A Networked World

Swine flu - is it a test tube accident?

The conspiracy theorists will be ALL over this, because they will assume that if you can have an accident in a test tube, you can have a deliberate act in a test tube. Frankly I don't think we are that smart yet, but accidents? They are the mechanism of evolution. Now get this.

The World Health Organisation is investigating a claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.

Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche's Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus's origins by analysing its genetic blueprint.

The World Health Organisation received the study last weekend and is reviewing it, Keiji Fukuda, the agency's assistant director-general of health security and environment, said in an interview. Gibbs, who has studied germ evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists to analyse the genetic makeup of the virus that was identified three weeks ago in Mexico and threatens to touch off the first flu pandemic since 1968.

A virus that resulted from lab experimentation or vaccine production may indicate a greater need for security, Fukuda said. By pinpointing the source of the virus, scientists also may better understand the microbe's potential for spreading and causing illness, Gibbs said.

Possible mistake

[...] Gibbs and two colleagues analysed the publicly available sequences of hundreds of amino acids coded by each of the flu virus's eight genes. He said he aims to submit his three-page paper today for publication in a medical journal.

[...]The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has received the report and has decided there is no evidence to support Gibbs's conclusion, said Nancy Cox, director of the agency's influenza division. She said since researchers don't have samples of swine flu viruses from South America and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, those regions can't be ruled out as natural sources for the new flu.

No evidence

''We are interested in the origins of this new influenza virus,'' Cox said. ''But contrary to what the author has found, when we do the comparisons that are most relevant, there is no evidence that this virus was derived by passage in eggs.''

On the other hand, absence of evidence is not evidence and they ARE taking it seriously.

The WHO's collaborative influenza research centers, which includes the CDC, and sites in Memphis, Melbourne, London and Tokyo, were asked by the international health agency to review the study over the weekend, Fukuda said. The request was extended to scientists at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, as well as the WHO's influenza network, he said.

[...] Gibbs said his analysis supports research by scientists including Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, who found the new strain is the product of two distinct lineages of influenza that have circulated among swine in North America and Europe for more than a decade.

In addition, his research found the rate of genetic mutation in the new virus outpaced that of the most closely related viruses found in pigs, suggesting it evolved outside of swine, Gibbs said.

[...] Gibbs said he has no evidence that the swine-derived virus was a deliberate, man-made product.

The fact is that there is no evidence of the flu in the pig farms near the human source of this virus and the only pigs that appear to have contracted it in North America seem to have picked it up from people, so the question about its origin is deadly serious.

As we push the environment harder and harder, both outside in the world and inside in the lab, we increase the number of opportunities for weirdness.

And whatever the answer, this sucker is definitely weird.

I hate it when my side scams an emergency

We have enough to worry about with the pandemic possibilities of the new flu virus, so we don't need this.

Swine flu: investigate and regulate.

Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to giant factory pig farms that are dirty, dangerous, and inhumane. Let's call on the United Nations World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation to investigate and regulate these farms to protect global health. Big agrobusiness will try to obstruct any attempts at reform, so we need a massive outcry that health authorities can't ignore.

It arrived in an email this morning, my reply

I'm 100% in favour of your campaign to eradicate disgraceful conditions for pigs in factory farms, wherever they may be.

However, this is not acceptable.

1. You do not link to any evidence that this is so, not in the email, nor on the website, this is poor, not to say unethical, practise.

2. I receive regular updates from a pandemic watch group (these days several updates a day) whose organiser is desperately concerned that we will be unprepared for the pandemic when it hits and deeply critical of the WHO and its leadership over the years since pandemic flu has been on the radar.

He has no torch to carry for any diminution of valid alarm. But I received this from him the other day

I can tell you something that is very key to this and that is that so far, so far there is NO link in pigs in Mexico to the outbreak. There HAS to be a smoking gun that gave this to people and so far, smoking pork isn't it. Pork is perfectly safe, but do remember NO CLEAVERS and no high speed cutting machines without eye, mouth and nose protection. This is whats driving everyone nutz. The pigs are supposed to be the carriers and the only new carriers found are in Canada, infected by a Mexican worker. So where in the heck did this stuff come from. Are we to believe that maybe one pig gave it to a human? Its possible but there are no secondary cases in the pigs. Pigs are being sampled by the thousands in old Mexico and they have come back zip...Even in the town that had 400 cases of the disease and is a pig producing town.

Some say it was contaminated sewage runoff into the water... Okay, it happens but not very often. Sunlight kills viruses. Have to be a very robust bug to get past that. Then there is the virus itself H1N1 base, A+B, C and bird bug. Randomization of all things? Lotta people are scratching their heads, where did this come from? Better than that...Where is it going? Many people were unhappy with Auntie Margaret (SARS) Chan and her appointment as Director General two years ago. I had a lot of misgivings because she is a politician with a doctors degree. On the other hand, she is getting this one right.

If Randolph says there isn't a connection, there isn't a connection, his antennae are tuned to nanometer level.

There are enough people trying to ride on the back of this alert, peddling fake drugs and cheap "preparedness kits' and traffic to their websites, AVAAZ should not be one of them, it is bad for their brand.

Update: to add insult to injury I just got this back

Your message was not delivered for the following reason:

    Recipient: <[email protected]>
    Reason:    5.2.2 The email account that you tried to reach is over quota.

Double stuff-up

Confusion outbreak ahead of pandemic

The paradox is that if we over-react to something that is not that bad, we crash the economy, that if we don't react fast enough we crash everything and if we do exactly what we should in the right time, we create massive distortions anyway.

But it sure as hell doesn't help when the people supposedly in charge are wall-to-wall clueless. From the SMH stockpile food and water but don't panic.

The Federal Government's pandemic plan, a 132-page manual issued to medics, media and the public, insists that once the world reaches phase five, Australians should

• stock their pantries with food and bottled water to last 14 days,
• check on elderly neighbours and
• put emergency numbers by the phone.

But yesterday a spokesman for the Department of Health and Ageing called for calm, saying the Government did not want to spark panic buying - ignoring its own plan, already issued to hospitals across the nation.

"I agree that is it confusing," the spokesman said, admitting he had not read the pandemic plan despite being employed to answer questions about it from national media.

"The manual may say people should be preparing but we don't want a run at the shops," he said.

God forbid that we have a run on the shops, it would be so much worse than having riots in the shops because people have run out of food after the supply chains have been cut. Idiot.

NZ is not a lot better. I checked with my Dr the other day and she confidently assured me that if I needed it I would have access to Tamiflu but I can't, even as an asthmatic, get some to keep on hand in case, I have to be symptomatic first.

But the recommendation for Tamiflu is that it has to be taken in the first 48 hours, during which time I may or may not be seriously symptomatic.

Also, the government has stockpiled enough Tamiflu for a third of the population, but its own planning documents say that we should expect a 40% infection rate. So I'm off to the pharmacy to find out how much they have in stock and what is the plan for gearing up when the alwert goes to stage 6. I'm not sanguine.

Inherent confusion and miscommunication is the order of the day, despite the guys at Effect Measure giving the WHO credit for what they are doing.

When it comes to local preparations, the word is still, we are probably on our own.

But an "official spokeperson" who hasn't read the plan, that should defy belief. Sadly it doesn't.

A while ago the Peak Shrink ran this piece on how Sweating the Small Stuff grinds us down.

It’s the small stuff. I know, I should be focused on losing my transportation in a place with no bus service, or whether I’ll have the mortgage next month, but that’s not what truly bugs me, and causes me a melt-down.

I know the feeling; I'm pretty much into the whole Peak Oil, economic meltdown, climate change, pandemic arena by now, I have plans and backups and strategies and I'm pretty sure that when one or another of them, maybe more than one, is declared, I wont do the stunned mullet thing with the "this can't be happening" overtones.

But dealing with the huge things, while challenging, is still a conceptual thing, even when it is actually happening. Over the last few days I've been watching an accumulation of direct and indirect small stuff and been appreciating how hard it can be to deal with.

Last night one of my dogs started having breathing problems. 11PM and 15 KM to the emergency vet who shot her full of steroids and antibiotics and I drove home with a much happier dog.

But in a constrained world I might not have the fuel to spend on a 30KM midnight dash, I might not be able to afford the $188 fee, I might not have a car at all. It was stressful enough dealing with her distress, but not being able to do anything about it till the next day, or longer? Try that for size.

My other dog has progressive loss of function in his left side (possibly a tumour pressing on his spinal chord) we are already facing the fact that he may not last much longer than his nearly 13 years, but the small stuff of actually dealing with it is the real kicker.

The other day one branch of the family had a separation after 21 years, a diagnosis of treatable bowel cancer and a fall from a ladder, all 3 people over 60, all in one day. All small enough stuff for those except the ones directly involved, but additive.

My SIL lost his job with Fujitsu a while back and with employment scarce he is planning to do a teaching diploma, meanwhile my daughter's company is pretty tight right now and can't pay her what they agree she is worth.

A colleague of my wife's, on whom she depends for critical parts of her work tried to auction her house last weekend, no bids and interest only $300K below their needed price, oh, and her daughter was made redundant yesterday. Nothing directly to do with us, but I'll bet it affects her work performance.

Small stuff, dealing with it well will be the key to whether we get through this thing or go postal.

Pandemic Rehearsals

Disasters like hurricanes and flood perform a great service by testing emergency preparedness systems and the thing they mostly show is that, beyond a certain scale such as a few trees down and some surface flooding, the systems all fail.

Which appears to be what is happening right now in Texas after IKE: Folks in Houston Living in Complete Mayhem.

I just got off the phone with my dad in Houston (after hours of trying to get through) and the situation is BAD....REAL BAD.

In fact, it is so bad that even though I grew up in Houston and have seen more than my fair share of tornados and hurricanes I was shocked at what I just heard from my dad.

I thought it was important to share the news.

My dad is forever the optimist- so when he says it's bad- it's bad!

Read the run-down. No water, no power, no petrol and above all

- No food.  There is only one grocery store open
nearby (if you can get to it) and the lines stretches for blocks.  My
dad says it is so jam-packed that there are hundreds of people waiting
to check out.  And they are so full that they can only let someone in
as someone else goes out- 2 people out, 2 people in (like they do in a
nightclub if they are over capacity). 

THEN AND ONLY THEN can you gather what little is left on the shelves.  In Houston most homes have electric stovetops so the only way to cook is if you have a gas grill.  Hotdogs and anything you can put on a grill are long gone.  Bread is gone.  All the staples are gone. They are grabbing anything they can and being creative about how to cook it.

- They have a 6 pm curfew to try to deter looters.

Meanwhile the US Government is restricting access to the media and has stopped private aviation over certain areas. In other words, they are behaving in exactly the same way as the Myanmar government did, and almost certainly for the same reason. If they can prevent the news getting out, then it didn't happen.

In a pandemic, of course, there will be not much physical damage (till the fire brigades can't respond anyway) but the dynamic infrastructure will fail very quickly and the people of Houston are having a trial run at that right now.

Don't let this one fall off your radar

Why Gaming Matters

The other day Johnnie raised something about how we play Games

What's so intriguing is how animated and committed the players become... suggesting that in an apparently pointless activity, something fundamentally important is going on... to do with our innate desire to learn and our preoccupations with relationships and status. We may think our business meetings are about the formal agenda, but I suspect we're really playing a version of Werewolf without really acknowledging it.

I think it is much, MUCH more important than that.

I think games are a huge key to what makes us tick; I think we are so wrapped into a games psychology that, like fish in water, we no longer detect it, that we can't, in fact, tell the difference between games and not-games at a very fundamental level, down among the endocrine system.

Get this, via Schenier to Clive Thompson at Wired: Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in 'Halo 3'.

But the fact remains that something quite interesting happened to me because of Halo.

Even though I've read scores of articles, white papers and books on the psychology of terrorists in recent years, and even though I have (I think) a strong intellectual grasp of the roots of suicide terrorism, something about playing the game gave me an "aha" moment that I'd never had before: an ability to feel, in whatever tiny fashion, the strategic logic and emotional calculus behind the act.

Games take us to places that we cannot, or would rather not, or should not, experience for ourselves.

And its why, whenever I get the chance, I push the notion that when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, or in fact any of the massive challenges that we face right now, we can suffer a bombardment of facts, figures and opinions and, as we do with most propaganda and other advertising shticks, ignore it, or we can be offered the chance to PLAY.

A game can put us in a place that we get to by ourselves, one that is part of who we are and the decisions we make and our attitudes, and in that psychological place we discover that we either win or lose. And if the game is a good one, we get hooked, and then we have the ahah! moment.

An Australian preview

I'm doing my thing here next week on IT and Pandemics and just finished updating the thing with a section on Australia's EI breakout. Its a horror story for anyone who is paying attention to the implications for a pandemic among humans, a real horror story, now with pitchforks and blazing faggots. This is it.

The recent outbreak of Equine Influenza in Australia is the perfect model for a human pandemic in that it demonstrates the fragility of systems, the power of the human factor, the ineffectiveness of attempts to control a virulent disease and the astronomical costs of failure.

In the 8 weeks since the outbreak, every attempt to control the virus has failed and it continues not only to spread geographically but is increasing its infection rates. In the week ending October 21 46,000 horses were known to be infected, an increase of 10,000 horses in the eighth week. While the stakes for every horse owner are enormous and every single owner has every possible reason to comply with every single regulation, the spread and infection rate is still rising and the cost is becoming horrendous.

The situation is also a perfect example of non-linear outcomes, there are about 1.2 million horses in Australia of which 46,000 are currently infected, a mere 4%, (an infection rate that is only 10% of the consensus rate for human influenza) yet every horse in the country is affected and a $6 billion plus industry may be in meltdown.

A class action law suit has now begun as horse owners look to recover the costs of that meltdown, at the date of writing the figure has already reached into the 100s of millions.

The key to the outbreak in late August 2007 is systemic failure at its strongest point; the Australian quarantine service, an organisation whose sole purpose, practise and protocol is to ensure that diseases such as EI have no chance of crossing the borders. And yet it appears that the service has been the enabler of the breach.

The sequence of events is instructive. In August 2007 there was already known to be an outbreak in Japan, the NZ Horsetalk website ran the following story on August 21.

Japan's equine flu outbreak could hobble Melbourne Cup bid

Questions remain over whether Japanese contenders in Australia's Melbourne and Caulfield Cups will be able to travel to compete in the big races after a suspected outbreak of equine flu in Japan.

[...] Race meetings in Japan were disrupted last weekend after 29 of 163 horses at a Japan Racing Association facility showed signs of influenza.

It is understand that the Japanese horses destined for the big Australian races have not been exposed, but the final decision will rest with Australian quarantine authorities.

Knowing that the horses may have been exposed, but no doubt under huge pressure from vested interests with large amounts of money at stake, the Japanese horses were allowed into the country “under quarantine” and yet, despite being completely aware of the risks they were running, EI escaped into the wild in Australia.

BTW, the horsetalk site has been doing some good writing on the subject and damn me if they haven't gathered all their stories into a timeline. First class, take a bow, what a shame all news sites don't do the same kind of thing, and as for those who drop their old stories behind a pay per View firewall, eecchh.

The Bird Men and the Plague Dogs

For the last few weeks, Australia has been providing an excellent test bed for a human pandemic: Sniffles and heartache spread to the breeders.

IN THE horse flu crisis, glimmers of good news can be swiftly overshadowed by bad. As the NSW racing industry looks to its first sign of hope today - possible approval for phantom meetings without punters this weekend - thoroughbred breeders are contemplating a total shutdown.

[...] Meanwhile, the breeding industry is pressuring the NSW and Federal governments to allow horses to be vaccinated, even though it would cost upwards of $50 million a year in NSW alone and despite doubts about its efficacy.

The head of Racing NSW, Peter V'Landys, said the industry had to consider what he called "extreme measures", including vaccinations."We had a meeting of 40 participant groups at Racing NSW today and they were unanimous that we must investigate vaccinations, no matter what the cost. That is what they have done in other jurisdictions."

The NSW Minister for Primary Industries, Ian Macdonald, acknowledged the breeding industry was in trouble. "At this point it looks pretty bleak. The thoroughbred industry is really under the hammer," he said. "We're talking tens of millions of dollars here [in costs]. It is possible that we could lose one or two years of breeding. It is very serious indeed."

[...] At the Emirates Park horse stud, which is across the road from Kulani Stud, they are taking no chances. A director of Emirates, Dr Shalabh Sahu, fears it will not be long before the disease spreads to his 400-horse estate. Staff who do not live on the site and have their own horses have been temporarily laid off; and everyone entering and leaving the estate must wash their shoes and hands with disinfectant. Dr Sahu even declines to shake hands with visitors.

"The situation is very scary," he told the Herald.

Instead of birds carrying the virus it is us, we humans are the vector, although the flu also spreads among horses of course. Stopping the horses moving is proving very difficult, even after weeks of publicity, some people are still trying to move their horses. So when it comes to closing down the movement of people in a human pandemic (as proposed by many jurisdictions) good luck with that. NOT going to happen short of shoot on sight.

What is more interesting though is the way the equine flu is spreading relentlessly through the horse population despite all the precautions and constraints; including the bizarre but valid concern that the jockeys are carrying the disease. Take out the jockeys and there goes the racing industry in a stroke, without any more horses being infected.

Which raises the most interesting part of all, and that is the external economic effects; the standstill ordered by the Government is alone enough to kill the industry and those effects are now cascading through the Australian economy. Fortunately they are trivial compared with the overall economy, but the numbers still run into hundreds of millions of dollars, and if the spring racing carnivals, especially the Melbourne cup, have to be canceled, those numbers will get very large, very quickly.

Nevertheless, this highly constrained, closed economic circle is turning into a great learning g opportunity for those wanting to study the likely effects of a pandemic among the human population where we are the victims, and not just the plague dogs.

More Pandemic Unpreparedness

I get to blather on about the role of IT in a pandemic on a regular basis and one of my key points is that, during the effective pandemic phase, IT will have almost no role to play because its networks, grids and operators will all be compromised or dead. Like this: Singapore government email, web sites go down.

Now you see them, now you don't - power outage in data centre brings down key government web sites.

Suspected power failure in a government data centre resulted in severe disruption to government email systems for most of yesterday, and many key government web sites.

The Supreme Court and Subordinate Court sites were down, along with those of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Manpower, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Transport. Other public sector agencies such as the Public Utilities Board and the Singapore Tourism Board were also down.

This is not a criticism, Singapore has one of the most together public IT sectors there is and still it is vulnerable to this kind of major disruption. The point, as Melanie Matson of Bump in the Beltway made in an email a while ago, is that people are robust and flexible but systems are fragile.

The role of IT in a pandemic will be in helping us to prepare and understand what the consequences will be and how to deal with them. Not just information dissemination but strategy development through gaming and simulation, especially gaming the rules so that the decision makers are using effective rules not ones guaranteed (as at present) to promote chaos.

And yes, its penultimate role will be the alerts that tell us it has started, but then we can forget most IT except very small, very local networks with line-of-sight, until the last of the waves pass and IT systems can be fired up with one principal purpose, discovery.

Finding out who is left, and what still works.

Pandemically Unprepared

Every plan for dealing with a possible pandemic assumes continuity of services such as health. But after a generation of lean business models that pare organisations to the bare minimum above the optimum to keep costs under control and maximise profits, we have burned our capacity to deal with major problems: Wellington hospitals call for extra nurses.

Two hospitals in Wellington are making a plea for extra nurses, as winter illnesses take their toll on staff.

Capital and Coast District Health Board says Wellington and Kenepuru hospitals are now rated code red, meaning they do not have the capacity to meet demand.

The board says it has the bed space available but is running at about 20 nurses down because so many staff are sick with colds or flu.

Hmm, colds or FLU. So, if we get a FLU pandemic, might it affect these same nurses, but rather more severely than the current "normal" flu? What might be the effect of that on our ability to cope with a massive increase in community infections?

It is asking any qualified nurse who is available to call the hospital to offer to help.

If we don't have strategies to manage even normal variations in flu infections, we are probably screwed.