Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Would Getting Swine Flu Now Be A GOOD Thing?
Health authorities are warning that the relatively mild swine flu (very few of those infected have died) could mutate into something more deadly.
But for now, it is pretty harmless.
Moreover, people exposed to one version of the virus may sometimes build up immunity to a subsequent, mutated version. For example, the Los Angeles Times writes about the current outbreak:
Ralph Tripp, an influenza expert at the University of Georgia, said that his early analysis of the virus' protein-making instructions suggested that people exposed to the 1957 flu pandemic -- which killed up to 2 million people worldwide -- may have some immunity to the new strain.Similarly, National Public Radio ran a story which included the following:
That could explain why older people have been spared in Mexico, where the swine flu has been most deadly.
Indeed, today, a senior official of the World Health Organization said that people who get - and recover from - swine flu now would be more protected from a similar virus in the future than people who do not get swine flu.Professor John Oxford at St. Bart's and the Royal London Hospital says there's some reason for cautious optimism.
"In one sense, it's one of the mildest shifts because most people on the planet have got some memory, have come across H1N1 viruses since 1978," Oxford says.
Even though health officials are calling this new virus H1N1, that's also the type of virus that's in wide circulation today. And it has an interesting history. It was the dominant flu virus through the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Oxford says it disappeared in 1957, when it was displaced by another flu virus. But then a strain of H1N1 suddenly reappeared in 1977...
The descendents of this virus are still circulating. He notes that most people who have encountered the newly emerged H1N1 virus seem to have developed only mild disease, and he speculates that's because we have all been exposed to a distant cousin, the H1N1 virus that emerged in the 1970s.
"That escaped virus perhaps will provide some benefit now in the face of this pig thing," Oxford says.
This is well-informed speculation, not iron-clad assurance.
Specifically, Keiji Fukuda - former chief epidemiologist in the influenza branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and now WHO's "flu chief" - said that influenza infections generally confer some degree of immunity "for a couple of years." (Fukuda told reporters that after a few years "the viruses themselves change enough so that it's kind of a new virus for your body" and people become susceptible again.)Given that the swine flu is currently not very lethal, but it could mutate to become more lethal, that raises the question of whether getting swine flu now might be a good thing - as it might help build at least some resistance to potentially lethal future mutations.
Note: I am not a medical or health care professional, and this does not constitute health care advice or information. You should not make any medical or health-related decisions without first consulting a medical doctor.
All I'm pointing out is that the fears of contracting swine flu are currently overblown, at least for people who do not have other health problems and while the virus is still relatively harmless .
U.S. Votes For 9/11-Style Commission To Probe Financial Crisis
Am I excited that "US lawmakers voted Wednesday to create a 9/11-style commission of experts to probe the causes of last year’s devastating financial meltdown and to draw lessons to prevent its recurrence"?
Of course.
The 9/11 Commission has - in retrospect - expressed confidence in the whole process:
- The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations
- The co-chairs also said that the CIA (and likely the White House) "obstructed our investigation"
- Indeed, they said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn't bother to tell the American people (free subscription required)
- 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only "the first draft" of history
- 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."
- 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"
- Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up"
- 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said that “We purposely put together a staff that had – in a way - conflicts of interest"
- The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) - who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry - said "At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened". He also said "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described .... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true."
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley has also expressed confidence in the process:
[The 9/11 Commission] was a commission that was really made for Washington - a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties - a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals. So it's the ideal Washington commission - a commission that would investigate without any repercussions.And the 9/11 Commission did everything possible to ensure that it received open, unbiased evidence from its witnesses, including being nice enough to provide "minders" to watch over the witnesses for their own protection.
Well, it is true (as explored in the book The Commission by respected journalist Philip Shenon), that the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was an administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of "public myths" thought to be true, even if not actually true. He wrote an outline of what he wanted the report to say very early in the process, controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission's inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this article and this article).
And sure, the 9/11 Commission's findings were almost entirely based on testimony extracted by torture from crazy guys.
Elliot Spitzer Lambasts the New York Fed
If you want to know how well the New York Fed protects the American public's interests, read this.
Facing the Shadow: How We Can Take Back Control
The main thing keeping us from fixing our problems is our faulty assumption that it would be impossible or take too much effort.
We bite our tongues because we don't have quick and brilliant oratory skills, not knowing that studies show that we simply have to speak our minds to make a difference.
We assume that we don't have the necessary level of barroom-brawl type testosterone, forgetting that courage actually comes from the passion to protect something we love.
We assume that we are powerless, but we actually have the power (especially if we show up with a bunch of friends).
We keep our heads down and try not to rock the boat too much, not realizing that united we stand, protected.
We have lost all energy because we have lost hope, failing to see that hope is not an emotional mood that others give us, but fierce determination to make the world a saner place.
But we are stronger than we have realized in our sleepwalking trance over the last number of years, and we can face the problems and reclaim a better life.
Facing the Shadow
Deepak Chopra wrote a widely-read essay yesterday, saying:
The question of torture won't go away. It would be easier to talk about moving ahead... This is one of those moments when painful truth is the only way to heal...There are demons in the closet, and shutting the door on them won't make them go away. Better to deal with it now...Lay everything out, however painful. The aim should not be punishment but detoxification...Not only should the right wing and the war-makers tell the truth, but so should those politicians, including Democrats, who passively went along with what their conscience told them was dead wrong...Then let's see where the truth leads us...The road away from torture is the road back to America. Can we all agree on that?
In the past, the vast majority of Americans never wanted to bother learning much about where money comes from, how the banks operate, or the laws that govern the economic players. We assumed that someone - the Fed, the Treasury, the government, the SEC, someone - would keep a steady hand on the tiller and keep the big boys honest. As a New York Times Op-Ed said last year, "the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking ... should get its share of the blame" for the financial crisis
Barbara Bush famously said about the Iraq war: "Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Indeed, the classic image of our relationship as civilians to those in the military, special forces and clandestine intelligence forces is that patriotic "rough men" (using Tom Clancy's phrase) would do the necessary, unsavory things to keep us safe, and that we should not even ask - let alone question - what they do in our name.
Because we are so civilized and don't want to get our hands dirty, we have not questioned where our meat comes from. We didn't even know that much of it is raised in factory farms which are disease incubators for swine flu, antibiotic-resistant staph, and other plagues.What do all of these things have in common?
Our failure to face the shadow side of life has allowed unscrupulous characters to muck things up.
That's why we're in this mess: we haven't been willing to face the shadow side of things. We've wanted to keep our hands clean, and so we've let others do the dirty work.
But we've been letting others run amok for so long that they're literally destroying our basic economy, our fundamental national security, our health and our way of life.
Not Too LateIts easy to kill a monster while its small. Its very hard to get rid of the darn thing once its full-grown.
Because we haven't dealt with the shadow side of life, the problems have gotten pretty big. The tentacles from the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and the industrial meat lobby have entwined themselves in more of our formerly-democratic institutions, and its become a little bit harder to pry them out of our government institutions.
Should we despair that its too late? Should we whine and give up hope?
Well, about a month before the American Revolutionary War, Patrick Henry said:
“They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year?”
If not now, when? Like Patrick Henry asked, when will we be stronger?
We missed the chance to kill the monster when it was still small. Let's act before it gets much bigger.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Banks Are the Largest Abusers of Offshore Tax Havens
Enron was lambasted for using offshore tax havens and complicated corporate structures to avoid paying taxes.
But the big banks are worse.
As the Financial Times notes:
In recent separate surveys by the US Government Accountability Office and the Tax Justice Network, the largest user of tax havens in every country surveyed was a bank. Tax authorities have enormous problems puzzling out these structures. If they can, it is often hard to characterise them as shams.
Will Obama Seize Americans' 401k and IRA Funds?
There is a rumor floating around that Obama will seize Americans' retirement funds, like Argentina and some other countries have done.
Two investment newsletters - Green Chip Review and The Mining Speculator - have recently claimed that the 401k seizure is a sure thing.
Is this just crazy talk, or is there something to it?
And in October of 2008, the idea of confiscating private 401k and IRA accounts and replacing them with government accounts gained wide traction. See this, this, this, and this.
But are those plans still in the works, or has the idea been abandoned?
In January, Larry Grossman, Managing Director of Sovereign International Pension Services, said:
Obama's "Ongoing Loyalty To Wall Street Is A Virus That Holds Far More Danger Than The Swine Flu. [His] Economic Team Needs To Be Put In Quarantine"
Arianna Huffington has the quote of the day:
The Obama administration's ongoing loyalty to Wall Street is a virus that holds far more danger than the swine flu (sorry, the H1N1). And the fact that the stress test results to be released on Thursday are unlikely to show the full extent of the sickness of our financial system is one more symptom that Obama's economic team needs to be put in quarantine -- and replaced by people willing to put the public interest ahead of the interests of Wall Street.
Bernanke: “Readings From the Credit Default Swap Market and Other Indicators Show that Substantial Concerns About the Banking Industry Remain”
Bernanke actually said something intelligent today:
Readings from the credit default swap market and other indicators show that substantial concerns about the banking industry remain.
Roubini: "Transferring Risk from Taxpayers to Creditors.. Is Fair.. These Are the Guys Who Served Alcohol to the Banks Just Before They Took Off
Roubini has a good piece in the Wall Street Journal today.
Here's the best quote:
It is highly likely that some of these large banks will be insolvent, given the various estimates of aggregate losses. The government has got to come up with a plan to deal with these institutions that does not involve a bottomless pit of taxpayer money. This means it will have the unenviable tasks of managing the systemic risk resulting from the failure of these institutions and then managing it in receivership. But it will also mean transferring risk from taxpayers to creditors. This is fair: Metaphorically speaking, these are the guys who served alcohol to the banks just before they took off down the highway.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Wolfram Alpha: A Force For Good Or a New Propaganda Outlet?
Everyone agrees that the "next big thing" on the web is Wolfram Alpha. Instead of searching like Google, Wolfram Alpha will use artificial intelligence to directly answer your question.
There is no doubt that the guy behind Wolfram Alpha, Stephen Wolfram, is a genius. And I have absolutely no evidence that Dr. Wolfram is himself a propagandist.
However, it strikes me that something touted by all the mainstream media as having the potential to replace Google, - and that gives "official" answers to questions - has alot of potential for propaganda.
For example, if I type in "Iraq War" into Wolfram Alpha's engine, will I get back an answer like
A war based on false pretenses which was so expensive that it has bankrupted Americaor will I get back something like
A necessary campaign in fighting terrorism and making the world safe for democracy
If the later, it will just be a new outlet for propaganda.
Especially given that the Department of Homeland Security apparently considers everyone in the "alternative media" to be terrorists (see this, this and this), there is little doubt that government propagandists would at least like to use Wolfram Alpha to "guide" web surfers to the "correct" answer.
Support Our Troops: Prosecute Torture
I have previously argued that failure to prosecute the officials who ordered torture will undermine the national security of the United States.
Today, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed concern that Bush administration torture may now be used against U.S. troops for years to come - echoing the statements of John McCain.
Please think this through . . .
If we prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and company for torture and hold them accountable, we will show that we do not support torture as a nation. So others will be less likely to use torture against our troops in the future.
Wells Fargo Fails the Stress Test
Wells Fargo has failed the stress test.
Given that Wells is insolvent, that's not surprising.
Was Torture Really Part of a Religious Crusade?
Conservative Christians were the biggest backers of the Iraq war.
Churchgoers were more likely to back torture of suspected terrorists than atheists (and see this).
One of the top Pentagon officials involved in the Iraq war - General William Boykin - literally:
Sees the "war on terror" as a religious war between Judeo-Christian civilization and Satan, with Islam of course cast in the latter role.
Jeremy Scahill describes Boykin as:
A Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Bush. Boykin was part of Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle at the Pentagon where he was placed in charge of hunting "high-value targets." Boykin was one of the key U.S. officials in establishing what critics alleged was death-squad-type activity in Iraq.
Boykin's crusade is also important because one of his assigned jobs was:
Speeding up the flow of intelligence on terrorist leaders to combat teams in the field so that they can attack top-ranking terrorist leaders. It can easily be speculated that it is this urgency to obtain intelligence, and an uncompromising religious outlook backed by a [crusader] mentality, that has led to the lower echelons in the US military to adopt Saddam Hussein-like brutalities.Moreover, the U.S. military has just been busted trying to convert Afghanis to Christianity (the same thing happened in Iraq).
As Scahill notes:
What's more, the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge US base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the US military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners.The bottom line is that - while torture was ordered by the highest level Bush administration officials in order to create a false link between 9/11 and Iraq - it seems like many of those who enthusiastically rallied around torture looked at it, literally, as a religious crusade.
The Officials Who Created the Torture Program Used The Old Playbook
The godfather of the Neoconservative movement - Leo Strauss - taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion.
As I have previously written:
Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of the current administration. Indeed, some of the main neocon players were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years. Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli.Therefore, it is unknown whether the Bush administration officials who created the torture program actually believed that the brown-skinned people they wished to torture were Satan-worshippers who needed either to be converted or destroyed.
Strauss believed that "A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured" (quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).
More likely, they just followed the old Straussian playbook in creating a threat which didn't exist - Satanic Muslims who wanted to take over the world - and using religion to rally the mid- and lower-level participants in the torture program to carry out their orders.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Unless We Stand Up and Demand Safe Meat Production, Next Time We WILL Have a Plague
McClatchy points out that 6 0f the 8 genetic segments in the current swine flu come from a 1990's outbreak on a large North Carolina pig farm:
The new H1N1 influenza virus that continues to spread through the U.S. has ancestry in a swine flu outbreak that first struck a North Carolina hog farm more than 10 years ago, according to scientists studying the strain's genetic makeup....
Two of the segments, [Raul Rabadan, a Columbia University scientist] said, appear to come from Eurasia and are somewhat mysterious in origin. The other six can be traced to the North American pig outbreak, which turned out to include a combination of avian, swine and human flu..."Pigs are amazing mixing bowls for creating new viruses," said Bob Martin, senior officer at the Pew Environmental Group. Martin was executive director of the study.
"It's a matter of when, not if," Martin said of the creation of new viruses on factory hog farms. "The structure of the system is the problem."
Saturday, May 2, 2009
"This Particular Strain of Flu Got its Genetic Start on U.S. Hog Farms Back in the 1990s. That's According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control"
The theory that industrial hog farms are disease incubators has been officially verified.
For example, Scientific American wrote an article yesterday asking:
Is so-called swine flu really just another environmental problem associated with factory farming?
After all, such large operations keep the animals in close confinement, dope them with antibiotics to keep them alive in the crowded conditions and create vast pools and piles of waste—all good ways to promote the spread of any disease.
Other health threats, such as antibiotic-resistant strains of staphylococcus aureus, have emerged from pig farms as well.
Nevertheless, this H1N1 strain has not yet been found in the pigs near La Gloria, nor is it clear how it would have jumped from the factory farm to little Edgar.
But what is clear thanks to the hard work of virologists is that this particular strain of flu got its genetic start on U.S. hog farms back in the 1990s. That's according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. How the virus jumped from pigs to humans may have nothing to do with factory farms, but confined animal feeding operations helped to breed the disease.
Stress Tests: A P.R. Stunt Devised by the Banking Industry
There's a major leak at a nuclear power plant, ultimately traced to a defective design in the concrete containment shell.
The faulty design was caused by a faulty model which showed that the containment shell would withstand a 7.0 earthquake when - in fact - it would not even withstand a 3.0 earthquake.
All of the big nuclear plants use the same design. And so they are all at risk.
The nuclear industry does not want to admit how dangerous the potential problem might be, or to spend the money to fix it. So the CEOs of the big nuclear power companies call up the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, himself the former CEO of one of the nuclear giants.
The NRC chief himself had been under pressure from the public to crack down on the faulty shell design, and so he was looking for a way to take the heat off of his agency.
Over drinks at the bar of a luxury hotel, the good old boys discuss their problem. They decide that what's needed is an examination to reassure the public that everything is okay with the power plants.
So the power company CEOs come up with a series of test procedures - using their old models - to show that the plants could withstand a level 7.0 or greater earthquake. (The NRC discovers that an 8.0 earthquake is forecast next to one of the power plants, but it doesn't insist anyone changes its models, it just says it will get tougher with the companies).
After the examinations are conducted, the NRC announces that one-third of the power plants need to reinforce their containment shells. The power company chieftans are furious, and engage in negotiations with the NRC to try to give more favorable results, so that they don't have to spend the money to reinforce their buildings.
Virtually all of the independent (non-industry) nuclear engineers say that the companies' models are faulty, that the NRC is not releasing sufficient details on how the models were run, that the models should have been run using the more realistic scenario (an 8.0 earthquake), that this isn't the kind of thing you "negotiate" over, that the containment shells at all of the big nuclear plants are defective and are likely to lead to meltdowns, and that the potential of additional accidents from weak concrete shells could cause severe problems to the country.
Stressed Out
This is exactly the situation occurring with the bank "stress tests" administered by the Treasury Department.
The tests are being administered by consummate banking industry insider Tim Geithner.
As the New York Times pointed out in February:
Treasury and Fed officials said they had consulted with industry executives in devising the tests.In other words, the banks helped devise the tests, and the tests won't produce any new information, but are being conducted as a p.r. stunt.
Bank executives reached over the weekend said that the tests might not produce information that is very different from what regulators already know about the banks. The Federal Reserve already has hundreds of examiners on site at the largest banks, monitoring their businesses.
In addition, the stress tests used the models created by the banks themselves:
The banks submitted results using their own methodologies, and most important for the big capital markets players like Citi and Bank of America, their own risk models...These were the same models which got the banks into the financial mess in the first place.
There was no verification of underlying accounting and loan books, not even a teeny bit of sampling.
And now, the banks are negotiating the stress test results with Treasury.
Virtually all of the independent banking experts say the stress tests are a hoax.
- PhD economist Nouriel Roubini said that the stress tests used scenarios more optimistic than what the economy is actually experiencing, saying:
Stress Testing the Stress Test Scenarios: Actual Macro Data Are Already Worse than the More Adverse Scenario for 2009 in the Stress Tests. So the Stress Tests Fail the Basic Criterion of Reality Check Even Before They Are Concluded...
In other terms, the results of the stress test – even before they are published – are not worth the paper they are written on as they make assumptions on the economy that are much more optimistic –even in the worst scenarios that the FDIC has designed - than the actual figures for Q1 of 2009.
- Paul Krugman said that the stress tests are merely a "self-esteem class" for the banks
- FDIC chief Sheila Bair has said the tests are a sham
- Former senior S&L regulator William Black previously called the stress tests a sham and a hoax
- The chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Elizabeth Warren, is highly sceptical of the stress tests
- Indeed, the Federal Reserve itself has more or less admitted that the stress tests do not really measure solvency, saying:
"Even if the tests showed a bank needs more capital, that "is not a measure of the current solvency or viability of the firm".
Once it became clear that even the worst-case scenario under the stress tests was much milder than actual conditions, Geithner and company didn't insist anyone change the inputs to the models, but just promised without detail that he would "get tougher" with the banks.
And just like the nuclear power analogy, the banks are now arguing about the cooked-up results, trying to avoid doing anything that would meaningfully reduce the actual risk to the economy.
Friday, May 1, 2009
International Monetary Fund Slowly Taking Over as Global Economic Regulator and Banker
AP writes:
The Group of 20 countries have made the [IMF] the linchpin in their efforts to combat the worst economic downturn since the Great DepressionThe Washington Post notes:
(Actually, the IMF began the review last year - under the condition that the results not be released until Bush was out of office).Global financial chiefs agreed yesterday to reshape the International Monetary Fund, moving to broaden its mission ...
The IMF, which in recent years had become largely an advisory body to nations in crisis, will now be charged with aggressive monitoring of the global economy. Underscoring that role, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said yesterday that Washington had consented to a rigorous IMF review of the U.S. financial system for the first time since the fund was created at the end of World War II.
The Truth About Pig Farms
When I was a boy, my school sent my class on a field trip to a chicken processing plant.
I was astonished at the blood and guts, as chickens were conveyed on an assembly line to be zapped, beheaded, de-feathered, cleaned, and then packaged for sale.
The facility was highly sanitary, all gleaming stainless steel surfaces, with efficient catch-basins to instantly whisk the blood away.
While the plant was clean, the facility where the chickens were raised wasn't. However, that was before the meat industry started using giant "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs ), like the one in Mexico which may have spawned the swine flu outbreak.
CAFOs are not only inhumane - animals are usually packed in so tightly they can't even turn around, and the conditions are so unhealthy that the animals usually have to be pumped with huge amounts of medicines just to keep them alive - but they are also notorious incubators for diseases that can harm people.
As David Kirby - who is writing a new book on industrial animal production - writes this week:
Pigs are nature's notorious "mixing bowls" for inter-species infections, and many swine flu viruses have long contained human influenza genetic components...
For years, leading scientists around the world have worried that large-scale, indoor swine "factories" would become breeding grounds for new pathogens that could more easily infect humans and then spread out rapidly in the general population - threatening to become a global pandemic.
We know that hog workers in Europe and North America are far more likely than others to be infected with potentially lethal pathogens such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), drug-resistant E. coli and Salmonella, and of course, swine influenza. Many scientists also believe that people who work inside CAFOs are more at risk of contracting and spreading these and other "zoonotic" diseases than those working in smaller-scale operations, with outdoor pens or pasture and far lower animal density...
Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a lengthy report on factory farming that included research on emerging forms of avian-swine-human influenza viruses[:]
The continual cycling of swine influenza viruses and other animal pathogens in large herds or flocks provides increased opportunity for the generation of novel viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmission of these viruses. In addition, agricultural workers serve as a bridging population between their communities and the animals in large confinement facilities. This bridging increases the risk of novel virus generation in that human viruses may enter the herds or flocks and adapt to the animals.Reassortant influenza viruses with human components have ravaged the modern swine industry. Such novel viruses not only put the workers and animals at risk of infections, but also potentially increase zoonotic disease transmission risk to the communities where the workers live. For instance, 64% of 63 persons exposed to humans infected with H7N7 avian influenza virus had serological evidence of H7N7 infection following the 2003 Netherlands avian influenza outbreak in poultry. Similarly, the spouses of swine workers who had no direct contact with pigs had increased odds of antibodies against swine influenza virus. Recent modeling work has shown that among communities where a large number of CAFO workers live, there is great potential for these workers to accelerate pandemic influenza virus transmission.
"We met with a team of researchers from the University of Iowa who are studying avian flu, and their real concern was the very scenario that may have happened in Mexico - that avian flu may get into a swine CAFO and rapidly mutate and then get passed to workers, and then on to other people very quickly," Bob Martin, who was executive director of the now-disbanded commission and currently a Senior Officer at the Pew Environmental Group, told me.
"Their concern was that new strains of avian flu combining with swine flu could make the swine flu more deadly," he said. "And because viruses pass so easily between pigs and people, the new avian component could make swine flu more virulent."
Researchers such as Gregory Gray, MD, a University of Iowa professor of international epidemiology and expert in zoonotic infections, warned that CAFO workers could serve as a "bridging population" to rural communities sharing viruses with the pigs, and vice-versa. Other scientists suggested that CAFO workers could theoretically spread disease quickly to great distances. An outbreak of infectious avian flu on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, for example, could reach the Rocky Mountains within 36 hours.
The Iowa team was also worried that CAFO production could lead to another 1918-style global pandemic. One theory behind that calamity is that waterfowl cross-infected U.S. pigs with a new type of avian-swine super-virus that was quickly transmitted to farm workers, possibly in Iowa, who went off to military training camps for WWI, and then spread the pathogen worldwide
"One very big concern was that swine flu mixed with wild bird flu, or bird flu in a chicken CAFO, tended to be ripe for incubating new types of viral infections, especially since the animals are so densely packed together," Bob Martin said...
Smithfield Foods Operated on All 3 Continents Where Swine Flu Strains Originated
You have heard that this swine flu is a combination of European, Asian and North American strains.
And you know that the outbreak may have started at the giant Granjas Carrol hog farm in Vera Cruz, Mexico , and that the world's largest pork producer - Smithfield Foods - is 50% owner of Granjas Carrol.
But you might not know that:"Smithfield has controlling interests in [hog] processing plants in Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom, and smaller interests in plants in Western Europe, Mexico, and China."In other words, Smithfield has hog processing plants in all 3 relevant continents - Europe, Asia, and North America.
Indeed, health experts say that different strains of swine flu can be mixed by birds, humans or pork products or feed:
Does Smithfield ship feed or pork products between its different facilities?The question, then, is could the Asian avian virus contain swine flu components from Eurasian pigs?
"Absolutely," said Ellen Silbergeld, professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a leading researcher of pathogen evolution in CAFOs. "A pig infected by avian virus can then come into contact with swine virus, which then combines and gets picked up by a bird again. It's a viral patchwork. Wild birds can carry virus with swine components in it - a lot of avian viruses contain elements from pigs."
Silbergeld is by no means convinced that birds brought the Eurasian genetic material to Mexico.
"Pig's don't fly, but pork does," she said. "There is an active international transfer of all kinds of animal products, including food, food components, animal waste, offal, feed made of rendered animals and so on. Some of it is imported from Asia or Europe."
And of course, people fly, too. Dr. Silbergeld thinks that human travel is the most likely way that Eurasian swine viral components made their way to Mexico. "A tourist from China could have gone to Mexico City, and that Asian strain was picked up by somebody else, who then went to a swine barn," she suggested. "It's a likely explanation. Sometimes we overestimate what wild birds can do."
Smithfield's operations should be examined to see if it is mixing food, food components, waste, offal or feed from its facilities in different continents in an unsafe manner.
Some Experts Think This Could Be WORSE than the Great Depression
The following experts have said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:
- Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
- Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O'Rourke (updated here)
- Investment advisor, risk expert and "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker
- Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
- Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin
- Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber
- Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead
- Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker
- Former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto
- Billionaire investor George Sorors
- Senior British minister Ed Balls
And many experts believe that we have already been in at least a mild depression.
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