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The Flu (Health)
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Spanish Flu, (the really big exterminator) unlike most strains of flu... killed in the main those aged 15-40 in advanced countries.

The 15 to 40 age group would presumably correspond with military personnel. Those engaged in military action were sent to different countries, many would presumably have been inoculated against well-known diseases but perhaps it was less diligently supervised than now. Soldiers' immune systems might have been tested beyond the limit.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Hatty wrote:
Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Spanish Flu, (the really big exterminator) unlike most strains of flu... killed in the main those aged 15-40 in advanced countries.

The 15 to 40 age group would presumably correspond with military personnel. Those engaged in military action were sent to different countries, many would presumably have been inoculated against well-known diseases but perhaps it was less diligently supervised than now. Soldiers' immune systems might have been tested beyond the limit.


That was Nemesis8 argument....what is worse the cure or disease?
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Maybe this was the cause of the wipe out of Aztecs and Incas, the natives had found a way of boosting their "immune systems.....?"


I, for one, place no credence in this notion of the Aztecs/Incas having been wiped out by disease, if for no other reason then the clearly observable fact that they were not wiped out. The so-called "Spanish" populations of central and south america are a mixture of unreduced native populations and immigrant genetic material, combined freely and liberally.

I suspect that the indigenous extinction by disease hypothesis arose shortly after the influenza epidemic of 1918. It has stuck around only because of its political expediency in among North American leftists, a group which includes every professor at every institution of higher learning. I doubt many South American scholars give it a moment's consideration (anyone wish to check this?)---socialism there being a nationalist rather than anti-nationalist movement.

I do not believe in mass death by communicable disease. I insist that it has never happened in the history of the human race and never will. All historical plagues have been the result of inadequate hygiene or malnutrition.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Some scholars believe that Bubonic Plague originated in China, and was spread through Central Asia by way of the Huns, Turks and Mongols.


I am not among them.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Ishmael wrote:

I do not believe in mass death by communicable disease. I insist that it has never happened in the history of the human race and never will. All historical plagues have been the result of inadequate hygiene or malnutrition.


Well we certainly will never know the size of the native population before the conquistadors arrived......
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Well we certainly will never know the size of the native population before the conquistadors arrived......


What is, is what was. The Native American population as it is today is, by some proportion, larger than what it was 500 years ago. Most probably, that proportion is the average growth rate demonstrated by the Earth's population over the same time span.

Advocates of the genocide-by-disease hypothesis must first conclusively demonstrate that the precolumbian native population was far higher than the postcolumbian population, and as these are the same scholars who insist the plains Indians hunted buffalo in their moccasins prior to discovering a feral population of escaped Spanish horses, I wish them luck with that. Then they must show that communicable diseases are capable of wiping out 75% to 90% of a human population. This too is problematic.

The only historical example of population decimation by communicable disease is the influenza epidemic of 1918. Without that one example, the thesis that Native Americans were wiped out by this means must be disallowed on Applied Epistemological grounds (as we are not permitted the invocation of unestablished causal factors). Even allowing for the influenza epidemic (a proposition I do not grant), its death toll fails to boost the academic case; influenza infected only 28% of the US population* and killed less than 1%.

How then does one build a case that unknown communicable diseases eliminated up to 90% of a native population one has not yet demonstrated even existed?

In academia, anything is possible. Applied Epidemiologists restrict themselves to what is probable.

________________________
*According to the CDC, up to 20% of the US population is infected with the flu every year.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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For those of you that want to avoid the next hysteria.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/apr/10/tamiflu-saga-drug-trials-big-pharma

So Tami flu wasn't that effective..

But what were the side effects?
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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The Cochrane Systematic Review appears to have fairly solid evidence that Roche played games with the clinical trial results. They say Tamiflu has significant side-effects including some kidney and psychiatric problems. The other major anti-flu drug Relenza had few side-effects, they report, although they say it had the same level of limited benefits as Tamiflu.

More here:
http://www.cochrane.org/features/tamiflu-relenza-how-effective-are-they

As I said a while ago...

Boreades wrote:
... drugs like Tamiflu ... do nothing to cure the disease, they mask the symptoms, thus allowing the carriers to function more normally, including carrying-on working or mixing with uninfected people.


My medical colleagues are having a "we all knew this years ago" field day with this. Much hilarity that it's taken the BBC so many years to catchup.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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A fascinating article about the Influenza epidemic. Argues that the flu strain came from the United States and emigrated to Europe when the US entered the War.

That review suggests that the most likely site of origin was Haskell County, Kansas, an isolated and sparsely populated county in the southwest corner of the state, in January 1918....

Both contemporary epidemiological studies and lay histories of the pandemic have identified the first known outbreak of epidemic influenza as occurring at Camp Funston, now Ft. Riley, in Kansas. But there was one place where a previously unknown -- and remarkable -- epidemic of influenza occurred.

Haskell County, Kansas, lay three hundred miles to the west of Funston. There the smell of manure meant civilization. People raised grains, poultry, cattle, and hogs. Sod-houses were so common that even one of the county's few post offices was located in a dug-out sod home.....

In late January and early February 1918 [Dr.] Miner was suddenly faced with an epidemic of influenza, but an influenza unlike any he had ever seen before. Soon dozens of his patients -- the strongest, the healthiest, the most robust people in the county -- were being struck down as suddenly as if they had been shot. Then one patient progressed to pneumonia. Then another. And they began to die.
-- The site of origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its public health implications
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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And this book details the procedures Eisenhower took to contain the disease. Had these procedures been followed elsewhere, the Flu might have been contained. Unfortunately, the US War Department gave instructions to the US Health Administration to effectively ignore the disease.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Good news today.

They have discovered that flu jabs work better in the morning.

This is really cutting edge science.

viro specialist wrote:
‘We know that a variety of factors, such as diet, sleep and exercise seem to impact on your immunity, but the fact that the amount of antibody produced following influenza vaccination differed according to whether or not the people included in the study were immunised in the morning or in the afternoon was intriguing.’


I reckon this shows the harmful toxic flu jab can be negated by the consumption of a life enhancing full English brekkie.

The researchers are putting it down to the Circadian rhythm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3558676/Key-chemicals-immune-help-body-respond-flu-jabs-highest-level-early-day.html
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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We are once again having a world flu pandemic (in the AE sense of the word) and things are once more going to form. Apologies in advance if this does not turn out like all the other ones, except for 1918. Again we have a new strain, again from China, again associated with birds, again it kills a proportion of people that catch it, again the numbers of actual deaths is tiny, again extreme measures are instituted, again they appear to have little effect, again they do seem to take effect because it ... er ... well, the others went away or at any rate weren't heard about again. It is all most perplexing.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Finally an expert popped up (on Newsnight) to point out that everything is being exaggerated absurdly. She was particularly scathing about people flying in from Wuhan being quarantined at RAF bases in case the British death toll should rise from one. She then told us this particular strain of the Coronavirus (apparently there are others, it's quite well known) is actually rather benign in terms of deaths per people catching it. This is important since all strains of flu carry off a proportion of the people suffering from them and is why (do we still?) call in the elderly to have their winter jabs.

Even though we are told "We do not know whether this year's jab will cover this year's strain" every year, it is apparently a worthwhile exercise though I note the campaign has died down a bit of recent years what with GP's and the NHS being under strain every winter. No puns intended.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Flu epidemics have an eerie parallel to terrorist outrages. Everyone seems entranced by them, everyone dashes around doing everything to contain them, nobody seems able to do anything about them, they always die down of their own accord, nobody seems to suffer from them. Except of course some people, some randomly selected people, who have to pay the price, though whether this is for our morbid entertainment or to propitiate the civilisation gods, it's hard to tell.

That old Rooseveltian adjuration 'You have nothing to fear except fear itself' seems to be peculiarly apposite. Though he, typically, applied it in quite the wrong circumstances since everybody did have to fear either the Great Slump or its consequences in other countries. And of course occasionally, quite randomly, the terrorists achieve their objectives or the epidemic becomes a genuine pandemic. So maybe we do have to go through all these rigmaroles. Meaning 'we, the human race' not 'we, applied epistemologists'. We must remain steadfastly smug.
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Grant



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Fascinating article in right wing website VDARE. Chinese are more susceptible to animal viruses than whites and blacks. Why? Because extensive animal husbandry came much later to Orientals than to white people. Even Africans adopted farming - presumably if you exclude rice - earlier than the Chinese
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