Lofty Matters

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Some day soon a US president will have to decide whose lives are the most important to save, and whose lives are “nonessential.”

Photo Caption: Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, KS in this 1918 file photo. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed at least 20 million people worldwide. Officials say that if the next pandemic resembles the 1918 Spanish flu up to 1.9 million Americans could die.

I’m talking about the next pandemic and one study from Harvard University estimates that the next pandemic will kill somewhere between 51 million and 81 million people - mostly in developing countries.

Organizations and institutions around the world are developing plans for dealing with this expected pandemic. Some people will be more important than others when fighting the disease and many will be left to fend for themselves.

WHO IS ‘ESSENTIAL’?

Doctors and nurses will be vital. Others essential to public health and safety will also be vital…but after that it gets tough.

We need to consider that the secondary effects of a severe pandemic influenza could be greater than deaths and illness from influenza itself. A pandemic could create a societal collapse on many levels.

So it is important to consider that people who might have been thought of as nonessential will be extremely essential if society is to keep functioning. Truck drivers fall into this category.

THE TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT

There will likely be a presidential decree to designate broadly who gets preferential treatment in response to the disaster. Who will make the decision on a community level?

People will likely be told to stay home from nonessential jobs because a pandemic is marked by the ease and speed that a misunderstood virus can spread from one person to another. Isolation reduces the chance of exposure. How will families survive without a paycheck, though?

Also of note…all of this would be occurring at a time of great confusion.

THE MOST VULNERABLE

Young children and older adults are the most vulnerable in an influenza pandemic. However, records show that healthy young adults were most likely to die during an epidemic.

A study out of Johns Hopkins recently showed that half of the public health employees in Maryland stated they would stay away from work instead of risking their families to the virus. Physicians and nurses were more likely to show up than support personnel. Two-thirds of the public health employees in that study said their role was not important in combating a pandemic so they were less likely to report to work.

If essential workers fail to work, the entire structure of a society will begin to fall apart. So you can see why the aftermath of a pandemic could claim more lives than the virus itself.

So many people underestimate the seriousness of an influenza pandemic. We all struggle with the flu from time to time…how can this really be life threatening? In the US an average of 36,000 people die every year from influenza and 200,000 are hospitalized.

Big numbers… but they dwarfed by comparisons to projections for a global pandemic. The Harvard University study did something interesting. They extrapolated the number of deaths during the 1918-20 pandemic to the worldwide population in 2004. It’s estimated that 62 million people would die each year from the pandemic (96 % in developing countries).

Don’t be tempted to rest on the assurances of technology and advancement…for time is on the side of any virus.

Tags: 1918 Spanish flu, Harvard University, Influenza

Five years later some are looking back at the worst blackout in North American history and are saying that the country’s problems that made it black for 50 million people have mostly been resolved. Larger issues may lead to even bigger and more damaging outages soon however.

Excess capacity in the system is diminishing and construction and plans for new plants has slowed because costs to build and operate them have skyrocketed.

Simultaneously, electricity use is projected to increase 29 percent between 2006 to 2030. Much of this will be driven by residential growth.

The blackout occurred five years ago today and it shut off power to huge areas of the Northeast and Midwest - some for as much as four days. Rolling blackouts continued in Ontario for the next week.

Hundreds of thousands of people also lost access to tap water for days in Ohio. This led the mayor of Cleveland to accuse shop owners of gouging people who were desperate for drinking water.

Millions of New Yorkers left the city on foot because subways were shut down and office towers were dark.

A U.S.-Canadian government task force was appointed and they largely blamed the Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corporation because they allowed a local power failure occurring near Cleveland to escalate to the East Coast and up into Canada.

Industry experts say changes have been made to protect against a similar outage.

The above picture shows the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline on August 14, 2003 during a major power outtage that affected a large part of the north eastern United States and Canada.

Americans demand more power to operate their flat-screen televisions, video games, surround-sound systems and appliances…there’s no denying this fact. Even in the face of this, there is broad opposition to the infrastructure that experts say we need.

Construction of coal-fired generating plants has mostly stopped and new nuclear plants are years away. Higher efficiency will only do so much.

Industry experts say it is easy for those in Washington and across the country to forget what happened five years ago. This is a mistake because it will occur again on a grander scale if nothing is done.

The U.S. had its own warning five years ago.

Emergency room physicians in the United States are warning of a relatively new phenomenon: people getting hurt because they’re text-messaging instead of paying attention to what they’re doing.

Injuries and deaths related to sending text messages at inappropriate times is on the rise. Activities like walking, driving, biking or travelling on in-line skates are all being done now while texting.

Many young adults and teens are arriving in emergency departments with serious and sometimes fatal injuries because they were not paying attention while texting.

People are texting and they trip and fall on their faces.  Many face, chin, mouth (and) eye injuries from falls are becoming commonplace. Worse injuries result when people are texting and are then involved in collisions with bikers and people on rollerblades.

Two deaths tied to texting accidents

Most injuries involve minor scrapes, cuts and sprains from texters who walked into lampposts or walls or tripped over curbs.

Even so, ER doctors who responded to a recent informal questionnaire reported two deaths - both in California. A San Francisco woman was killed by a pickup truck when she stepped off a curb while texting, and a Bakersfield man was killed last year by a car while crossing the street and texting.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission does not have a national estimate for how common texting-related injuries are. Since 2005, however, the agency has received at least seven reports of serious texting mishaps.  This includes a 15-year-old girl who fell off her horse while texting and a 13-year-old girl who suffered injuries after texting her boyfriend while cooking noodles.

Other reports include a 39-year-old man who suffered a head injury after crashing into a tree on his bicycle while texting and a 16-year-old boy who suffered a concussion because he was texting while walking and walked into a telephone pole.

Apparently a street in London is experimenting with applying protective padding to lampposts, to protect pedestrians who have a habit of walking into them while focusing on their mobile phones. The protective padding will start at London’s East-End in the iconic Brick Lane.  This is where the highest incidents of ‘walking and texting’ injuries in the country have been reported.

Advice for Texters:

–Don’t text or use a cellphone while performing any physical activities that require attention.

–Never text or use a hand-held cellphone while driving or motorcycling.

–Avoid becoming distracted by rummaging through purses, backpacks or clothing.  Keep cellphones and BlackBerrys in easily accessible locations.

–Ignore the call or message if it might interfere with concentration during activities that require attention.

Two drug store chains (Rite Aid and CVS) are being targeted and sued for selling expired dairy products, medicine and baby formula. The most surprising part about this situation is that neither federal nor state law requires most food items to be pulled from shelves when expired.

There are no policies as far as requirements for expiration dates on products except for pharmaceuticals and baby food. According to the FDA, the federal government requires expiration dates be printed on infant formula and baby food and these items must be removed for sale after that date. If this is not done, retailers can be held legally and financially responsible.

For other consumables, however, as long as a date is not tampered with for the purpose of misleading the consumer about a product’s freshness, there are no concrete rules about pulling items from the shelves past their prime.

Don’t think that retailers don’t have systems in place for product rotation, though. Employees routinely check for and remove outdated or nearly outdated items from shelves and use expiration dates as a guide. Items nearing expiration are usually clearly marked with reduced prices.

A wary shopper will check expiration dates to make sure that items bought are within freshness dates.
Consumer advocates recommend checking freshness dates before making purchases.

Most companies have return policies that allow for the exchange of outdated goods. Though expiration dates themselves are not mandated, product quality is.

Stores are not required to date items, but they are required to sell wholesome, safe food. Sell-by dates are a tool that helps sores manage this.

How to read freshness labels:

Best if used by or best before – The item is best used before the printed date for the best quality and flavor but is considered safe if consumed after.

Closed or coded dates – Printed for use by the manufacturer, these dates are found on canned and dry goods and are often indecipherable to consumers. Some use a month-day-year code (MMDDYYYY) or every day of the year is consecutively numbered. For example, January 1 would be printed 001 and December 31 would appear as 365. This is only one type of dating – the easiest to guess. These dates can contain fewer numbers or partial dates like only 2 digits for the year instead of 4, and the year can appear before or behind the month and day. You have to know which system is used or a “guess” could be wrong by years.

Sell by – This tells the store how long to display an item. Consumers should consume, cook or freeze the item within one to two days.

Use by – This is the last day the manufacturer predicts the item will be edible at “peak quality.”

A spoiled carton of milk offered for sale within its stamped expiration date would be wrong; a wholesome pound of ground beef offered for sale after its sell-by date is not unlawful.

Display dates speak to an item’s quality rather than its safety. Usually, food kept after its listed date will be safe to eat. The date listed is the manufacturer’s best estimation of the product’s peak taste and quality. Food should be consumed or cooked before its listed “use-by” date or at least within one or two days of its “sell-by” date.

Food that is immediately and properly frozen is considered safe indefinitely. Keep in mind, though, that food containing harmful bacteria such as salmonella or E. coli will be unsafe even before it expires.

The Pentagon is considering a plan to ship deadly chemical weapons to military sites in four states in order to destroy the munitions in a timely manner…according to a new report.

Might you live near one of these routes???

Transporting such lethal agents along routes perhaps from Colorado to Oregon has prompted strong opposition from Congress and watchdog groups as well.

Their complaint is that this plan exposes the American public to unnecessary risks.

According to a 1997 treaty which banned chemical weapons, Congress has ordered the military to destroy all munitions of this type by the end of 2017.

According to an unpublicized report delivered to lawmakers last week, the Pentagon has admitted that it probably could not meet that deadline unless begins to ship nerve agents and mustard gas to additional sites for destruction.

Even the possibility of adding more staff and working around the clock at the two sites with complicated dismantling requirements in Kentucky and Colorado probably won’t ascertain that the military meets the 2017 deadline, the report said.

So…work would be accomplished faster if some weapons at Kentucky’s Blue Grass Army Depot were moved to sites in Alabama and Arkansas, the report said. Also some at the Pueblo, CO, site will be sent to Utah and Oregon.

Congress would first have to change laws that prevent moving the weapons, the report said.

Pentagon officials do not have many options for meeting the congressional mandate to destroy all weapons by 2017. The US already expects to miss the 2012 deadline set by the international Chemical Weapons Convention.

Kevin Flamm (Pentagon manager for plans to eliminate weapons in Colorado and Kentucky) said that he is focusing on speeding up weapons destruction by adding workers and operating around the clock. He expects that this will enable destruction to be finished in Colorado by 2017 but probably not in Kentucky.

Feel like calling a Congressperson or something? I do!

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has just released a large report containing its plans to build a mega bio-defense lab for scientists to study the Earth’s deadliest diseases. It seems it will be a real-life version of The Andromeda Strain.

Amazing? Exciting?

There is one small problem…leaks from the lab are expected to happen according to the report.

The department has also assessed the possibility of a terrorist attack resulting in the release of pathogens from the lab. This would involve the most infectious animal disease (Foot and Mouth) and those most deadly to humans (Hendra and Nipah viruses).

The overall risk assessment for a release at the five mainland sites was “moderate” because of “the potential easy spread of a disease through livestock or wildlife” nearby, according to a statement.

Plans are for the new lab to be built in 2010 and it will replace an existing bio-defense lab on Long Island. That lab is called the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and is considered outdated and no longer useful.

DHS wants its researchers to study “zoonotic diseases.” These are diseases that travel from animals to people (”bird flu”?). To do that they need a facility rated “bio-security level 4,” (the highest level). Plum Island is a level 3. Approximately ten percent of the new facility will be at level 4.

DHS is currently considering five possible sites in the mainland United States.

The health insurance system in the United States works great, as long as you stay healthy. It’s only people who need medical care who have problems.

Here is the basic scenario:

You go to the doctor and pay directly. You send your bill to the insurance company for reimbursement. You then get a form letter from your insurance company rejecting the claim. It happens frequently.

If you’re persistent, you call your insurance company and demand to know the reason the claim was rejected. The insurer gives you a form for your doctor to fill out. Your doctor fills out the form and returns it but still the insurer does not pay the bill.

If you’re very persistent, you call back your insurance company and demand to know the reason the claim has not been paid. The insurer tells you that they never received the form from the doctor. With irritation, the doctor fills out the form again. The bill is still not paid.

If you’re extremely persistent, you call the insurer again and demand to know the reason the claim was rejected. The insurance company this time tells you that the doctor filled out the wrong form.

In the end your persistence may pay off and you will get reimbursed for your claim. It helps if you are well-educated in your rights under the insurance contract, though.

What if this denial scenario involved someone who is not very well-educated, has a language barrier, or does not have the physical or mental ability to pursue the insurance company? That person might just have assumed the insurance company was right to turn down their claim and not contested the issue. Or, if they contested it once, they might have let it drop after the first round or the second.

An insurance company denies a claim initially almost as a matter of course. For the price of a stamp, they can save themselves a reimbursement that may cost them thousands of dollars. Worst case scenario, they encounter persistent people who demand that they honor their contract. When this happens they only end up paying what they would have paid in the first place and they are able to make money on the float until they do pay. They don’t face any fines or penalties for wrongly denying these claims.

What is the basis for denied claims? You can’t get that information. How often do insurers deny claims? You usually can’t have this information either.

This is not the only information that you can’t have. With most policies, when people go “out of network,” the insurance company will reimburse an amount that is 70 % to 80 % of the “reasonable and customary” rate. This rate will not typically be disclosed in advance by the insurer. This means that patients will not know how much a doctor visit will actually cost them until after the doctor submits the claim. Also, the insurer is free to change their reimbursement rate at its own discretion. In addition, the insurance company can, at its own discretion, change what procedures are and are not covered.

Most businesses don’t get to write their own rules. There is no reason to make an exception for insurers, especially since they typically are dealing with people with serious health problems. This being the most vulnerable segment of the population.

So…do we have options? Are we just at the mercy of the big seed companies and corporations who seek to control the food production of the world?

I admit I was feeling quite overwhelmed and powerless until I did a little further reading and then I became convinced that we do have a few options, at least personally in our own little worlds…if we so choose.

It is possible to acquire, preserve and store a diverse variety of food and herbal non-GMO seeds and thus enable the human race to have access to non-GMO food and herbs in the days to come.

Thanks to a very informative website that I was fortunate to find this week, I have found that there are some sources for garden seeds. Visit www.BePrepared.com (800-999-1863; AF1-FG-S200). There you will find items like Garden Seeds in a Can (16 jumbo foil-lined packets of open pollinator seeds) - not terminator seeds!

We need to realize that once the GMO terminator seeds from the big seed companies finish integrating with seeds in nature, seeds that you and I store will be the only natural seeds left for all of humanity. This is very scary, considering that the seed companies admit that this is already occurring.

Lastly, I would like to encourage all of my readers to visit The Nutrition and Disease website that a recent reader shared with me. I spent several hours reading yesterday evening and this site is full of exciting and important information. You really don’t want to miss it.

Is biotechnology the miracle solution necessary to fix the many problems we face in the world today – world hunger, suffering third world economies, toxic pesticides, and the damaged environment to name a few? The big seed companies are doing everything they can to make you believe this is the case. In fact, they are making claims bordering on emotional blackmail to get you to accept their new technology.

First, they would like you to believe that biotechnology is nothing new…that it is just a natural extension of plant breeding techniques that have been around forever. The big agribusiness corporations insist that genetic engineering is simply a faster and better way of improving crops over traditional methods. It is definitely true that modern biotechnology has produced varieties of plants that did not previously exist. However, the genetic composition of these new species is new and unknown, and this could produce unpredictable outcomes in many cases.

They would also like you to believe that Genetically Modified (GM) foods are extensively researched and regulated. Here is how that works. In 1992 the FDA decided that genetically engineered foods were no different from conventional foods. Under FDA law, if a food is “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS), no independent safety testing is necessary. Biotech foods have been determined to be GRAS. So, the FDA relies on the biotech companies to do their own safety testing and also to make the determination themselves whether any given product is GRAS.

Big Seed Corporations are telling us that GM crops will allow us to reduce and even eliminate toxic pesticides and fertilizer, hopefully leading us to the conclusion that GM crops are good for the environment. To date this could not be further from the truth. In fact, most of the GM crops growing today have been modified either to either withstand herbicide spray or actually produce their own insecticide.

Currently, over 50% of the nation’s soybean crops were genetically modified to withstand spraying of the herbicide RoundUp. It has also been disclosed that there is currently no testing of these crops in place for increased herbicide residue. Additionally, the Environment Protection Agency went so far as to raise the allowable residue limits for RoundUp on crops.

Biotechnology is also not going to help us eradicate world hunger. Obviously, world hunger is a very big concern, but food scarcity is not the root cause of starvation. According to the UN World Food Program, there is more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on earth a healthy diet. The reason this doesn’t occur is that nearly 800 million people do not have access to food because they can’t afford it or they cannot grow it themselves.

Biotech companies purport that GM crops will rebuild third world economies. So far, this has yet to be seen. In fact, the opposite seems to be occurring. The foundation of genetic engineering has turned the seeds themselves into “intellectual property,” so that the farmers planting the seeds don’t even technically own them. This new arrangement makes it against the law to save seeds from year to year, something commonly done in third world countries. This places farmers in the position of returning year after year to purchase seeds. Imagine what a financial burden this would create for struggling farmers. Monsanto recently brought this to a head by actually hiring private investigators to take samples of plants from fields of farmers they suspected didn’t buy their seeds. Monsanto has also encouraged neighbor to give up neighbor if planting GM seeds without paying for them is suspected.

By turning GM seeds into intellectual property, agribusiness corporations have taken another huge step toward control over the food resources and instead of eradicating world hunger, biotechnology will likely increase it by increasing dependence on the corporate seed companies.

Tomorrow: There ARE options!  Exploring non-GMO seeds and what this means for our future.

Based on some contract proposals that went public in May, it is now evident that there has been a call for new spending in Iraq.

Among the contracts is a proposal to supply mentors to officials with Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries and the establishment of a U.S.-marshal-type system to protect Iraqi courts.

The proposals reflect multi-year commitments.

The mentors will assist a US military group that previously began to implement what has been described as “core processes and systems” (procurement, contracting, force development, management and budgeting, and public affairs).

The marshals service would be organized by the State Department’s bureau and would be responsible for developing rule of law programs in Iraq.

Another contract noticed last week previews the opening of a US run prison that is now labeled a Theater Internment Facility Reconciliation Center. This will be located at Camp Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad.

The new contract calls for providing food for “up to 5,000 detainees” and will also cover 150 Iraqi nationals who will work at the facility. The contract will run for one year with an option year to follow.