Parademic Notes Week Ending 160918

#(160918)

1 AFFF; 2 Ebola Continues; 3 Flu Watching; 4 Zika; 5 Science News Unreliable; 6 BioPolitics; 7 Medicine and Religion; 8 Sup3erfund Sites; 9 Big Sugar; 10 Personality ≠ Community; 11 Famine and Pandemic.

-1. Part of the nature of Parademic the website is that it is incomplete, a jotting down of ideas that overtime become fully developed. One such was applying the Freeze, assess situation, avoid being noticed; Flight, get away, neutralize others advantages; Fight, no choice or realization one can likely win (FFF), the base visceral biological motives of behavior. There was a glaring lack of something in FFF, but identifying what it was took some time. As often the case it was obvious once realized. Awareness. FFF cannot activate if one does not sense in someway that there is a potential threat. Invisible, slow, circulative biothreats hard to discern and interpret as the threat, and even then indirectly. ¶ There are degree of awareness. In a safe environment one can let one’s guard and awareness down. Some have perhaps been safe for so long that they have a false sense of security and are unpracticed at activating awareness of a threat, or falsely perceives or interprets as a threat what is not. When someone with atrophied awareness is confronted with a threat, that can significantly delay FFF, and other effective behavior, or be so confuse individual that they put themselves in more danger. ¶ There can also be hyper awareness (PTSD), where one has been in danger so long, or intensely, or were protected from danger so long that they are unable to modulate awareness when in a risk environment, much less tune it down after the risk is lowered. ¶ One shouldalso consider the possibility of Fake, which is a different application of AFFF. To appear as a threat to be avoided when one is not;  to bluster ones way out of FFF, but activate the others FFF; Or to not appear as a threat when one actually has (or for those threats that do not have intention or are unnoticed) harmful intent. [Cartoon]

-2. One reason why defining the end and beginning of a biodisaster is difficult. Ebola Virus Lingers Longer than Scientists Thought, Ebola Virus Can Remain in Semen Longer Than Thought. This will strengthen the persistence of Ebola stigma, even for those who never had Ebola, but where “there”. ¶ The social stigma and consequence can last much longer. Ebola Nurse Pauline Cafferkey 'Concealed Temperature', Ebola Nurse Pauline Cafferkey to Face Misconduct Allegations, UK Nurse Who Contracted Ebola Faces Disciplinary Hearing, Ebola Nurse Pauline Cafferkey Was 'Not Dishonest', Disciplinary Hearing Told. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, which alleges she allowed a wrong temperature to be recorded at Heathrow Airport after returning from Africa, has decided she has no case to answer over a dishonesty charge because her judgement may have been impaired by the illness. Ebola Nurse Pauline Cafferkey Returns to 'Chaotic' Scenes at Heathrow screening centre which was unprepared for the volume of medics returning. Everyone’s judgement is going to be impaired during a biodisaster, assuming it was not impaired before, if for no other reason that errors and lack in information, panic, fear, being overwhelmed. This will also be used to justify poor decisions made concerning people who returned from “there” The Renegade Nurse. ¶ Ebola Nurse Pauline Cafferkey Cleared of Misconduct. A few questions. Was this a staged event to get a definitive legal ruling, was this a case of blaming the victim, was the decision based more on the possibility that striking off would cause more harm than not doing so.

          -“The prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully”. – Samuel Johnson, who never personally was faced with prospect of being hanged, and therefore is not direct knowledge but on opinion that is widely accepted. This was written to help defend another individual who was sentenced to hanging.

           -“They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged”. – Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

-3. New Analysis Explores the Geographical Origins of the Flu. A computer model developed by shows that small increases in transmission rates of the seasonal influenza can lead to rapid evolution of new strains that spread globally through human populations. The results reinforce the idea that surveillance for developing new, seasonal vaccines should be focused on areas of east, south and southeast Asia where population size and community dynamics can increase transmission of endemic strains of the flu. When I was the Pandemic Planner for Region E several people questioned why I was watching flu progress in Asia. Interestingly it seems they did not believe me that “disease does not respect borders” and that “most influenza originated in Asia. That was another reason for providing a basic information weekly newsletter. [Meme]

↕4. Pregnant Women Anxious as Florida’s Zika Test Results Take Weeks. So many pregnant women have taken advantage of Florida’s offer of free Zika testing that state laboratories have been unable to keep pace, doctors and patients say, leading to long delays for women anxious to know whether the virus has passed to their fetuses. ¶ The delays began with a well intentioned and much applauded offer. On Aug. 3, Gov. Rick Scott announced that the state would provide the costly Zika tests to all pregnant women, a move intended to quell fears and allow low income or uninsured women to be tested. Hopefully the wrong lesson will not be learned, that one should not offer testing and health care that can overwhelm the system. The correct lesson is that if one is going to offer something (food, water, shelter, information, care) that what makes sure one has the resources to meet the need, or a means to ration that if viewed as fair and equitable. ¶ As Aerial Spraying Continues In Miami’s Zika Fight, Effectiveness Up In Air, Tempers Flare as Public Protests Spraying for Zika Mosquitoes in South Beach, In Zika Stricken Miami, Aerial inePesticide Spray Adds to Fears, Outcry Erupts Over Miami Beach’s Pesticide Spraying to Curb Zika, A Mosquito Killer, Unwelcome to Many.  Florida Expands Zika Zone in Miami Beach after Five New Cases. Florida Gets Help to Deal With Backlog of Zika Tests. 160911-4D, 160904-4.3A, 160828-4.1A, -45, 160821-4.4A, 160821-7B, 160501-4.4↓.

            -A. West Nile to Zika: How One Virus Helped New York City Prepare for Another. No one told the Aedes mosquito that New York is the city that never sleeps. The type of mosquito that can spread Zika virus is most active during the day and hides at night when our city’s mosquito control efforts are in full swing, meaning that our scientists had to find a way to reach it during pre-dawn hours. The solution. Wake it up, force it to take flight, and then kill it. The last sentence is not what one would expect to be used in a CDC blog. This may be an artifact from it being posted by a New Yorker. [Photo]

            -4.1. We do have relatively recent historical data on what will happen as Zika babies grow up. Can Forgotten Rubella Children of the ’60s Hold Clue for Zika Babies. One side of the bedroom is an explosion of pink, from the hair accessories and dangling trinkets to the stuffed animals and laundry hamper. The other, starting with the fuzzy pillows and puffy comforter, is an ode to purple. ¶ Kim is the pink aficionado in this well kept townhome in Brooklyn. She’s 51 and believes in Santa. Her roommate, Darvena, is the same age; they’ve lived together for about 45 years. ¶ What bound these women together so long ago was an illness that struck while they were in their mothers’ wombs. It robbed them of their hearing and much of their vision, and it damaged their brains. What Doctors Learned from 42 Infants with Microcephaly. As they grow, they get worse, and we would expect that they will continue to fall further behind. What Will Life Be like for Brazil’s Generation of Zika Babies. There is a visceral struggle here. The natural instinct to protect and nurture infants, and the urge to commit infanticide of malformedinfants that lack physical cues that they are human. [Photo, Photo, Photo, Photo]

            -4.2. Can Congress Stop the Puerto Rican Zika Outbreak. It’s been less than a year since the first reported case of Zika in Puerto Rico, but doctors in the territory are already at their breaking points. Zika infections themselves are not terribly taxing to health care systems – symptoms usually resemble those of a cold or flu, if patients exhibit them at all – but the potential complications can stagger even well funded health systems. Treatment for microcephalic infants and adults that develop neurological complications can cost millions per patient. The oft repeated saving money tends to cost more than what was saved. Even so could sufficient money prevented this situation. Zika Virus: Ethics Preparedness for Old and New Challenges.

            -4.3. CDC Deploys New Rapid Response Teams to Fight Zika. It was a call that public health officials were dreading, but for which they had prepared. An elderly man in Salt Lake City died after contracting the Zika virus, the 1st fatality from the disease in the continental US. His son, who had been a caregiver, also had become sick, but health officials did not know how. Anomalies or outliers like this can be a meaningless distraction, or may provide a clue to a fuller insight. MMWR: Investigation Into the `Unique' Utah Zika Case.

            4.4. Though one can find out how members of congress voted, Roll Call Votes, there are other means to be anonymous. No One Knows Who Is Blocking US Funding for Zika Treatment, – As oft happens over time the article will be given a new title The Hunt to Find the Lawmaker Blocking the Zika Funding Bill). Among the things Congress has managed to not do this year is allocate money for responding to the mosquito borne, birth defect causing disease Zika. ¶ Republicans added a rider to the bill that would make the Puerto Rican division of Planned Parenthood, Profamilias, ineligible to get the money. Democrats see that language as a poison pill. Cue the legislative deadlock. ¶ On the bright side, that means that there’s someone to blame for this mess: whoever added the rider to the bill. No one in Congress will say who that person is. Memo to Congress: Bickering Won't Cure Zika. Dr. Oz on the Zika Virus Funding Stalemate in Congress (Video). The Zika Virus Lie and Cover up for Monsanto (Video). U.S. Congress to Advance Zika Funding Bill: Sen. McConnell.

                        -4.4.1. Scott Pulls Another $10 Million from State Treasury to Fight Zika Virus in Florida, just days after returning from Washington with no deal on congressional funds. The additional money approved by Scott will go toward mosquito abatement and personnel training, lab work and the purchase of Zika virus prevention kits from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not getting any money was the expected result. Neither party in congress can give more money to Florida, one side has denied everyone help so they can’t make an exception, while the other side can’t support a poison pill state, Florida Governor Signs Law Ending Funding to Clinics Providing Abortions. This also partially replaces funding what was previously cut. 160828-4↓.

             -“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best”. –  Otto von Bismarck, national health care pragmatist

            -4.5. Is Mayaro another one to add to West Nile, Chikungunya 130106-16↓, Dengue 121223-25↓, Zika, that have or are reaching North America and Europe, and will mosquito control get more attention and funds. Probably not, advanced warning and a consistent pattern of new diseases arriving does not seem to persuasive. New Mosquito Borne Disease Detected in Haiti. A patient in Haiti has a serious mosquito borne illness that has never before been reported in the Caribbean nation. Mayaro Virus Disease: an Emerging Mosquito Borne Zoonosis in Tropical South America (1999). The Spreading Politics of Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya.

            -4.6. Uncertainty and the Zika Virus: Why Scientists Need to Think like Poets. The ability to exist comfortably amidst uncertainty and doubt. At first, this attribute seems like it would be far more useful to the poet than to the scientist or health professional. Poets have the luxury of not having to draw any particular conclusions from the phenomena they observe; they need only construct beautiful phrases. Health professionals, on the other hand, are faced with matters of life and death — diseases to be cured, outbreaks to be contained, pain in urgent need of alleviation. They may not remain wide eyed observers. They must act. ¶ We need to first recognize that ambiguity is inevitable. It is not an anomaly; it is the norm. Accepting this allows us to recalibrate our expectations, and move forward. ¶ We must also learn to separate bona fide ignorance from manufactured ambiguity. Often, powerful special interests will work to generate doubt about the state of the science around a particular issue when, in fact, none exists.

-5. Have addressed that science news tends to be too soon, over generalized and claim too much.  Five Ways to Tackle the Reproducibility Crisis in Biomedical Research. Daniel Drucker's unofficial laboratory slogan is "I'd rather be third and right, than first and wrong." As a clinician-scientist who has spent 30 years developing new drugs for diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, and obesity, he has seen high profile journal article after article proclaim the beginning of the end for these diseases, only for the findings to never be discussed again. This isn't dishonesty or fraud, he says, but the irreproducibility of these amazing discoveries reflects a culture that supports invalidated materials, unreported negative data, and authors overgeneralizing their results. Never Waste a Good Crisis: Confronting Reproducibility in Translational Research. How to Be a Savvy Science Reader. One can use these when evaluating the validity of a clinical or quack study:

1. Apply Rules for Clinical Trials to Preclinical Research. Are negative results included.
2. Test Hypotheses in More Than One Animal Model, and more that one test.
3. Hold Reproducibility Symposia. Formal means to improve research practices.
4. Develop Reproducibility Reporting. Track if previous work has been reproducible.
5. Improve Methods Reporting. How did one reach the conclusion and results.

            -5.1. This can also be adapted to evaluation of plans. It is already known that most Emergency plans don’t work, 17 Mistakes Made in Emergency Plans, U.S. Needs Smarter Disaster Planning, Written Statement of Craig Fugate, Outdated FEMA Flood Maps Don't Account for Climate Change, Putting Shots in the Locker. The corrections however seem to consist more of buzz words, reframing and “adaptive planning” – since the plan will fail make it so it can be adapted to the situation, except lets not rehearse plan failure, don’t bother to read and improve the plan, get rid of those who question it, don’t update data, and follow the proper procedures anyway. ¶ The stance of Parademic is that failed plans don’t plan for people, focusing on what people should do, not what they will do, not considering that the general public has a different narrative than the Emergency Plan (10↓). ¶ There is also evidence of whymessages from quacks, and “experts” persist. 'Sleeper Effect' Accounts for Durability of Weak Messages from Credible Sources. The least convincing arguments can reverberate in the public consciousness over time – provided they're delivered by a “credible” source.

            -A. Which leads to another important point. As the curator of Parademic I am taking it on faith that I am not a quack. On the other hand because of being limited to open sources and not having a team to provide criticism I am not an expert either. Any individual who claims they are an expert in an disaster management is incorrect in their self assessment. Moreover I am looking for material that is not a category in media and its hard to be Finding Things in Complex Environments. Again this is part of the reason for the stub notes style used, to give practice at finding information. And consider that this is easier than the real world, all the notes are related and grouped.

            5.2. To the list in add “endorsement or comment by one of the original authors of the reported study”, and I am happy to report my first correction from a source 160911-9A.  Dr Larson the lead of the original study sent me a copy of State of Vaccine Confidence 2016: Global Insights Through a 67 Country Survey, which provides more complete information and statistics by country. ¶ She also posted the article at the (#Website) Vaccine Confidence Project. That implies that she does not disagree with what was written, though I have no idea of what her professional opinion is. ¶ My own take is that it dramatized a specific bit of data. The article did not mention the don’t know (9%) if vaccine is safe in France brought the figure up to 50%. One can assume that those who tend to disagree (27%) and strongly disagree (14%) don’t vaccinate or don’t use the recommended vaccine schedule. Strongly Agree (9%) can be assumed to vaccinate and lain tend to agree (41%), may also not use the recommended vaccine schedule or avoid certain vaccines. ¶ Again note the red (danger, bad) grey (area, ambiguous) and green (safe, good). ¶ There is also the question of what does in means with the relatively high ratings of importance, effective and religion under green, and the relatively low red. ¶ What if grey and light green result in the same in behavior. ¶ I am not sophisticated enough with Zipf’s statistics to do the calculations but reviewing the charts does appear to have Zipf distributions, and presumably outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease will follow the same principle of least effort. It is already been observed that pharmaceutical manufacture follows Vaccines, Drugs, and Zipf Distributions. In parademic terminology this is expressed as satisfied, good enough, sufficient, pandemic fatigue, media attention, effort ends, cost effective, risk assessment, denial, anger, Leveling, safe default decision/choice, diverting effort, rumor Plum Island: Home to High Security Lab and Source of Rumors, conspiracy theory, magical thinking*, persistent adherence to procedure though it is failing, ideation, status quo. [Cartoon]

           -“In simple terms the Principle of Least effort means, that a person in solving his immediate problems will view these against the background of his probably future problems, as estimated by himself. Moreover he will strive to solve his problems in such a way as to minimize the total work that he must expend in solving both is immediate problems, and his probable future problems. That in turn means that the person will strive to minimize the probable average rate of his work expenditure (over time). And is so doing he will be minimizing his effort.” – George Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology, Introduction and Orientation, 3^rd Paragraph

            -* Magical Thinking which is common in conspiracy theory, anti-GMO, health foods, and anti-vax Conflicts of Interest among Vaccine Advocates: The Law of Contagion, Sanderson's First Law, which provides three rules to fiction writers on how to write about magic**. Parademic has referred to Fraser’s, Principles of Magic several times over the years.

            -** 1 An author's ability to solve conflict (cognitive dissonance) with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic - someone full accepting the worldview of whatever is better able to rationalize and dismiss evidence against. 2 Limitations are more important than powers - don’t attack what science can do, but what it can’t, such as explain everything, predict everything, defend against that which cannot be tested. 3 Expand what you already have before you add something new - and anti-vax has not added anything new in 300 years.

            -5.3. This does not mean that simplification is always bad, it helps to eventually understand a topic, but can in the meantime misinform especially if one does not go beyond a basic knowledge. Epic Climate Cartoon Goes Viral, but it Has One Key Problem. From anthrax outbreaks in thawing permafrost 160807-7.3↓, to rice farms flooded with salty water, climate change seems to play a bigger and bigger role in global health each year. But sometimes it can be hard to grasp what all the numbers and stats mean. For instance, when scientists say Earth's average surface temperature has gone up about 1 degree Celsius over the past 150 years or so, what does that really mean. Yes, the Climate Has Always Changed. This Comic Shows Why That’s No Comfort, Two Charts Show Carbon Pollution Will End the Era of Stable Climate. Only One Is Funny. Though unlikely to be a fortiori (a conclusion for which there is stronger evidence than for a previously accepted one) that will sway climate deniers, but one that make those who accept the fact more certain. Oddly this is partly by giving the longer time scale, and by pointing out the possibility that the longer time scale can still support climate denial, makes it a stronger argument.

            -5.4. ∩ Rise of the Internet Has Reduced Voter Turnout. The internet has transformed the way in which voters access and receive political information. It has allowed politicians to directly communicate their message to voters, circumventing the mainstream media which would traditionally filter information. This overwhelming of information is more the result of  information paralysis How to Overcome the 'Analysis Paralysis' of Decision Making of which one behavioral expression is not voting - but that is not the only reason to not vote. All information is filtered and manipulated (SLA), sometimes to be deceitful, other times to give clarity. This is a weakness of Parademic. The information goes though a filter of the original observation and perception, then the report of the interpretation, then the winnowing and channeling of the Internet, to my own fragmentary note like reporting (to mimic the onslaught of information flow to analysts and decision makers when a biodisaster accelerates). This is overcome with familiarity and experience with the information, which takes time to accumulate, and continual practice of the cognitive skills involved with the .

            -5.5. Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) Corner [Logo] of CDC Emergency Partners Newsletter - September 16, 2016. Culture and Communication. Culture is among the most complex communication issues to manage during a crisis. Different cultural factors affect communication during a crisis:

• Languages spoken
• Risk perception
• Trusted sources of information
• Traditional family roles and relationships
• Rituals for grieving and death
• Acceptable forms of communication

¶ The more you know about a particular cultural group, the greater the chance your communication will be effective. ¶ There’s little time to acquire detailed cultural knowledge during a crisis. You may need to turn to a cultural agent who can help you understand how a particular culture will view an issue. Be aware that cultures are not always unified. It may be challenging to find a cultural agent who is accepted by all. It is important to build ties to various ethnic and cultural communities before a crisis occurs.

-6. The US is not the only place where politics trumps* public health. India: Situation Worsens, Over 12,000 Chikungunya Cases Reported Across Country. 10 Chikungunya Deaths In Delhi, AAP Says 'Let's Rise Above Politics'. What Is Chikungunya and Why Is India Worried about it. Delhi Govt Starts Process to Declare Chikungunya Dangerous. Five More Deaths Take Chikungunya Toll to 18, a indicator of a health system that is being overwhelmed is that case and mortality numbers become less accurate, my own count is 21 deaths at this time, which is a far lower number than usual before numbers become meaningless. Another indicator is when various departments and level of government are inconsistent in their messsages. Delhi Government Notifies Chikungunya as a 'Deadly' Disease, a day after Delhi's Health Minister announced that Chikungunya cannot cause death,  the Delhi government notified Chikungunya as a 'deadly' disease.

               *There is a possibility that the word trump [Cartoon, Cartoon, Cartoon, Cartoon, Cartoon] has acquired additional meaning with the 2016 election.

            -6.1. Arguing with Justice: Brexit and Biomedicine. The most toxic claims came from those who appealed to a kind of natural right, couched in English nationalism, about who belonged in the UK ¶ by mobilising the language and motif of social injustice to argue against the EU. ¶ At this intersection between Brexit, science and health, it comes clearly into relief that biomedicine is about much more than patients and clinicians, or research participants and investigators. It is about the legal and institutional frameworks that shape our daily lives and our access to healthcare and medicines. Such issues of inclusion, health and wellbeing are matters of justice. ¶ Brexit is a heredity redux—an explicit revival of imperial attention to biological and genealogical propriety, marked by the dilation of hierarchy as ordering mechanism. An overt return to much older and never fully forgotten nationalist, biological and xenophobic sentiments about who belongs and is entitled to receive provisions of justice, like health care and access to medicines. This phenomena of return to a previous golden age (which never existed) is seen world wide, and expressed in slogans [Poster, Poster, Poster, Photo] . Instead of a global movement it is small nationalist/ethnic/religious/class movements that somehow see themselves as superior but under the thumb of inferiors, and returning to the good old days when others were under their thumb. Glory Days, Good Old Ways, Nostalgia Filter, “Tito Time,” A Nation’s Idealized Past: Collective Memory and Cultural Nostalgia through the Memorialization of Charismatic Leaders, Were the Good Old Days That Good.

-7. Nonsecular Medical Anthropology. A nonsecular medical anthropology insists on the ways medicine and science have constituted ‘the secular’ itself through the ‘secular self’, how medical knowing has been used to craft the secular political subject. Too often in social theory “religion gets safely tucked away, restricted theoretically to ‘meaning’ rather than power”. The authors of the six articles in this special issue ‘untuck’ religiosity from within the norms and numbers of medicine itself, and examine how ‘secular’ medicine has relied on religious traditions to produce political secularity. These articles demonstrate that ‘secular’ medicine relies on religious others whose exclusion bespeaks latent religious commitments of citizenship in the modern political realm of health.

            -A. In most of history religion and medicine overlapped, in fact still do, but the idea that religion and science don’t overlap this has been downplayed. If one looks at the Geneva Convention for the protection and neutrality of religious and medical facilities and persons, one will note they are very similar. This has created the soft target and hijack problem, where attackers will strike both or hide within, while these personnel and facilities have a dilemma of protecting their neutrality to avoid attack. Summary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Their Additional Protocols

-8. Though a known threat to health this is one that largely does not get media coverage, and if so usually not from the perspective of the biodisaster, Erin Brockovich. EPA Adds Sites to National Priorities List to Reduce Risk to Public Health and Environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is adding ten and proposing to add eight more hazardous waste sites to the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL). EPA adds sites to the NPL when mismanagement of contamination from a variety of sources – including manufacturing, mining, battery recycling, and dry cleaning – threatens public health and the environment. Colorado Gold Mine Is One of the EPSA’s New Superfund Pollution Sites 150816-44, 150809-35↓.

            -8.1. 100 Objects That Shaped Public Health in Cities. Window screens, spittoons, and the Chevrolet Corvair are part of Johns Hopkins University’s list of objects that changed public health.

-9. Another scandal of conspiracy by an industry that impacts health. This time Big Sugar. How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat. The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead. Sugar Study Draws Attention to Food Industry’s Sour Secret. Food industries have long opened their wallets to snag a piece of the science pie. UCSF Led Study Details Sugar Industry’s Attempt to Shape Science. 10 Natural Alternatives to Sugar: How Healthy Are They Really. Adjusting and Regulating Black Bile and the Nervous Humor. Tobacco Industry Tactics Influential in E/Cigarette Policy [Memein ]. Note that the tactics used are the same as anti-vax, anti-GMO, health foods 'Preserved Farmland:' The New Buzzword in Produce Marketing. Why Supplements Are Just Modern Day Snake Oil (Video). Though a fun and largely correct debunking source this series also has errors. In this episode there is a claim that someone has wheat allergies (Gluten) which is often times untrue 160911-2↓. Sugar Industry Shaped Public Opinion for Decades, Sugar Industry Research.

-10. Is this the 80/20 rule again, 160911-6*↓. Four Basic Personality Types Identified: Pessimistic; Optimistic; Envious and Trusting. 90% of the population can be classified into four basic personality types. However, Envious is the most common, with 30% compared to 20% for each of the other groups. There are several grid systems to identify individual personality types, Personality Grid, Myers-Briggs, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. These are useful heuristic tools and a handy way to quickly access individuals and communicate the assessment, depending on the skill of the assessor, and if one is assessing for the right traits for the specific purpose. These however have more limited value for assessing the personality of a community, though there is a tendency for human groups to exhibit personality traits like the leader of the group. For utility in a disaster however, generalizing group personality or National Character, is so dynamic and the same personality can expressed in too wide of a range to have more than short term value at a given time. What can be said about a group attitude, behavior, reactions, responses, activity will be invalid in just a few hours, and may not be valid when assessing previous community action. One cannot even be sure that the group, organization, faction, community existed in more than name before a disaster, or continued during and after a disaster, as context has changed and will continue to change. How the “Big Five” Personality Traits in Science Can Help You Build a More Effective Team. Is it Selfishness that Prevents Cooperation, what keeps us from having seamless information sharing and logistical systems, and without those plans are useless (5.1↑). [Cartoon, Cartoon, Cartoon, Cartoon]

          -“Beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on”. – Othello, Act 3, Scene Three

-11. It has been stated before that they is a correlation of the mass fatalities of pandemic and famine. This has been noted with the Black Death. 18^th Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. #6 Thornton Abbey: Pestilence and Famine in 14^th Century Lincolnshire page 18. The survey of the monastic complex identified a large sub(surface) rectangular feature containing 48 burials of males, females and children dating to between 1295 and 1400 AD. All individuals were positioned supine, extended in rows with the lower legs and feet of the adults from one row placed between the heads of those in the next. Non adults were interspersed between, and placed upon, larger individuals. Several adjacent burials touched, and there was no evidence of intercutting of burials (that is the opening of a new grave cuts into previous ones), indicating a period of simultaneous burial (i.e. a large pit for a mass burial). ¶ There are two major catastrophic events which may be responsible for this unusual burial, namely the Great Famine of 1315-17, and further years of famine in 1321, 1351 and 1369, and the Black Death, which was firmly progressing across England in 1350.  The presence of Yersinia pestis suggesting Black Death to be at least partially responsible for these interments. This analysis enhances the understanding of medieval attitudes to mass fatality and disease beyond urban centres. [Art Revelation 6:5, Meme]

            -A. Presumably one difference between medieval rural and urban areas was the insistence of burial to still be in sanctified ground in the rural areas, while in urban areas any available spaces were used to mass graves after formal cemeteries were filled. A contemporary mass grave should take into consideration the possibility of reburial in the “proper way” at a future date, implying accurate records of where remains are located and packaging of remains or cremains for future retrieval. Another consideration is somehow consecrating the area for a mass grave that is accepted by all parties of differing faiths. ¶ Tracking Mass Death During the Fall of Rome’s Empire is an example of a collapsing society where we can see competing religion and groups in the treatment of the dead.