GaudiaRay Notes and Comments on Mike Osterholm 09/2006
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GaudiaRay Notes and Comments on Mike Osterholm at World Affairs Council of Ventura County, CA, meeting, Sept 20, 2006.
Observation: Mike as Asst Dir of DHS has been run ragged this past week over the e coli spinach affair. He's gained weight in the past 8 months (my guess...he's swamped with meetings, and extensive travel). He looks a bit pale. His spirits and his machinegun delivery were very positive and unchanged since last Feb. He referred to his nickname, "Bad News Mike".
The key points he made:
1. The average age of those who died in 1918 was 27. The average age of those who WHO reports as dying due to H5N1 is 27.
2. The risk of a pandemic happening is "one"... it is not an optional event.
3. He met with Chan from WHO either earlier today or yesterday, in Wn, DC.
(so to me, he knows as much as anyone about what's happening out there vis a vis the virus' evolution.)
4. He, his wife, and his family now plan for his not returning home during the pandemic. He is committed to work; it is clearly a heartfelt obligation he has. He expects his family will sequester (at their new home in the countryside outside of Minneapolis, alongside a stream) and he will not endanger any of his family by visiting them during the pandemic. This is very surprising and new news. [Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Pandemic Year references the boatman who too would not step foot in his family home but who left money and food on a rock outside of the home and who would call out to his wife to retrieve them, with him keeping a far distance so that she not become infected, albeit there unsuccessfully.] Mike's term is "protective sequestration".
The reason he and his wife have concluded that protective sequestration is the right option for them is "social distancing won't work" in an urban environment; antivirals will be too few and have a low probability of being effective; there will be no vax timely available; there will be a lack of facemasks and gloves; and hand cleaning products will be scooped up and run out overnight.
6. His slide show concluded with a statement, "To do nothing is unacceptable... to promise protection is unethical."
Answers to the questions for which there was enough time:
A. Lenore / Cathypeanut: Nat'l plan for emergency implementation of mass vaccination. They are 3 to 5 months off after the start of the pandemic, just to start, and mass vax won't start for 6 to 8 months...
He said "the modern medical system will collapse".
"Vaccine and antiviral drugs will have limited impact on the pandemic if it occurs in the next several years"
"
B. DryHeat asked if there are any efforts being made for "serious stockpiling". Mike complimented me after the talk on the quality of this question. Mike's answer to DryHeat's questions, 'Are any big distribution systems like Walgreens taking it on themsevles to violate the "JIT" efficiencies in order to stockpile say 6 months of meds or supplies?' is "If I were Walgreens, I wouldn't stockpile. Nothing in the system rewards that type of activity. There is no economic incentive to do so." He is miffed that at MBA schools there is no interest in "stockpiling" but instead all are focused on saving that additional 1/2 of one percent.
DH, your answer from Mike is "No! No company he knew of is doing that.
Mike is writing a paper along with Robert Rubin, the Economic Advisor in Clinton's White House. They both believe the pandemic is coming sooner rather than later. They see no economic incentives to effectuate the outcome DH asked about.
As an aside, I had opportunity to meet with a representative of a major oil producer. The production company is seriously considering just shutting down during the pandemic!!! Or running at a very reduced level!! They're fully aware of the risks to their employees. Their view is "Why bother risking the lives of our white collar workers or any of our workers when our resource, oil, will be there after the pandemic as well as during? This has got to drive Goju through the roof. Goju is correct, given what I heard from both this major, major, major producer and from Osterholm. There is a huge probability of oil and refined oil products being shut in during a pandemic!!
Mike said that he fully expects from what he's heard from the oil refiners that they will be understaffed and unable to refine the petroleum products. That would force the oil producer to shut in. That would stop 80% of all oil from being available, assuming all small producers continued to pump and some refiners continue to refine. (The 80% estimate is from the oil producer, not from me.)
The oil producer has not heard a peep from FEMA. Remember when I posted that in the Feb meeting, I met with the FEMA public-private industry liason in Minneapolis? He said he was not concerned about power. Well, as usual once again FEMA employs a total F up. That guy swaggered his opinion that power would stay on. He forgot to tell us what I'm telling you now; the oil industry has not done more than a superficial pandemic plan, that they're late to the planning table, that there are highly placed individuals within the oil companies who advocate to do little to nothing to prepare for this event as it is yet an inchoate threat, and that neither FEMA nor any other federal agency has contacted them to say, "Stay open and operating."
GR: You know what this means. It means that everything we are basing our business continuity plans on appears to be stepping on lilypads on a pond. We're going to see some serious infrastructure collapses. Mike said he expects major collateral damage to occur, well beyond the impact of the illness itself. He said that at the beginning of his talk and 1 1/2 hours later at the end of his talk...serious "collateral damage".
He knew of only one example where the governmental institution has prepared for a disaster and can respond immediately and effectively, and those are the fire departments at international airports.
Continuing re the oil company, they produce into a pipeline. If the pipeline is full due to the slowdown at the refineries, they cannot produce. They will shut in most if not all of their production. They believe they face a serious ethical issue, and that being, "Why should we endanger our workforce over this life or death disease?" They are not pledged to risk their lives, unlike the law enforcement and medical communities. They are businesses, and they've not be deputized or nationalized; so they are looking at how to take no more than a prudent economic risk. GR's thinking: there's zero reason to be casual and expectant that oil and refined oil products will flow during a pandemic, and that means that a major portion of our electrical generation will also shut in. This ties directly with what Mike Osterholm says, that there will be a 12 to 18 month "blizzard", and he believes sincerely that "today" Washington, DC is dysfunctional. This imo assures a high probability that Katrina will in fact be a tiny "scout" for the pandemic "army" that will soon follow when infrastructure collapses throughout the developed world.
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CIDRAP did a study, Osterholm said, on evacuation and population of a reasonable, not a tall, office building using social distancing. He said it would take 28 hours to evacuate the building if social distancing were used. I assume that's one person per elevator run. He thinks the idea should be viewed based in light of this understanding.
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Osterholm, re: dead bodies, the discussion at FT, said they're no more contagious than any other body. Their skin will probably have the virus on it.
If you seriously want to know, you should ask DMORT at FEMA. Disaster Morticians = DMORT.
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GR: Osterholm is more concerned now than he was in February. He has now taken a hard decision, protective sequestration. He has seen the Taubenberger study re: H1N1. He speaks with the most knowledgeable people on this topic worldwide at the most senior levels. And I sensed that while he still references now "key mutations" as the evolutionary manner of change for this virus, rather than recombination, and different from point mutation which to me back in Feb sounded like it was more random and less common, he has now nearly totally abandoned reassortment, and now recognizes this, and this is my paraphrase of what he said, "The process of H5N1 evolution is via key mutation...enough changes and the easy ability to mutate... will result in the the pandemic."
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Mike said, re Oprah Show, he lightly self jabbed by saying he nearly shut down the email system at U Minn due to responses emailed to him. He identified two primary responses, both of which he termed "the easy response" which we should anticipate will be the response from the masses at the time the pandemic is announced.
The first group said, "You should be locked up. You scared us needlessly." The second group said, "You're not telling the truth. We're all going to die anyway."
GR: I think he was saying: There are the doubters on both sides. The information was too vague. The easy response is the extreme response. Expect the vast majority in their thinking to go to one extreme or another.
Mike said, in response to these two groups of thought, "The fact is we're in the middle".
Regarding the WHO position on avian influenza:
Like almost all of us, Mike thinks the WHO is a political institution pressed very hard by its members to conclude somewhere in the middle of the varying positions. The WHO is always, "Just Right".
Mike is very surprised and emphasized emphatically that for WHO to take the public positions it does regarding avian influenza, there must be something very serious that is occurring to cause them to be as bold as they are now being. He listed ten points now posted by the WHO.
I copied down just a few of those points. It's not clear from my notes if these are verbatim, but WHO's website will have them listed. In light of what Mike just said, I think they should be reposted here in FC and FT and FW. I'm a bit inept and I'm really supposed to be at work... but I want to upload more of these notes, yet just a small amount of what I've gathered.
1. The world may be on the brink of another pandemic.
2. Collateral damage WILL occur.
3. The modern medical system WILL collapse.
4. Vaccine and antiviral drugs will have limited inpact on the pandmeif if it occurs in the next several years.
There are more WHO points, but I don't have 'em here. Help?
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic10things/en/index.html
That's what Mike was saying, just what's there. So Mike is WHO mainstream, for all his fervence, he's still middle of the road in his thinking. He did say that he would in his talk tell the truth as he knows it to be now.
-- He showed many slides. One was of the Karo cluster (though not marked as such). He showed Mother infecting children, nephew and the nephew infecting his own father. The H2H2H was clear as a bell.
-- On the topic above on protective sequestration, those who've not yet read it yet should read Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year". Do a Google search and pick your poison, including a free, downloadable audio book. Defoe's folks onboard those ships in the Thames avoided the plague completely and left those ships in full good health (those who did not become infected by allowing anyone near them, save food, which we know now also may carry the virus due to handling) and as if nothing negative had transpired. That's protective sequestration 1665 style. When I read that about a year + ago, I responded by posting what Clawdia and many here also agree with, "Don't Get Sick". This is in direct contravention with the open heart of so many, including and especially Goju, who hope outloud that TPTB would do more than say, "We can't and we won't be able to help".
He raised almost Biblical questions at the start of his speech. "Who Will Be In Charge? What Can We Do About It? Will We? Do We Have Enough Time?"
Gotta go, but here's one more line. On the quality of health reporting, to say it's degraded at present, from reporting to now entertainment, would be a compliment to the majority of those reporting. He cited as especially confusing and untrustworthy for the most part those editorials posted by Donald G McNeil, Jr. in the NY Times. The message is that Don's reporting is unhelpful, and Don is one of the better reporters. He did not mention Helen Branswell who we here all appreciate.
Karo cluster... Mike showed the slide and said, "This reminds me of my grandfather who in Iowa had a John Deere tractor. I can remember when it started up. At first, there's a sputter, and then a rup-rup, and then, when he tried again, it would make a huge varoom". [I'm paraphrasing as closely as I can recollect.]
GR: Mike sees this Phase 6 event as imminent.
He said, "the current statistics on the number of people infected is the tip of the iceberg which is reflecting the breadth of the influenza virus in the birds."
GR: I heard that as, "The bird virus is expanding. Here's a flyway slide [we in the newsgroups have seen that slide many times in the past]. The human illnesses reflect the expansion of avian infections."
Mike recognized that high virulence AI is not yet in the Americas. He also said he did not know why this was the case; but he expected it due to the flyways meeting in the far northern hemisphere.
I will, in my last postings re: Mike's content, include housekeeping info that's imo less relevant but as it's here I'll list for your edification as well.
Mike then talked "chicken". He showed a slide on the explosive growth of pig and chicken population in China over the past ?? decade? forty years? Anyhow, it's huge. He said the average life of a chicken is 30 days. He said we humans have "sacrificed" over 15 million poultry to H5N1. But in China, which grows 12 or 15 billion chickens a year, they sacrifice as their protein source 1 billion chickens a month. His point is that when there's a disease in the poultry population, there's never a time when poultry is not present and alive, and thus the disease never burns out.
GR: I immediately thought of Indonesia where the culling of poultry has been oh let's say the greatest farce on earth?! This virus never is without a populated playing field there. Say the Indo's, "Ah, but we did cull within 100 feet of where the poultry died!"
They've said that for a year, since the father and daugher in the Jakarta suburb died. The joke's on us folks, and everyone here knows it.
Osterholm next said, "No one can predict if, when, or where the influenza virus will break out." He then said this virus will (most probably?) start in Asia. He termed the area, "the Asian roulette table". My notes say Mike next said, "...at present nothing appears to stop it."
Mike's Definition of Phase 6 Pandemic: "The first evidence of a pandemic will be sustained third generation infection."
[GR: Mike's saying that when the Karo-type cluster starts again and sustains into that third generation (the dad/uncle), then that's the "E" Ticket, the beginning of imo the rockiest ride of our lives.]
Mike still thinks the infection is now bird to human but for Karo type cases, the John Deere's trying to start up. IMO, there's not a person here who doesn't think the samething. It's at least reassuring that TPTB are fully conscious of what's happening out there in Asialand; they see what's happening and that's why WHO is anxious and very bold in its statements. Mike made no big deal, not even a mention, over the fact that right now there is no cluster recognized as occurring. IMO I for one used to think I needed and deserved a linear expansion of the flu, 1 2 4 16, whatever... But now, we have all seen that the virus is appearing in fits and spurts, like Mike's Deere tractor start up effort, as if the virus is fiddling with the sparkplugs and timer to "get the mixture just right."
Mike challenged the recent Wall St Journal article which listed the advancements in the production of vaccine. "We are many years off from a modern influenza vaccine which has production capacity for the whole world." I may have gotten this a bit wrong, but he considered the WSJ article to be another feel good deception foisted by the reportorialists among us. He showed a slide, 300 million doses of 15 umg doses per year; we know this fact very well and we know what this means, even if the vax plants producing those were able to switch in an instant to PI vax.
He said there are 35 current H5N1 candidate vaxes which are still years away from FDA approval. He says it takes 3 to 5 years to get FDA approval to build a vax plant!
[GR: refrain of Osterholm's famous line, "We're screwed." Sadly, Mike didn't offer it up last night, unlike entertainment stars who never miss a chance to utter their iterations ad nauseum.]
His 2005 co-authored? Foreign Affairs article called for many efforts to be undertaken by the US government. He said "Five percent of what I wanted was done." Mike said he has had one or more US Congressmen say to him, "You public health people are always whining for money for yet your latest projects." We all know that the president's office asked for $8 billion and got $3 billion [GR: of which right now IBM and Florida are trying to take $500 million for a computer and some geeks to literally repeat in part the MIDAS study, leaving chump change for the event planning itself....color me "idiot".]
Mike mentioned but not by name Senator Doctor Bill Frist who called for a Manhattan Project, but he too has failed to assure even the majority of the $8 billion requested. [Again, we can hear Mike say to himself, "We're screwed."]
Before we go further, there were 100 people in attendance at this meeting, 8 chairs at a round table. RobT and I represented 2 out of that 100. That's pretty kewl. I sat next to the reporter from the Ventura Star Press. He knew, I surmised, little to nothing. I didn't choose to talk with him, but instead to focus afterwards on lobbying the rep from the large oil producer how essential it is to assure loyalty of employees, simply as a protective proactive step to avoid head hunters from pulling their talent away after a severe pandemic which guts a significant portion of the workforce. The rep liked that idea and saw it as useful when engaging with the senior officer who's seriously at such odds with what everyone here perceives as the needs of our society. This person was no slouch; they knew very well much of what I knew; they're part of the international conglomerate who itself is projecting costs of protecting their employees. I mentioned the need to protect the employee's families, their pets (who for single people are often as dear as any family member), and their extended families, offering carrots of knowledge and PPE and food supplies during the pandemic as ways to attract the workers to do what they've been contracted to do, work in the oilfields. [You folks don't know me; I owned oilwells in California in the past in the midst of a flood field and I'll vouchsafe that they need electricity and they need constant, periodic checking and rarely but routinely, servicing; that servicing involves oilrig operators and hands; those men at the wellheads work within inches of each other for hours on end and typically day after day, stripping the well, doing the work, and resetting the pump, rods and tubing. Surface piping is rarely an issue. It's at the wellhead that most work takes place for fieldhands, and in the office where much work is done by field engineers, accountants, and crew managers. This rep did say they were looking at how to move some of the work into telecommute status; but the fieldhands are essential and must be exposed to one another if we are to maintain current production during a pandemic. If foreign oil stops flowing due to higher mortality for the many obvious reasons, we'll need domestic production to stay online.
Here's the "shocker" as Osterholm said what I said recently (RobT, plz correct me if wrong). Osterholm thinks this virus H5N1 will become aerosol transmitted. He did not explain why. He gave an example that he could not just with water droplets but via aerosol transmission infect the people at the back of the room.
[GR: this is my impression of what he said; I admit I was distracted prior to hearing the word "aerosol" at which point my ears opened wide, but by then, I had missed the first part of his sentence and assume this is what he was saying as he was referencing aerosol spread to the back of the room.]
The current Transfusion threads:
Basically Osterholm thinks it's silly, not because of the concept about which he said nothing, but because he said, "Transfusion methods are JIT. Transfusion medicine will collapse over night."
Tamiflu: Osterholm believes Tamiflu is "of no use 2 days after infection". [GR: yes, I know this can be parsed and is vague, but Mike sees Tamiflu as useful for prophylaxis. He recognizes the logic of taking Tamiflu to avoid getting sick, and he sees, imo, the silliness of first world societies thinking they can continue to operate by treating with Tamiflu or even by dosing the front-line workers with Tamiflu to keep them healthy for 6 to 8 weeks.]
Mike did not mention the fact that Tamiflu has shown itself in Ginting quickly circumvented by H5N1. He also did not mention that his family had a supply of it. Last February, he said his family had Tamiflu. At that time, he was still flirting with the idea that he would work and they all would be safe due to Tamiflu in their possession. Now, 7 months later, Mike has decided that it's too great a gamble for him to return to the family home at all during the pandemic. This is "wake up" news to everyone here. This man has become either more paranoid or has applied current research which validates Dan Defoe's observations 250 years ago. Dan Defoe spoke to us in his book and he was clear as a bell in his stated intention, to talk to the future via his novel, to tell us what he saw and his elders witnessed and experienced when they encountered a "plague".
My next posting will be a hodge pot of miscellaneous statements and facts on Mike's slides.
Thx to each of you who posted your appreciation of this news. I'm beyond pleased, too, to help expand the envelope of knowledge about what we all (but for one it appears) believe to threaten society as we know it. I think we're all fortunate to have the internet at our disposal...Mike wasn't touting its ability to stay up during this upcoming event. So, as service to yourselves, may I suggest Fredness' postings at FW and your downloading at least electronic info on what to do during pandemic so if you lose the internet but have electricity, you can access relevant prep and factual info?
Miscellaneous Comments / Observations by Mike Osterholm at World Affairs Council of Ventura County meeting, Sept 20, 2006.
Check out the CIDRAP website.
Plan Now, Not Tomorrow.
Develop a Crisis Plan.
Develop a Communications Plan. Do not expect the cell phone system to continue unaffected. Identify alternative ways of communicating.
[GR: I've both landlines and a cellphone, and internet via radio transmission as well as via landline. I figure it's cheap insurance.]
This will be "a 12 - 18 month blizzard."
30-60% of world will be infected
1.6 billion deaths based on current CFR. Mike doesn't think this will happen. However, I did 2 years ago when a Russian virologist said this was a real risk, when Niman said this was a real risk and when I concluded, along with you know who you are as well, here, that this was a real risk. It was my "wake up" call.
It was clear this happened in the past, many times.
(An aside...where I live there's a 100,000 acre wildfire burning right now, about 8 miles away, to the NE. Tonite, the fire dept held a meeting for the County. They said, we've put in a fire break and we hope to hold the fire. But starting tomorrow, nature may unleash 60 to 90 mph winds for up to 3 days. We think you need to be "aware". My reaction, as I'm leaving town on biz? Tomorrow, I'll rent a big truck and hire day labor and pack out everything I consider irreplaceable and valuable; and then I'll move that truck to a safe area for the time I'm gone, the full time of the identified risk. My cost is inconsequential, maybe a few hundred dollars, compared to the loss of any small pile of items I'm about to remove from the home. My alternative is to assume risk. My choice is zero risk, and nearly total indifference to loss. Insurance will cover what's left. I'll be inconvenienced if this place burns; but it will not threaten a thing which I consider to be most valuable. Like with bird flu, I get the message, and that message is that this is a natural event over which humans can make a valiant effort to save what they can save from destruction. Beyond that valiant effort, it's absolutely essential for me to take care of myself. With AI/PI/BF/H5N1, I show the same respect that I do to this wildfire. Others may do as they wish; I pledge to myself and I honor myself enought that I will do all I can so I do not get caught as victim.
Last night, Mike had something to say about this. He said, "Hope and despair are not strategies. Business continuity planning is not optional...[G]overnments will have limited resources to respond "everywhere" to everything for [the duration of the event --in the case of H5N1, 12-18 months].
He opened and closed on the same note, "We'll get through it just like every pandemic in our history."
GR: Thank you, Michael Osterholm.
IMO, Mike said it best when he repeated the John Deere tractor start-up story. It's the same story as I"ve posted now years ago, the one of people tossing lit matches at a bonfire of logs which are surrounded by explosive fatwood sticks. Most won't light the fatwood. Some will. Some fatwood fire intensely and will die out. And finally, varoom, the fatwood will ignite fully and set on fire the tinder-dry logs, as well as other fatwood sticks crossing the one already lit.
The fact that GSGS doesn't see cluster cases TODAY means nothing imo, absolutely nothing. GSGS is applying a human desire, an imperative demand, that the virus infections be presented linearly, measureably, calculably. That's hogWHO. It's BS.
Do appreciate that I too expected that about 2 years ago. I saw postings of many here who believed the same way. Many of those have also modified their expectation and become more like Mike, "we just don't know".
It's a matter imo of looking at patterns. When I was in the convocation student introduction, with the rest of the 100 or so souls then starting the first year of Law School at Stanford, the then Dean, Bayliss Manning, described the task of the students as a challenge, to learn to "telescope and microscope" on the issues at hand, and to be aware that the issues are much more complex than at first glance. The law students at Stanford did not study the law to prepare to pass the bar examination; they and I were trained on how to focus and stay out of focus, to see a broad field of vision and yet to examine closely minutia, independently and interconnectedly, in a search to find a defensible pattern of logic for the issue at hand. It was for me not a novel way to see reality, but instead was the first time the way I thought was officially verbalized and held out as legitimate.
Osterholm I believe has shown his ability to do this repeatedly. Do appreciate that I yet don't trust him fully as I've seen sophists spout and dazzle many times in my life and I yet distrust his facile and fast paced command of the concepts and the language with which to present them.
Osterholm I believe has changed (of course as he's thinking the way I did in the past when I first assessed this issue, I now blushingly, immodestly concur with his thinking as it now tracking mine, and due to his superior knowledge of, and access to information on this topic, I also concur with those aspects of what he says which agree with my own conclusions).
He now sees "key mutations" taking place rapidly and across (betwixt and between) huge numbers of avian hosts. This is different from his "point mutations" he posted on his slide in February. He then did not at the Feb Biz Continuity conference in Minneapolis even come close to emphasizing the torrent of key mutations which are now taking place. [All here know I disagree with him as I see these as does Niman, as recombinations; yet the effect is the same, a torrent of polymorphic (is there such a word?) changes occurring for reasons obvious to virologists and which will eventually light the firewood / start the tractor.] For him, imo, this is his main reason for his in-reality reactions and change of personal familial protective strategy.
That Osterholm has made the same decision I thought was the only safe decision, irrespective of the mental, emotional hardship it entails, preventative sequestration for his wife and 2 of his 4? children, tells me that he believes exactly as he says, "Plan Now, Not Later." His prior plan did not include this radical step towards the defense of his family.
He recognized that cases have more than doubled during the past 9 months when measured year to year, and he applies last year's history, the norm for human flu and possibly for H5N1, to conjecture what is about to occur, multiply more human cases, which portend more "3rd Generation" clusters.
His definition of what WHO calls Phase 6 pandemic is, "First evidence of of a pandemic will be sustained transmission [in the] 3rd Generation". Mike's added a simple litmus test, the first fatwood flame which has set the logs afire. Mike requires nothing more. Neither do I. He's not seeking verifications, measurements, angles...nothing; he's seeking nothing more than what I just quoted. And, he's the most pre-eminent epidemiologist in the USA who focuses on this area of our mutual interest.
I don't think we need to expect any development in any location or region. But when we see the event, we should be able to immediately discern if it fits telescopically into our model of H5N1 infection with possible transmission via the 3rd Generation. It is here that I disagree so strongly with GSGS. I don't give a rats feather what the exact science is. I understand the big picture. I look at the "way" the disease presents itself and, based on all the prior knowledge posted here and what I've decided is important, yet another law school jargon phrase pops to mind, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." I just don't think it necessary for my purposes, protective sequestration, to know more than enough to determine two of the three criteria stated immediately preceding this sentence. I'm not involved in a scientific debate with GSGS, and those who are scientists have way too often shown his logic to be less than bankable.
However, as it's an opportunity to look at what changes of mind there are in Osterholm over the past 7-8 months, I believe that to be constructive.
Finally, while glancing over this topic in his speech on Wednesday night last, he mentioned business continuity this time with a sense to me of profound frustration and much lowered expectation. He said that only 5% of what he had hoped in his 2005 Foreign Affairs article had been approved by Congress. For Mike, I believe this is a stinging wake up call. For me, it's a catastrophic and immeasureably large failure of the Republican Party, in control of both Houses, to the citizens of the USA. Back in February, he was quite hopeful that business would be able to prepare for the pandemic; now, as he says, I believe his guiding principle is his decent Irish Catholic, Iowan heartland-America heirarchy of values and loyalties which is embodied in what we could say is CIDRAP's banner, "To do nothing is unacceptable...to promise protection is unethical."
To GSGS, Mike's banner is what drove me to travel and allocate time/money back in February. Mike at that meeting I thought "didn't get it", that irrespective of this situation about to be so tragic, imo then cataclysmicaly tragic, to do nothing is unacceptable (and this being based on a core commitment, private, personal, and profound). IMO, Mike's change and therefore mine to him, is that he "gets it" now.
GR, again thank you very much to have dare, to have share with such eloquence and precisions Michael comments.
And thank you again to rise up Daniel Defoe Wisdom in his book, The Year of the Plague', free on line (See Defoë Café)
Yes volontary sequestration has became a solution for many of us.
I am happy about his daring to share a realistic observations concerning Business Continuity.
Thank you to you to have so clearly sketch the future of energy in a pandemic.
But mostly thank you for your Perseverance and Constance.
Snowy
Also, I am encouraged by your conversion to fully engage society as a method to cope with the pandemic. I applaud your recent actions.
There are many who without "fanfare", publicity or a blog, work tirelessly behind the scenes to make a difference. These are the "unsung" humanitarians that are the backbone of the positive efforts worldwide to lessen morbidity and mortality.
I am grateful to all of the individuals who are working to contribute in their neighborhoods, communities, and countries.
Online Book (HTML) (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/d/defoe/daniel/d31j/)
Computer Generated Audio Book (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9683)
I am beginning to firmly believe that may be the first line of defense and survival.
i am a bit disheartened at the lack of major movement in this direction.
I understand the fear of coming out. We both have been there.
A major effort is needed and "we" are the only ones who can lead the way. Others will follow.
You, Anne, Snowy have set a great example. Your pushing and prodding me has helped me move to a new reality.
I've been in a lull. Thank you for the kick in the butt :eek:
In Mike's case we need to watch both what he says and what he does!
.
However, the genetic diversity, coupled with the increasing targets for more recombination, provide the additional detail on why the pandemic is inevitable. The failure to even identify the source of the human H5N1 infections in Indonesia makes it clear that H5N1 knows what it is doing, while governements do not know (and have no clue).
C R aka Joe Thornton
With your "shouting" the truth... the inevitable... perhaps some will understand the danger before us.
Lets take this knowledge and do something beyond "saving our own butts"... follow in Dr. Mike's footsteps and become the beacons of light for the unaware masses.
Hey GR - wanna go on tour?
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