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If you google "designer flu" you get lots of hits on "designer flu masks" and some discussions from conspiracy theorists who believe it is a bioweapon out of a laboratory.

Therefore I'm a bit shocked to find th term in a Reuters headline.

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 12th, 2009 at 05:09:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]
See, there's the difference in our symbolic-analytic work objectives: I don't "google" anything, least of all "designer" trivia. Why would I, when I can get all my news (as versions) from bloomberg? Bwah!

Or the venerable wiki footnotes: the assumption that H1N1 genome derives from livestock (not intermediate or finished goods) trade between Eurasia and North America is not supported by data in the PR. Why?

I search the interboobz for the phrases "US live hog imports","US livestock imports","US live hog imports from asia" and so forth. Aside from the trades (selected, above), yahoo! returned a butt-load of NM customs and USDA pages.I t's the end of the day though, so I don't download the pdf or zip data tables to mine two lines (hogs, poultry) out of cattle exports seven ways to Sunday in each of the past 20 years.

I've assembled sufficient information to posit a pathogenic origin of H1N1: US feed, breed "crops" and technical stock exports.

As opposed to morbid obesity.

I'm going to read that UN report in its entirety. How 'bout you?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Jul 12th, 2009 at 08:55:27 AM EST
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I've assembled sufficient information to posit a pathogenic origin of H1N1: US feed, breed "crops" and technical stock exports.

As opposed to morbid obesity.

Did I posit morbid obesity as an origin for H1N1?

All I said is that I don't find it surprising that the morbidly obese might be more susceptible to the opportunistic infections that actually kill flu patients since their lungs are already under strain from all that extra fat. Therefore I asked whether obesity is a factor in seasonal flu mortality. If it isn't, then the link to obesity is specific to the new flu and therefore interesting.

The fact that current farm practices are conducive to breeding new disease strains should not be controversial.

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 12th, 2009 at 09:03:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Untwist your panties.

All I said is that I don't find it surprising ... If it isn't, then the link to obesity is specific to the new flu and therefore interesting.

So I gathered and retrieved a quote from the bloomberg article to illustrate a dimension of the experts' indifference to H1N1 pathogenesis. Obesity should be uninteresting to epidemiologists who purport to investigate the origin and propagation of communicable disease precisely because it is a pre-existing condition, characteristic, of morbidity per se.

Try to magine my dismay then as I read this ridiculous article.

The fact that current farm practices are conducive to breeding new disease strains should not be controversial.

Quite. But institutional medical PR avoids industrial  analyses and prophylatic recommendations, preferring to promote palliatives case by case.

That is, in my book, a failure of public offices, made all the more disturbing and dismal by persisting communications to characterize H1N1 symptoms as a threat to humanity so far greater than obesity, diabetes, hypertension, HPV, CHF, COPD, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction, war, and of course life-style

as to warrant mandatory vaccination.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Jul 12th, 2009 at 10:17:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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