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1. Blue Ribbon - Bioterrorism; 2. Avian Flu - S. Korea; 3. Money ≠ Health; 4. Zika; 5. FEMA - Biodisaster; 6. Quarantine problem; 7. Landscape of Biodisaster ; 8. Interesting Science; 9. Quack History; C. Communications.
-1. Tom Ridge and Joseph Lieberman: How Donald Trump Can Protect America from Bioterrorism. When President elect Trump assumes the Oval Office this January, he has a unique opportunity to fulfill his promise to make America safe again – by taking steps to protect the nation from bioterrorism. More than a year ago, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, which we chair, issued 87 recommendations for improving America's biodefenses. They are easily achievable and require little extra funding. But they'd vastly improve our ability to detect, prevent and respond to biological attacks and major outbreaks. Last time a statement made was back in 1999 Trump Reveals Fears of Bioterrorism. 151115-18, 151108-34↓. Biological Emergences: Incremental Progress Not Enough.
-2. South Korea Intensifies Efforts Against Rapidly Spreading H5N6. Despite numerous detections of H5N6 in wild and migratory birds, Japan has managed to limit its impact on their poultry industry to just a few farms. South Korea, on the other hand, continues to struggle with controlling the virus, having culled nearly 10 million birds in the past 30 days. In just the past week (Dec 5th-11th), 58 new farms in 19 cities have tested positive for the virus. As usual North Korea is not providing report. One can assume the same level or higher in the north, except that it is also unknown how many domestic chickens there are, though there are larger areas for wild birds. Why North Korea Is a Safe Haven for Birds.
-2.1. Trying Not to Get Sick. Science Says You're Probably Doing It Wrong. 1 Talking, yelling and even breathing spread the flu and coughing. 2 Surgical masks won’t protect you, but can help spreading to others. 3 You probably won’t get sick from shaking a sick person’s hand, but don’t touch your own face, mouth, nose eyes. 4 You could get a cold from touching something a sick person touched, days before. 5 Forget the extra vitamin C, except as a placebo. 6 We're closer than ever to a universal flu vaccine, but unknown when, and it covers most not all, which may become a selective pressure for new flus.
-2.2. Riding the Bird Flu Rollercoaster. Although it is only mid December, and we've yet to hear from what are traditionally the biggest players in our winter flu season (seasonal flu, H5N1, or very much from H7N9 or H5N6), the number and variety of flu stories has already reached an impressive level.
-3. ∩ Many Organizations Falsely Equate IT Security Spending with Maturity. A good point to keep in mind. Parademic has complained about defunding of public health, and diversion form mundane medical needs to bioterrorism. However more money does not equal better health, better health security, better care. Money may not be spent as intended, restrictions on how money is used could prevent most effective measures, focus on a single health condition loses the bigger long term picture, providing money to appear to be doing something, financing pet projects, withholding funds for political purposes, misdirected efforts, are all dangers that deplete available funds for what is needed and future biodisasters.
↕4. Not exactly a surprise. Will take several neural damage babies and people before vaccine skeptics will decide it is safe to protect themselves and others. Public Skepticism Would Likely Greet a New Zika Vaccine. As scientists race to create a vaccine for the Zika virus, new research suggests almost half of Americans wouldn’t be interested in getting the shot even if public health officials recommended it for them. Study Offers Clues to Risk of Zika Birth Defects in the U.S. Women who were infected with Zika virus while abroad and then came to the U.S. had complications about 6 percent of the time. First trimester exposure was linked to more birth defects. Birth Defects Seen in 6 Percent of US Pregnancies with Zika the rate was nearly twice as high for women infected early in pregnancy. Zika Virus Can Keep Growing in Infant Brains Even after Birth. ¶ CDC Issues Texas City Travel Warning for Pregnant Women after Zika. With vaccine resistence in Texas, the errors CDC made regarding Ebola in Texas, this will not go overwell in Brownsville 161204-4↓. Texas' Worst Mumps Outbreak in Years Grows with New Cases in Dallas Area. So Far, Zika Is Showing up in the United States Just Where the Modelers Said it Would. New Strain of Bird Flu Confirmed at Poultry Farm, Korean Media: MAFRA Now Reports Finding HPAI H5N8.
-4.1. The combination of two or more disease outbreaks in a syndemic. In parademic syndemic includes other biothreats in addition to disease. In addition any disease outbreak in an indicator that there will be other disease outbreaks. Puerto Rico: Declares Influenza Epidemic (Dec 2016), Public Statement on Zika Virus in Puerto Rico (Mar 2016) 161030-4.2, 160918-4.2, 160814-4.2, 160724-4.1A, 160619-4.1↓ Influenza Epidemic Declared in Puerto Rico (Jan 2016), Puerto Rico Declares Flu Epidemic; 1 Dead, 140 Hospitalized (Feb 2015), PR Health Dept Declares a Flu Epidemic (Oct 2013). This 4 year in a row flu seasons that become epidemic, with a Zika outbreak in between the 2016-2017 and 2015-2016 flu seasons is a syndemic, which is also an unrecognized deficient public health system. A public health system is not just medical care, but the actions of the population it serves.
-5. What Comes Around, Goes Around (and Around and Around): Reviving the Lost History of FEMA and Its Importance to Future Disasters. The Agency lacks a coherent historical record. Often this results in the agency repeating the mistakes of its past. In the past Parademic has addressed issues with FEMA; the conflict between its Federal Continuity of Government and State/Community Disaster Support missions; the conflict of a humanitarian organization being part of what is basically a Law Enforcement, Investigative, Security agency; civil military conflicts, the lack of a coherent identify. Whatever the weaknesses it is likely that for the non-medical aspects of a biodisaster FEMA and like agencies will be involved. If they are prepared for bioterrorism and not a natural biodisaster they will initially cause harm as the response to terrorism and traditional disasters can be exactly the wrong thing to do for a biodisaster – for instance having a staging area when mobile task forces are needed, unprepared for slow developing disasters that are the people, air, water, food, that accelerate and come in waves – much less a parademic of panic, misinformation, denial, conflicting emergence, not of which are geographically or temporally defined.
-5.1. Government Crisis Response Center Outdated, Inefficient and Understaffed, Audit Warns. The federal government's crisis response center is outdated, understaffed and "inadequate" for coordinating emergency situations such as national security threats or natural disasters, a new audit warns. In 2015, the Government Operations Center was called on to triage more than 5,000 incidents. Of those, more than 500 were deemed to be of national interest, requiring a risk assessment, planning and coordinated response, making it a vital nerve center. Unfortunately this trend is likely to continue, but that should not stop states from setting up their own regional centers without depending on federal funds. FEMA's Plan to Make States Pay More for Disasters. Personally I will not pursue a job if one of the interview questions is about grant writing experience. This indicates the position is dependent on getting others to pay and is not a sustained position within the agency or real interest in the position as a need.
-5.2. The 'Things That Don't Make a Lot of Noise:' Craig Fugate on Managing Fema. Leading the Federal Emergency Management Agency is a high risk proposition. The agency’s administrator is always one failed emergency response away from opprobrium and dismissal. So perhaps W. Craig Fugate’s most impressive accomplishment is simply surviving nearly eight years at the helm of FEMA
-6. A Gang Killed a Guy with Ebola. Will They Agree to Be Quarantined. In 2015 police discovered a body in a warehouse. It's a young man who's been stabbed multiple times. They swab the body — and it tests positive for a deadly infectious disease. Investigators realize the people who killed him — members of a street gang — may now be spreading the virus without knowing it. ¶ As soon as public health workers realized that Ebola might be incubating in this gang in the city of Monrovia, the first thing they had to do was track down the members of the gang. That turned out to be easy. The hard part was convincing the members to quarantine themselves for 21 days. The young men — like many Liberians — were skeptical of international aid organizations and their government. Adding to this epidemic of fear and mistrust was another fact: The police wanted to arrest the gang members in connection with the stabbing victim's death. So the public health workers convinced the police to stand down. Then they offered incentives for the gang members to quarantine themselves by paying the families some support costs because they were no longer able to earn money for their families," Mahoney says. "And the government provided the families with food. Even this was not enough. It turned out some of the young men were addicts, and they needed drugs so they wouldn't go through withdrawal. ¶ In the end, none of the young gang members contracted Ebola. The cluster did not spread in this poor part of Monrovia. What we were asking people to do was either to trust the healthcare system or to trust the government enough to agree to this voluntary precautionary isolation. You have to understand their context, their concerns and their needs. And, most importantly, I think, you need to be human. In this case creativity was important, not creative as in finding something new, but creative in terms of thinking in different terms. To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold. A Corpse Tests Positive for Ebola and an Unusual Murder Investigation Ensues. Life continues during biodisasters. People need to eat, get sick from other causes, commit crimes, work at jobs, go shopping. These all take on a different meaning and behavior in the context of a biodisaster.
-7. This is an approach employed by Parademic that is one of many useful tools. Landscapes of Disease Themed Issue. This issue represents the wide variety of studies that can be done all contributing to an understanding of past landscapes of disease. One of the reasons why I like the phrase landscape of disease, rather than simply landscape epidemiology, is that it opens up the array of disciplines that can be involved. In the study of diseases of the past, humanistic approaches can be as valuable as scientific methods. Both are required to build a reasonably coherent reconstruction of the past. Science and the humanities need to act as a check and balance on each other, hopefully in a supportive and collegial way. Unfortunately the last hope if interdisciplinary and interagency is easy to say but very difficult to implement. The differing worldviews involved immediately lead to conflict, disruption, defensiveness, aggressiveness.... In short this is relationship building that takes time and needs to be done long before a crisis where it becomes a hopeless task [Quote]. Worse is that after the crisis a element that was cut out of the discussion and response will complain bitterly that they had the answer but no one was willing to listen, not recognizing they either avoided the relationship building beforehand, or assumed that their wisdom would be accepted without question. Governments Are Moving from Managing Disasters to Managing Risks. Interagency Cooperation Is the Key to an Effective Pandemic Response.
-8. It is an expected behavior that words, What Makes Influential Science. Telling a Good Story. Scientific papers written in a more narrative style were more influential among peer reviewed studies in the climate change literature, new research has found. It turns out that even in the world of scientific writing, your eighth grade teacher was right: how you write can matter as much as what you write. Yet later in life employers, graduate level education, government don’t want interesting stories but dry boring fact. Business Marketing 101 – Sell the Sizzle Not the Steak which translated to climate change is “don’t sell two degrees, sell the diseases, flooding, tornadoes, droughts, severe weather and miserable life. Storytelling Deconstructed: Vonnegut Was Right about Just Six Emotional Story Lines, Says Big Data. [Photo, GIF, Photo, Meme]
-9. It is normal behavior to change the definition of words used to makes something seem worse that it is or not so bad. Global Warming to Climate Change, Pandemic to Epidemic, and until 1929 when Recession was called Depression as that was not as bad. Unfortunately history did not work out that way and Depression became the new term for serious economic down turn [Quote]. Don’t Call it ‘Smog’ in Beijing, Call it a ‘Meteorological Disaster’. City officials are poised to legally classify air pollution as a weather calamity, like a sandstorm, worrying those who see it as a way to dodge responsibility. Beijing Smog: Pollution Red Alert Declared in China Capital and 21 Other Cities.
-10. Natural Medicine, Starvation, and Murder: The Story of Linda Hazzard. History is replete with doctors who practiced quackery. Here is the story of one such quack whose fasting therapy resulted in many deaths, a story that is so bizarre and horrific that it's hard to believe it really happened, but it did. The Doctor Who Starved Her Patients to Death. In my opinion it is not unbelievable that it did happen, and it still happens today Chinese ‘Quack’ Doctor Whose Patients Died Was Freed from Jail to Kill Again. One of the common defenses of quacks against accusations of committing murder is to claim a conspiracy of murder of quacks, Who Is Killing the Healers and Why, Explosive Real Reason Doctors Are Being Targeted for Death - Threat to Holistic Doctors Increases as They Are Attacked on Multiple Fronts; Nicholas Gonzalez: The Latest Victim of the Pharma Assassins, The “Conspiracy” to Kill Alternative Medicine Practitioners Continues Apace, The Bizarre Anti-Vaxxer Holistic Doctor Murder Conspiracy, Explained, The Feds are Murdering Alternative Doctors—Debunked. Nurse Disappears after Using “Q” Word.
↕C. Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) Corner [Logo] Managing Misinformation in the Media. The media have a good record of getting facts correct during a crisis, but occasionally they get their information wrong. Unfortunately, these mistakes may be harmful to the public or undermine your organization’s credibility. While media rumors, myths, and errors in press reports are usually self correcting, sometimes the correction doesn’t happen fast enough. The following steps can help speed up corrections: 1 Remain calm. 2 Analyze the situation. 3 Know what to request. 4 Know whom to contact. 5 Know what you want to communicate. 6 Have a plan before you need it. This is good advice for responsible media. For fake news sites, conspiracy blogs, pseudoscience, disinformation none of these will work, in fact can be turned against you as attempts to censor them. The approach against this intentional misinformation is completely different and probably not attempted unless one has the resources and trained staff for counterpropaganda. UPMC Releases Casebook for Ensuring MCM Stewardship in an Emergency.
-C.1. Tonight’s Top Story: Ebola and the News Media. When the first few cases of Ebola came to the US in 2014, it seemed as though it was impossible to watch or read the news and not hear about the disease. At first, news coverage of Ebola rose in response to the return of media personnel diagnosed overseas. Then news coverage increased greatly after the diagnosis of the first case on American soil in late September, 2014. ¶ Most of us can agree that the intense public and media reaction to the limited number of cases in the US was unwarranted when considering the actual risks involved in the situation. In fact, many actions were put forth, out of an abundance of caution, which were unnecessary and counter-productive, such as border closures and excessive quarantines. Useful article in terms of the reconstructing the facts of the muddled history about mainstream media and Ebolaphobia. This doesn’t address the change in narrative. Most mainstream media, if they reported on Ebola at all, was wondering why was public health worried about just a few cases of Ebola in a remote part of the world. Guinean Government Confirms Disease That Killed 34 as Ebola (March 2014), Ebola Is Not the Next Pandemic (April), Guinea Ebola Outbreak Still Spreading, Sierra Leone Also Affected (May), Ebola Kills at Least 399 in West Africa (June). Then there was notice that this is different than previous Ebola outbreaks and beginnings of parademic outside of West Africa Ebola Outbreak Is Largest Ever, Why Are We Ignoring a New Ebola Outbreak (July). Quickly followed by an acceleration of cases and an American Doctor with Ebola Arrives in U.S. for Treatment (August), followed by more news reporting and Ebola Cases Reported Up Sharply in Liberia, with the first speculations that lead to fear mongering and panic (Ebolaphobia) Transmission of Ebola: Two Microbiologists Weigh In (September). By October that was recognition that Ebola could be politicized for the November 2014 elections Congressman Urges C.D.C. Director to Read the News. After the November 2014 the fear mongering about Ebola plummeted, but it would be more months before Ebola was declared over (a few times). Part of the delay in the initial response was because of the accusations of hoax when the 2009 was disappointing by not killing very many people and causing a global social collapse. The fear mongering in part delayed the containment and control of Ebola.
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