A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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January 08, 2006Bird flu and OilI wanted to convey some information I've gleamed on these subjects and thought I'd combine them into one post. Bird Flu Here is a link to the web site run by the International Society for Infectious Diseases . It's a nice site for getting information straight from the horses mouth. Although it does link to MSM sites, it also posts reports directly from the doctors involved and other pertinent organizations. A resent post about Turkey is a little disturbing. A combination of ignorance, paranoia and poverty seems to be setting the stage for overwhelming the governments response to the current outbreak. On the other hand Turkey's recent push to become part of the European union has made it a much more open society. We have a much better chance of seeing how things unfold than trying to monitor Asia. Update: Increased interest in the bird flu seems to have caused so much traffic that its crashing related web sites. Flu wiki was down but has returned to service. ProMED-mail is off line. Kind of makes we wonder what will happen during an actual pandemic. Oil For more information about U.S. Oil consumption here is a nice link. Although you have to be careful looking at the graphs, they like to use running averages. Also they like to display “average range”, even though consumption goes up every year. Posted by BobJYoung at January 8, 2006 02:42 PMComments
The thing to watch with bird flu is mutation to a form that allows direct human-to-human transmission. Without that, the victims will continue to be confined to those in close contact with infected birds. But if and when that mutation occurs, it's time to stay home with the doors locked for a month or two. Emergency stocks are not just for storms and earthquakes. Strangely (according to an infectious-disease physician I know) the healthy can often have higher death rates from such a virus than those already fighting another viral disease, even just a cold. The danger is that the virus can get a real foothold in the body before the immune system can get rolling, and overwhelm the body defenses through sheer speed. Those already fighting off another virus already have their immune systems "activated," and can often fight off the infection long enough to develop the proper antibodies and immunities before the infection progresses to lethality. Odd idea. I'd love some added confirmation on that one. Posted by: Tully at January 8, 2006 04:19 PMBird Flu: Kind of a stretch with the bird flu thing and the Kurds. There is absolutely no connection between the two. Nor is there any evidence that there might someday be such a connection. Oil: That first graph you show is truncated. This exaggerates the difference between the data points. Using truncated graphs is considered bad form in statistics for precisely that reason. If you look at the complete graph you’ll see that the differences are relatively small over time. To their credit, the original poster of the graph showed both the truncated graph and the whole from which it came (as did you, to your credit). At any rate none of the graphs illustrate what is supposed to be your point about the relative petroleum consumption between the US and China. Maybe a graph showing that relationship and how it is changing over time would be more helpful. On oil, So you all did hear that Kuwait is reporting that their second largest field has peaked? http://uschatter.com/index.php?p=361 when ic omes to oil consumption it really dosen't matter who's to "blame", oil is completly fungable and the only relivent numbers fro world prices are total consumption vs production. Yes, I heard that. Febuary 1971 actually, almost to the month of the prediction. Posted by: Rick DeMent at January 9, 2006 01:44 PMOn bird flu: You all did notice, didn't you, that the bird flu case was in the part of Turkey where Kurds are the majority? Which is a connection of a kind, but would seem to suggest that the Kurds (in Iraq) would incline to NOT going for a formal break just now. Because doing so would give a good chance that the Turks would do something that would cause a lot more chaos in "Kurdistan" . . . and thus more Kurds dying of bird flu, too. Plenty of time to declare formal independence when there is less prospect of biological, as well as military, deaths as a result. Posted by: wj at January 9, 2006 02:14 PMI just found out today that the hardest hit region in Turkey is the Kurdish area. |
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