Sometimes life imitates art

Let Bartlet be Bartlet changed the West Wing. The West Wing was one of the best TV dramas ever shown. The first season started about 6 months into Bartlet’s first term. His numbers were down, Congress was disrespecting him and his staff were very frustrated. The only success they had produced had been a Supreme Court appointment.

Then came this pivotal episode, where Barlet decided doing the right thing was more important than doing the safe thing. Here is how the episode ended:

I felt like we might have been seeing something similar tonight. I hope so.

(Of course, we know that with Rahm Emanuel in there, real life would have included a lot more expletives. A lot more.)

Technorati Tags: Politics

The GOP needs to get their politicians under control

I generally try and stay away from politics but I was really horrified at the Republicans and their total disrespect for the President tonight. I’m not talking about not standing up when the Democrats cheered. Both parties do that.

But the horrible thing to hear was the outburst of a Republican Congressman calling the President’s words lies from the floor of the House. On what planet does the Representative from South Carolina believe that is appropriate behavior? He would not have been allowed to do that during a session of the House. He would have been called out by the Speaker. But he thinks that is okay to do to the President?

I have never heard a President of either party booed or had catcalls thrown at him during a speech in Congress.

The leaders of the GOP need to get their members under control. No matter how one feels about the policies of our President, the disrespect shown President Obama during this speech was beyond the pale. It is even worse than Cheney telling a Senator to go f@#k himself while on the floor of the Senate.

At least then, the Senate was not in session. This was during a joint session of Congress.

I hope some sort of discipline is applied to him and that he does not become some sort of GOP hero. If so, it will simply demonstrate the continuing disrespect of the President by those who should know better.

Because you can bet that if that had been done to a GOP President, the hapless Representative might be looking for a new job.

Technorati Tags: Politics

These are really pretty

Rebirth of an icon: Hubble’s first images since Servicing Mission 4:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

“This is one more important step in the confirmation of this wonderful mission. We Europeans are proud to be part of this and heartily congratulate the engineers, astronauts and scientists who got us to this point,” said ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood.

[More]

The new pictures from the refurbished Hubble are simply astounding. You can read about it more at the European home page and also see some amazing photos. The NASA site has some videos.

Here is one of the beautiful ones.:

by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

You can download it as a picture with 3527 X 4110 resolution (9.96 MB in size). Just Wow! Smaller versions are also available.

And the thing is traveling faster than 600,000 miles and hour! The complete size is about 2 light years from end to end.

Then look at some of the other images.

Technorati Tags: Science

Memories we don’t even remember

by Foxtongue
Memories exist even when forgotten, study suggests:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

A woman looks familiar, but you can’t remember her name or where you met her. New research by UC Irvine neuroscientists suggests the memory exists – you simply can’t retrieve it.

[More]

I know the feeling of knowing a memory is there but not being able to retrieve it. Often I can come at it from a different angle, some other relevant fact and trace it back to the needed memory.

But what about all those memories that we do not even know about anymore? Do we have recorded memories of every dinner we ever had and are just unable to retrieve them? Do we remember every shirt we wore, every car we drove, the weather for every day we live?

It seems unlikely to me that we retain all of those memories. And this study does not really get us an answer to those question. But maybe it will lead to a way for me to remember names faster.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

Swine flu bests seasonal flu

Ferreting out how swine flu crowds out seasonal flu:
[Via Effect Measure]

Yesterday one of the questions we asked was whether swine H1N1 would replace seasonal viruses this season. In previous pandemics one subtype completely replaced its seasonal predecessor: in 1957 H2N2 replaced the H1N1 that had been coming back annually at least since 1918; only 11 years later, in 1968, a pandemic with H3N2 replaced the H2N2. H2N2 is no longer circulating but in 1977 an H1N1 returned and has been co-circulating with H3N2 since then. This was a new situation. We could ask why this hadn’t happened before with H2N2 and H1N1 or H2N2 and H3N2 or all three together; or we could ask why it happened after 1977 with H1N1 and H3N2. We still aren’t sure of the answer, but the question has special pertinence at this point because it bears on whether we will be seeing three viruses this fall in the north (swine H1N1, seasonal H1N1, seasonal H3N2) or just the seasonal viruses or just the swine virus, or the swine virus and one of the others. We have a vaccine to cover some of the seasonal virus (there is a lingering question of a good match for the H3N2 component) but not yet one for swine flu. We can’t wait to find out and I, for one, will be getting the seasonal vaccine as soon as it’s my turn (which will be shortly at my medical center) and then get the swine flu vaccine when it’s my turn in the queue as it becomes available. To me that seems the most prudent way to cover my bets, although I won’t know until later whether it was the right choice. Meanwhile there is science to be done to help us understand all this, and within hours of yesterday’s post appearing there was a paper published in PLoS Currents/Influenza [PLoS Currents: Influenza. 2009 Aug 25 [revised 2009 Aug 27]:RRN1011] that provided a tantalizing data point on the subject of the dynamics of infection with combinations of swine flu and the seasonal flu A subtypes.
[More]

I see this as a preliminary sort of work but it indicates that the speed of replication and transmission for the swine flu causes it out compete the seasonal flu viruses. So much so that when both are present, only the swine flu gets transmitted.

This might be a reason why we have seen new viral regimes take place, where previously circulating viruses completely disappear from the yearly cycle,to be replaced by new pandemic forms.

What has me a little worried is the possibility of a reassortment between the swine flu (H1N1) and avian flu (H5N1). The possible antigenic shift between a highly contagious but not very virulent virus (H1N1) and one that is very virulent but not very contagious (H5N1) would be something to watch out for.

Let’s hope there are some genetic reasons this could not happen (i.e.e the genes that make it contagious also prevent high mortality rates). This sort of new reassortment could really tax health facilities.

Technorati Tags: Health

The math is not good

The depressing math of swine flu, ICUs and ventilators:
[Via Effect Measure]

One of the most feared outcomes of infection with influenza is Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS; in less severe form it may be called Acute Lung Injury, ALI). For reasons we still do not understand, cells deep in the lung that are involved in gas exchange (oxygen and carbon dioxide) become so damaged that the basic work of supplying the body with enough oxygen for life and getting rid of the carbon dioxide generated by metabolism is too much for the patient and either some intervention to relieve the lungs of some of the work is made or the patient dies. ARDS is so severe that often no intervention works, and fatality ratios of 50% are quite typical. The most common intervention is a mechanical device called a ventilator to do some of the work of breathing for the patient. Critical care respiratory therapy is much more than pumping air in and out of the lungs, however. It is a very complex and tricky art, and it is now believed by many that conventional mechanical ventilation can make ARDS worse and decrease the odds of survival. The literature on ventilation in ARDS is highly technical, and advanced methods using sophisticated computer-controlled devices are often needed.
[More]

The swine flu does not appear to be as deadly as the 1918 pandemic. It does not kill a particularly high percentage of the people who contract.

Where it is very different from the seasonal flu is that it is extremely contagious. So a very high percentage of people in America are expected to get it within a short time period. Estimates are around 40-50 million will get infected. This leads to the possibility that several hundred thousand will require hospitalization in the ICU.

What happens to our health system when several hundred thousand people all require ventilation at the same time? Will the ICUs be to stressed to provide the care needed for these thousands of people?

That is the worrisome math. Even a flu that is not a major killer can still be very disruptive if it is so contagious. This will be a big flu season for our health system just to survive intact, I think.

Technorati Tags: Health