their guts. By studying the microbiomes of people of all ages, scientists have found patterns that extend across the entire life span. The microbiome undergoes rapid changes as it develops in the first three years of life. Then it remains relatively stable for decades, before gradually undergoing changes in its makeup as people reach midlife, which accelerates into old age in those who are healthy but slows or remains static in people who are less healthy.

Although no two microbiomes are identical, people on average share about 30 percent of their gut bacterial species. A few species that are particularly common and abundant make up a “core” set of gut microbes in all of us, along with smaller amounts of a wide variety of other species that are found in different combinations in every person.

To get a better understanding of what happens in the gut as people age, Dr. Gibbons and his colleagues, including Dr. Tomasz Wilmanski, the lead author of the new study, looked at data on over 9,000 adults who had their microbiomes sequenced. They ranged in age from 18 to 101.

About 900 of these people were seniors who underwent regular checkups at medical clinics to assess their health. Dr. Gibbons and his colleagues found that in midlife, starting at around age 40, people started to show distinct changes in their microbiomes. The strains that were most dominant in their guts tended to decline, while other, less common strains became more prevalent, causing their microbiomes to diverge and look more and more different from others in the population.

“What we found is that over the different decades of life, individuals drift apart — their microbiomes become more and more unique from one another,” said Dr. Gibbons.

People who had the most changes in their microbial compositions tended to have better health and longer life spans. They had higher vitamin D levels and lower levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood. They needed fewer medications, and they had better physical health, with faster walking speeds and greater mobility.

The researchers found that these “unique” individuals also had higher levels of several metabolites in their blood that are produced by gut microbes, including indoles, which have been shown to reduce inflammation and maintain the integrity of the barrier that lines and protects the gut. In some studies, scientists have found that giving indoles to mice and other animals helps them stay youthful, allowing them to be more physically active, mobile and resistant to sickness, injuries and other stresses in old age. Another one of the metabolites identified in the new study was phenylacetylglutamine. It is not clear exactly what this compound does. But some experts believe it promotes longevity because research has shown that centenarians in northern Italy tend to have very high levels of it.

Dr. Wilmanski found that people whose gut microbiomes did not undergo much change as they got older were in poorer health. They had higher cholesterol and triglycerides and lower levels of vitamin D. They were less active and could not walk as fast. They used more medications, and they were nearly twice as likely to die during the study period.

The researchers speculated that some gut bugs that might be innocuous or perhaps even beneficial in early adulthood could turn harmful in old age. The study found, for example, that in healthy people who saw the most dramatic shifts in their microbiome compositions there was a steep decline in the prevalence of bacteria called Bacteroides, which are more common in developed countries where people eat a lot of processed foods full of fat, sugar and salt, and less prevalent in developing countries where people tend to eat a higher-fiber diet. When fiber is not available, Dr. Gibbons said, Bacteroides like to “munch on mucus,” including the protective mucus layer that lines the gut.

“Maybe that’s good when you’re 20 or 30 and producing a lot of mucus in your gut,” he said. “But as we get older, our mucus layer thins, and maybe we may need to suppress these bugs.”

If those microbes chew through the barrier that keeps them safely in the gut, it is possible they could trigger an immune system response.

“When that happens, the immune system goes nuts,” Dr. Gibbons said. “Having that mucus layer is like having a barrier that maintains a détente that allows us to live happily with our gut microbes, and if that goes away it starts a war” and could set off chronic inflammation. Increasingly, chronic inflammation is thought to underlie a wide range of age-related ailments, from heart disease and diabetes to cancer and arthritis.

One way to prevent these microbes from destroying the lining of the gut is to give them something else to snack on, such as fiber from nutritious whole foods like beans, nuts and seeds and fruits and vegetables.

Other studies have shown that diet can have a substantial impact on the composition of the microbiome. While the new research did not look closely at the impact of different foods on changes in the microbiome as we age, Dr. Gibbons said he hopes to examine that in a future study.

“It may be possible to preserve the aging mucus layer in the gut by increasing the amount of fiber in the diet,” Dr. Gibbons said. “Or we might identify other ways to reduce Bacteroides abundance or increase indole production through diet. These are not-too-distant future interventions that we hope to test.”

In the meantime, he said, his advice for people is to try to stay physically active, which can have a beneficial effect on the gut microbiome, and eat more fiber and fish and fewer highly processed foods.

“I have started eating a lot more fiber since I began studying the microbiome,” he said. “Whole foods like fresh fruits and veggies have all the complex carbohydrates that our microbes like to eat. So, when you’re feeding yourself, think about your microbes too.”

What They Don't Tell Us

No matter what happens, and no matter what the Press Poodles manage to dig up while it's happening, we never get to know everything we should know about any big event.

There's always a few details - usually a whole metric fuck ton of details - that we never get to see.

Once in a while, somebody cracks a little and we get The Pentagon Papers, but that's the exception instead of the rule. And given our commitment to "peaceful transition of power", we've evolved part of the system into a game of Stall 'Em.

Somebody shits the bed, and there's a bad reaction, and the people in power (some of them) get thrown out and new people come in, but the PR guys get to work and before ya know it, a few years have passed, and power has transitioned again, and deals are made and those details are lost until historians suss it out (sorta) and then we learn about some pretty fucking important stuff 30 years after it woulda made a real difference for us.

And here we are again.

WaPo:

U.S. deaths soared in early weeks of pandemic, far exceeding number attributed to covid-19

An analysis of federal data for the first time estimates excess deaths - the number beyond what would normally be expected - during that period

In the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to covid-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.

The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.

Is there terminology that's any creepier than "Excess Deaths"?

Anyway - yes, dammit, we have a right to know stuff. Most stuff. Certain stuff. Stuff that wouldn't get the good guys killed if it we knew about it - assuming of course the good guys are who we're told they are, and we're not just being sold another Vaporware upgrade, and only because I believe the guys in charge as long as they're my brand of guys and as long as I'm relatively sure they aren't just fuckin' with me, pretending to be my guys when they really aren't.

So that's clear, right?

Anyway also too, one of the really big things about our slide into this Daddy State authoritarian ocean of shit is the degradation of our official-government-supposed-to-be nonpartisan data gathering and reporting.

The Daddy State must control the flow of information if it's to have any chance of dictating reality to us.

That's why they insist on not properly funding the research at various entities to keep us informed on the public health aspects of guns and pollution and the other profit-over-people activities of this bullshit version of Capitalism that they're always pimping.

Not To Worry

 The guy who can't quite master the intricate workings of an umbrella; has no idea how the Civil War got started, and then wondered why Andrew Jackson didn't do more to stop it; believed Colorado is a border state; thinks healthcare insurance costs about 12 bucks a year; thought Canadians burned the White House; asked why we can't just nuke the hurricanes; and claimed windmills cause cancer - 

- that's the guy who went on national TV yesterday to tell us COVID-19 is no big deal, and if it is a big deal, we're ready for it.

And anyway, the warm weather will fix it.

We are so fucked.

Fat People Have Heads

Samantha Bee

Are You Sorry?

When your daughter gets rubella as she's expecting your grandchild, how do you explain your decision to leave them at risk?

What will you say when she calls to tell you about her diagnosis of cervical cancer, that could've been prevented, but you were afraid to get her the HPV vaccination as a teenager?

How will you justify your decision to skip the vaccination that would've kept your son from becoming infertile now that he's contracted mumps as a young adult?

And how do you break the news that their grandma won't be coming home from the hospital because you refused to get your kids vaccinated for the flu?

Will you still insist that those "childhood diseases" aren't all that serious; that your gluten-free home-cooked organic cuisine should've been enough to protect them - and it's all Monsanto's fault anyway?

How sorry are you?

Today's Quote

"Eating healthy is so esthetically pleasing."

--Sadie Grace Christina Roberts

He Gets It Wrong

...again.

WaPo:

In a meeting with educators, Trump asked the principal of a center that serves students with disabilities about the prevalence of autism. The principal, Jane Quenneville, spoke about the increasing number of students with autism at the Kilmer Center, a Fairfax County public school. But Trump then claimed that there was a “tremendous amount of increase” in autism in general — “really a horrible thing to watch.”

This exchange is especially noteworthy, because Trump wants to create a vaccine safety commission that could roll back vaccine laws based on the widely discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Since as early as 2012, Trump has falsely claimed there is a vaccine-autism link. On the presidential campaign trail, Trump again cited the junk science to explain the reason he believes so many children are diagnosed with autism.

So, is autism on the rise?

-and-

The rate in the 2016 report was the same as it was in 2014 — and the definition for autism was broadened in 2013.

The parameters for autism were changed in 2013, so that more kids who need help would get help. Way more important is that the Rate of Incidence didn't change for the three years after they re-jigered those parameters.

But 45* just goes right along pimping the Jenny McCarthy-style anti-vaxxer bullshit.

Here it is, putz: "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" is a Logical Fallacy.

In terms even 45* can understand: A legless dog won't come when you call him, but that don't mean he's deaf. 

So yeah - 45* is that guy.

Back To The Gilded Age

A little reminder of the damage a bad president can do.

Vox:

Since the election of Donald Trump, there’s been a lot of discussion in medical circles about bringing a Silicon Valley ethos to drug innovation in America.

This idea is embodied in Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, who has reportedly been helping the president vet a pool of candidates to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

Thiel, a libertarian iconoclast, has repeatedly made the case that the FDA gets in the way of drug innovation by making it too difficult for new medicines to get to the market. Some of the FDA candidates he’s identified — including Silicon Valley’s Jim O’Neill and Balaji Srinivasan — have similarly argued that the agency should dump its requirement that drugs be proven effective before reaching the market, and that we’d be better off if the FDA operated more like a “Yelp for drugs.” In other words, bringing the same speedy and disruptive approach to medical regulation that Silicon Valley brought to the taxi and hotel industries, for example, will unlock cures — fast.

But Thiel and his pals miss a very important point about developing new drugs: Manipulating biology isn’t the same as manipulating computer code. It’s much, much harder. Speeding up medical innovation will take a lot more than just stripping down the FDA — it’ll take huge leaps forward in our understanding of biochemistry and the body. Health care is also different from taxis and hotels in another key way: Consumers can’t really judge the safety and quality of medical products by themselves.

Trump to remove USDA animal welfare protections from cruelty for dogs. A reminder from 9/16: he's never HAD a dog pic.twitter.com/NykVqnG6Nj

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2017

So, like, one of the things Da Gubmint is there trying to do for you is to keep some asshole from killing your dog.  If you can't quite work yourself up to giving a fuck about people, maybe you could think about finding a little compassion for their fucking house pets.

More from the Vox piece:

One of the key notions that undergirds the Peter Thiel view of the FDA is that if the agency just got rid of some of the pesky restrictions for drug approval, we’d usher in another golden age in drug development. (Thiel declined our interview request.)

To test this idea, I asked a longtime pharmaceutical scientist (and conservative), Derek Lowe, for his views. In his 28 years in the lab, Lowe has seen hundreds of thousands of compounds tested on a huge variety of drug targets, and never, not once, has he brought a drug to market.

The reason? “We don’t know how to find drugs that work,” he said.

For every 5,000 compounds discovered at this "preclinical" phase of drug development, only about five are promising enough to be tried in humans. That’s a success rate of 0.1 percent.

Drug innovation comes from painstaking tinkering and a dash of luck. “It’s very tempting for someone who has come out of IT to say, ‘DNA is code, and cells are the hardware; go in and debug it’,” Lowe said. “But this is wrong.”

Let's just try to remember one or two itty-bitty things, OK?

You were supposed to have read that shit way back in high school, y'know.

Learn a little more about FDA

Gettin' Old Ain't For Pussies

I'm stalking the thrift shops looking for a high-end adult Spider Man costume to hang in the back of my closet, just so I can fuck with myself in case Alzheimer's gets me. 

Today's Tweet

@TitusNation Thought you'd appreciate this. pic.twitter.com/nrtbV7fDOc

— Primrose MK (@PrimroseMK) December 9, 2015

Today's Tweet

@TinaDupuy:  So far every case of Ebola in this country got it by helping people. So relax, Republicans, you're in the clear.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

It Ain't Healthy

From NYT:

The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.

The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”

Coupla things: "This is not the product of a particular administration or political party."

WTF?  Even if I'm willing to say it's not so much a particular party but a particular outlook, that statement is borderline criminally stoopid.  Which side in any debate over any health-related issue has been funding the kind of quack science that said cigarettes aren't that bad?  that said Love Canal wasn't making the whole neighborhood sick?  that AGW and Climate Change are parts of an elaborate hoax?  that Obamacare is a federal takeover?  that artificial food additives are a good source of nutrition?  that Fracking isn't contaminating our drinking water?  that even the study of gun violence wasn't something we should spend tax dollars on? and and and.

So OK - let's focus on fixing the problem instead of the blame - but if we're gonna have any real shot at getting it right, we hafta identify the full scope of the problem.  And a big part of the problem is that "one side" keeps lying us into making bad decisions or actively seeks to keep us from making good decisions.

It's good to get this info out into the light of day, but let's remember to have the balls it takes to see the whole problem - and to call the problem by its full name.

Perspective

Abortion is about the biggest decision anybody is ever likely to have to make.
Which is pretty much why government should probably stay out of it.
Which is exactly why "conservatives" should be against letting the government anywhere near it.

hat tip = bluegal via facebook

Reconstruction

Yikes.  Got the main bill for the Hospital side of things for my Total Hip Replacement.  The bill from the surgeon should be following shortly.

Previously, I had an XRay for diagnosis, and then another XRay Study to measure for the device itself.  Those two totaled close to $1400.00.

Right now, I'm getting two visits per week from a nurse who checks me over and tests my Coumadin level, plus two visits per week from the Physical Therapist.  Once they turn me loose and I'm no longer considered "house-bound", I switch to Out-Patient status, and I go to a rehab center twice a week

Thank God for good insurance coverage. 

Reconstruction - In All Its Gnarly Glory

I couldn't figure out how to get a ruler in the shot to show scale - the scar's about 7 1/2 inches.

The dressing came off Monday, and it can stay off as long as the wound stays closed and doesn't start to leak. Shower tomorrow (post-op day 7).  Swabbing myself down every day with a sponge and baby wipes is a drag.

Reconstruction (update)

Pretty good day yesterday and a good night last night.  Up at about 5 this AM.

I had the first of what will be several home visits from Lee (nurse) and Laurie (PT) yesterday.  They both told me I'm doing a lot better than most of the people they see.  This is one of those things that you can't possibly take any credit for, but find it hard to say anything other than thank you.  Kinda like when somebody says you have beautiful kids:  "Why thank you - I made them myself, you know; and I don't mind telling you how hard it is to get all that genetic sequencing just right..."  Anyway, it's nice having a winning ticket on that little slice of Life's Grand Lottery.  Pain levels have been very reasonable so far, and the pain is what they worry most about.  If you can't knock down the pain, then you can't do the exercises, and it'll take longer to get back to a healthy state; and many times, you never get back to where you need to be.  So they send you home with a basketful of meds, most of which are aimed at the pain.

My drug regimen for the next couple of months has me taking a daily cocktail of 5 medications (all of which are added to whatever I was on before the surgery of course).  Luckily, I've always resisted the paradigm of Health Management by Prescription, so other than my One-A-Day vitamin supplement, I started with a more or less clean slate.

Coumadin (to prevent blood clotting)
Indomethacin (anti-inflammatory)
Tramadol (non-narcotic pain killer)
Oxycodone (narcotic pain killer)
Colace (stool softener - constipation is always number one on the list of side effects for pain meds)

Anyway, I have a set of 10 exercises that I need to do 2 or 3 times a day that are aimed at simply getting the musculature back into place to support the new joint.  God's design (particularly of the lower back and hips) became obsolete once we started walkin' around on our hind legs.  When the joint deteriorates to the point where you have to replace original equipment with steel and plastic, you have to cut away most of the tendons and ligaments, and rely on the body's amazing adaptive capabilities to substitute muscle as the support structure.  Obviously, they have to cut thru a good inch and a half of meat and then pry the muscles away from the bones to expose the parts of the joint that have to be removed and sculpted in order to accept the replacement parts. (Orthopods often refer to themselves as carpenters, btw)  So the rehab is all about training the muscles to take over the functions of keepin the joint in place as the wound heals and the muscles re-attach to the bone.

I'm still working on some of the different angles of this thing, primarily looking for the If/Then/Else algorithms that drive this weird system of ours.  Some of the costs outlined on the Explanation(s) Of Benefits we've gotten so far are a bit shocking, so more on all of that later.

Reconstruction (update)

Day 4 Post-Op:
OK night.  Still pretty stiff, and I've gotten some noticeable swelling going now in my left leg.

I came home with:
Coumadin (blood thinner)
Oxycodone (pain killer)
Tramdol (non-narcotic pain killer)
Colase (stool softener - to counteract constipation due to the pain killers)

Avoiding the oxycodone in favor of tramadol, just trying to stay as drug-free (and as uncomplicated) as possible.

Expecting first visits from Nursing and Physical Therapy this PM.