Swine flu: One killer virus, three key questions : Nature News –This is a deadly dull report until you get near the end and read about this experimentation. If these labs were not constantly breached, I’d be happier.

A deadly line-up of viruses is locked up in the computer-controlled safes at the Jean Mérieux/INSERM biosecurity level four (BSL-4) facility in Lyon, France, including Ebola, Nipah, Lassa, Hendra and Marburg. And in the next few weeks, scientists working there are planning to manufacture a new resident. They hope to test whether the highly transmissible pandemic H1N1 virus could reassort with its deadlier cousin, the H5N1 avian flu, to make a virus with the worst properties of both.

Over the summer, Lina’s team has been using the BSL-4 facility to investigate the likelihood that pandemic H1N1 will acquire resistance to the front-line antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) through reassortment, and how easily these reassortments might spread. Resistance can emerge by spontaneous mutation, but given that seasonal H1N1 is already resistant to the drug and spreads easily, reassortment is perhaps the most likely way that pandemic H1N1 will acquire resistance — especially as seasonal H1NI and pandemic H1N1 are the same subtype. Since the start of the pandemic, Tamiflu-resistant strains have sporadically appeared in several countries but none has yet gained a foothold. That they haven’t arisen more often or spread more easily may be because there is little seasonal H1N1 circulating, as pandemic H1N1 is outcompeting it — a large number of co-infections are needed for transmissible reassortments to arise.

Washington Post- Nov. 17, 2009:

The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to get enough to eat.

At a time when rising poverty, widespread unemployment and other effects of the recession have been well documented, the report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides the government’s first detailed portrait of the toll that the faltering economy has taken on Americans’ access to food.

The magnitude of the increase in food shortages — and, in some cases, outright hunger — identified in the report startled even the nation’s leading anti-poverty advocates, who have grown accustomed to longer lines lately at food banks and soup kitchens.

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years.

Doctors learned why Ukrainians dying! total destruction of the lungs cardiogenic shock is developed, which causes cardiac standstill and death mixed types of parainfluenza & influenza A/N1N1, very toxic strain able to penetrate not only through respiratory apparatus but also through the eyes. All victims of the virus in Bukovyna 22 people at the age of 20-40 died not from bilateral pneumonia, as was previously thought, but as a result of viral distress syndrome, i.e the total destruction of the lungs.

While you wait for actual Big Media coverage, read this related story here.

In Japan, being thin isn’t just the price you pay for fashion or social acceptance. It’s the law.

So before the fat police could throw her in pudgy purgatory, Miki Yabe, 39, a manager at a major transportation corporation, went on a crash diet last month. In the week before her company’s annual health check-up, Yabe ate 21 consecutive meals of vegetable soup and hit the gym for 30 minutes a day of running and swimming.

“It’s scary,” said Yabe, who is 5 feet 3 inches and 133 pounds. “I gained 2 kilos [4.5 pounds] this year.”

In Japan, already the slimmest industrialized nation, people are fighting fat to ward off dreaded metabolic syndrome and comply with a government-imposed waistline standard. Metabolic syndrome, known here simply as “metabo,” is a combination of health risks, including stomach flab, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that can lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Concerned about rising rates of both in a graying nation, Japanese lawmakers last year set a maximum waistline size for anyone age 40 and older: 85 centimeters (33.5 inches) for men and 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) for women.

In the United States, the Senate and House health care reform bills have included the so-called “Safeway Amendment,” which would offer reductions in insurance premiums to people who lead fitter lives. The experience of the Japanese offers lessons in how complicated it is to legislate good health.

Step 2. Don’t get any health care plan.

Step 3. If you do get really sick, just buy any health insurance plan (they won’t be able to deny you), get the care you need, then opt out.

The best part is, you will not have to pay the additional 2,5% income tax, because Section 501 of H.R. 3962 exempts you:

Subsection (a) shall not apply to any individual (and any qualifying child residing with such individual) for any period if such individual has in effect an exemption which certifies that such individual is a member of a recognized religious sect or division thereof described in section 1402(g)(1) and an adherent of established tenets or teachings of such sect or division as described in such section.

I hope they don’t fix this giant loophole. (Note: I still have to figure out what this section 1402(g)(1) is.)

Since our current system doesn’t work what with continually rising costs that are unsustainable, millions uninsured, the country’s financial health in bad shape and on and on, what should we do? With so many aspects and facets to the problem to consider, which ones are most important?

From minor tweaks to scrapping it all and starting over, where do you stand?

Look at the question from two perspectives. First, what would you do if you could wave a magic wand and start over without politicians being involved? In other words, the health care system of your dreams.

Second, given where we are and the idiotic political realities of the US these days, what are the politically and monetarily feasible changes to what we now have that you would like to see?

House Committee on Ways & Means – Republican — This kind of solves the problem if you think of it. Jails have health care.

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp R-MI released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation JCT confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill H.R. 3962, as amended could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax generally 2.5% of income, are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

Found by Matt Duvall.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

I saw this yesterday at the Airport, with the version in French being right beside this poster.