Wow.

Okay, okay. I know. I was doing so well there for about a month. Slacker. Been a weird month, give me a break.
But I guess WHO has officially declared a pandemic. So I’m curious to everyone’s thoughts on this.
I haven’t really been following because…well…no one else really has either…right? I mean it’s kind of fallen [...]

ARE YOU PANICKED?!?!

Hello readers. Thanks for bearing with me while I took a much needed vacation at home in Roanoke. I didn’t look at a newspaper, television, or allow myself to discuss Swine Flu at all…and it proved to be very restful indeed. But now, as I sit in the Roanoke Regional Airport…waiting for the fog to [...]

A U.S. Death and the Morals of Epidemic

As I’m sure most of you have heard by now, the U.S. has had its first Swine Flu related death. A 23 month old toddler. It’s terrifying and sad, and now we have to wait and see if it gets much worse than this.
In other news, I’m giving a very brief presentation today in Art [...]

Swine Flu Roundup

Hi! I’m Reed.
* I’ve spent the past two days looking at the Twitter Search page for swine flu and #swineflu and I’m thoroughly enjoying the ignorance of diseases displayed by the Tweeple.
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=swine+flu
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23swineflu
* These graphs are from Daily Kos, of all places:
This is where we were on Saturday:

This is where we were on Monday:

So that [...]

NY Times Article needs a good berating…

Thanks to SophiaZoe over at A Pandemic Chronicle this morning for pointing out this schlop of a news article.
Read it and feel her glibness and sarcasm dripping off the page. It’s a little sickening. Susan Dominus really doesn’t think that the Swine Flu is a big deal. She snarkily asks her readers not to panic, [...]

Seasonal Vaccine is likely no help

EDIT: Apparently, after more testing H1N1 does show some sensitivity to both Tamiflu and Relenza. But this may not be stable. We’ll wait and see.
To answer Andrew’s question, it looks like the season vaccine is not going to be effective at all.
ATLANTA — U.S. health officials say they are “very pessimistic” that the seasonal flu [...]

Apathy in crisis?

There seems to me to be a great amount of apathy in New York City concerning the potential pandemic at hand. This is especially shocking considering it’s ALREADY HERE in New York. Everyone has heard about the 8 students at a Queens high school who have been confirmed as having a flu (likely Swine Flu)…and [...]

Talk to me readers.

Okay, so with news flying around about the Swine flew and the 68 dead in Mexico (the words “potential pandemic” are also being bandied about), I think it is time that those of you who have casually read over or glanced at this blog step up and speak out. Tell me what you think about [...]

Volkswagen, Part II

Despite the title, this doesn’t have anything to do with the commercial again, other than that and a post over at SystemsThinker.com has me thinking about what actually qualifies as epidemic. His really excellent discussion of Borderline Personality Disorder was at one point deemed an epidemic. I found this really interesting mostly because it reminded [...]

Volkswagen Commercial

I just this very minute saw a commercial for a new model of Volkswagen that used the word epidemic in the most bizarre context ever. Or was it?
The woman in the commercial says a new epidemic is sweeping the nation. At this, I perked up…
She continues to say that women all over the country are [...]