Enough of the vaccine, already
Ah, the heady drama of last fall. H1N1 was a steady source of worry, creating the Worried Well and sparking a fevered drive to stock up on vaccine. In October CBS interviewed Dr. Troyen Brennan, the Chief Medical Officer of CVS, the drug store chain.
Asked if there will be enough H1N1 vaccine to go around, Brennan said, “We do believe there will be enough. The government’s been very careful in terms of the amount of H1N1 it’s ordered and that’s coming online right now.”
And so millions of Americans queued up for a Swine Flu shot, some at CVS, along with a seasonal flu shot. Boy, was there ever enough of the H1N1 vaccine. Too much for Europe, where some claim that Swine Flu was a fake epidemic. From NPR, “Governments all across Europe are canceling orders of swine flu vaccine as frantically as they were clamoring for it a few month ago.” Alas, we’re more determined to be protected in the US.
The government is thinking about how much more swine flu vaccine to order up and pay for. But Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Hall says any decision to scale back vaccine orders is “weeks away.” Let’s take stock. Last spring the US government signed contracts for $1.5 billion worth of vaccine against the novel H1N1 virus–251 million doses. So far, 55 percent of that amount has been shipped, and something like 60 million Americans have been vaccinated. That leaves 45 percent of the contracted-for vaccine yet to be delivered. That’s 115 million doses, worth about $675 million.
Okay, it’s under a billion dollars, so it won’t even show up in the US budget.
But the cost of stress-induced concern about health, missed work time to vaccinate, isolation of the populace that didn’t want to risk being in this epidemic: much greater. There’s a payoff for coverage as breathless and shallow as the CBS Early Show stuff, thank goodness. We’re being innoculated from the sudden panic of virus outbreaks. Read the rest of this entry »
Many massage points in today’s haptics chair
The Consumer Electronics Show for 2010 kicked off last night, and the expo illuminated a few technologies that could play a role in Viral Times. The Inada Doctor’s Choice Massage Chair offers a vast range of massage points for its $5,799 retail price tag.
It’s a chair that mimics human touch. Inada says it’s shaped for 106 different human body types. If the programming could be transferred to a suit, like those in Viral Times, this touch could be used for immunotherapy while people are isolated during a viral storm. The same SimSuit that offers Secure Sex could serve as a naturopath’s healing tool.
During pre-programmed massages, kneading speeds automatically vary between 10 and 32 strokes per minute while tapping varies between 180 to 500 taps per minute. Proprietary 3-D rollers thrust forward and relax backward up to 2.8 inches, creating highly desirable movements of the spine. All these actions and many others are carefully managed by the chair’s electronics.
Over at VentureBeat, the reporter there was calling it a “glove chair.” Just drop the first letter off of that name and you’ll get another sensual purpose for the technology of today. Give a society a roadblock to physical contact like the New Flu and you’ll create a market demand for a love chair, or suit, that can be sold for a lot less than $5,799.
Haptics shows the steps to SafeSex
One of the crucial concepts for Viral Times shows up early in the novel. In the first chapter of my novel the science of haptics, already well-developed today, has started to fill the gap that people create between themselves and communicable disease caused by viruses.
Given enough years and enough desire, haptics will offer the engine to drive the most serious home electronics device: The SimSuit. You only need to look at the Wikipedia definition of haptics to see how a well-built, broadband suit could help us reach out and touch.
Haptics is the study of touching as nonverbal communication. Touches that can be defined as communication include handshakes, holding hands, kissing (cheek, lips, hand), back slapping, high fives, a pat on the shoulder, and brushing an arm. Touching of oneself may include licking, picking, holding, and scratching. These behaviors are referred to as “adaptor” and may send messages that reveal the intentions or feelings of a communicator. The meaning conveyed from touch is highly dependent upon the context of the situation, the relationship between communicators, and the manner of touch.
In 1992 I worked as a computer tech journalist and followed an emerging video game experience that let players fight in role-play onscreen, their movements tracked by a sensory ring on the floor, surrounding them. Less than 17 years later we have the Nintendo Wii — so popular it was sold out for stretches of 2008 — and advanced enough to let us play sports with one another. Or Just Dance.
An article today in Fast Company tracks the fun quotient and sweat rating of Wii games. By 2019, an emerging crisis of viral times can create a very different, haptic kind of sweat.
H1N1 drives deep into the lungs to kill
Even while a vaccine for H1N1 becomes far more available, doctors are discovering the virus creates infections far deeper in the lungs than seasonal flus.
The pattern of infection among the tiny percentage of people who have died from the virus mirrors the infection methods in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, according to a report on CNN. The story also describes how someone dies from H1N1 infection. Their lungs cease to function well enough to give the victim sufficient air.
“Generally, flu stays in the upper airways,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “What this shows is clearly this virus has capability of infecting and causing inflammation and destruction of cells from the trachea, all the way down into smaller cells of the lungs. “The cells of the lung get directly attacked by the virus,” said Fauci.”
Nine out of every 10 people who have died from H1N1 have “underlying conditions” that are pushed into critical status by losing respiratory function. Like a profiler on a CSI episode, the medical community is trying to match conditions to deaths. 72 percent of those who have died had obesity in their profile.
Vanderbilt University researcher Dr. William Schaffner, professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the university’s School of Medicine, was surprised by the H1N1 fatality-obesity connection.
“That was a striking finding,” said Schaffner. “It contributes in a very material way to what we know about risks for a severe outcome with H1N1 infection. We are keeping an eye on obesity as a risk factor for H1N1 death.”
See Swine Flu safety info. See data illustrated.
Journalist David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer, has a superior summary of everything which a Swine Flu vaccine can do, based on a wide variety of public sources. Best of all, it’s presented in illustrated format.
One major surprise to me is the amount of mercury (thimerosal) that’s inserted into flu shots. A can of tuna has about twice as much mercury as any thimerosal you will find in an injection. The nasal application of the H1N1 vaccine contains zero micrograms of mercury. But getting vaccinated with an inhaled formula isn’t recommended for anyone over 50. This is the same age group that has only a 4 percent chance of contracting this kind of influenza. The data so far also indicates that this flu is being contracted mostly by people under 25. He also concludes that the chances of dying of the current vaccine are more than 1 in a million.
McCandless’s Swine Flu data is at informationisbeautiful.net, along with dozens of other interesting presentations.
ABC believes H1N1 is on the wane
A weekend report from ABC News explores the idea that the Swine Flu panic may be ebbing. Now that didn’t take long.
As part of its insights, the TV network took note of the Austin children’s hospital which pitched tents in the parking lot to vaccinate kids back in September. The tents are gone, ABC finally noticed. (The Dell Children’s Hospital here in my hometown took the tents down more than six weeks ago, but a reporter has to call around to find out anything. Apparently the local affiliate KVUE’s stories didn’t float up to the mothership.)
My friend Tom Coefield, who works as a planner for rival Columbia Healthcare St. David’s hospital, took note of the tents too. He was impressed by how thoughtful the tactic seemed. The hospital had no good reason for erecting the easy-to-spot tents, at least not public health-related. “But it showed everyone how much they cared,” Tom said with a wink.
Comments on the ABC TV web site assert that perhaps the recent alarm about Swine Flu was related to winning some stimulus monies for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Web site comments are way down the ladder on the reliable source chain, of course. And the H1N1 virus hasn’t departed our populace. But Tom says the test for determining if your flu is Swine is only accurate about 30 percent of the time. So much for the accuracy of reports about how many people have contracted it. Now come reports that H1N1 is mutating. Good news? That flu shot you got for H1N1 will be somewhat useful in creating immunity if you encounter a mutated live virus in the air, somewhere.
WHO reports: Swine vaccine now in 65 million bodies
The World Health organization has surveyed 16 countries and believes that 65 million vaccinations for swine flu have taken place worldwide. Perceived risks of vaccination include Guillain-Barre syndrome, and the WHO report says “fewer than 10 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported” among people who received vaccines.
24 more countries are among those surveyed by the WHO, but the results in this majority of the world aren’t part of the report. Despite the safety reports, a new CNN poll asserts that the majority of Americans don’t want to receive an H1N1 vaccination.
According to the poll, 55 percent of adults don’t want to get the swine flu vaccine and don’t plan to get a shot. Another one in five say they want to get inoculated but haven’t taken any steps to do so; 14 percent want a shot and have tried to get it but have been unsuccessful. Just 7 percent have been inoculated for H1N1.
A “small number” of deaths have been reported to the World Health Organization, but given its optimism for the vaccine, the WHO believes its investigations can’t find a link between vaccine and death. “The results of completed investigations reported to WHO have ruled out a direct link to pandemic vaccine as the cause of death.”
But the CNN poll lists concern over side effects as the top reason more than half of the US residents surveyed don’t want a vaccine. The poll director calculates that 28 percent of the adult population don’t plan to get inoculated due to the risk of dangerous side effects.
More social distancing from flu
The Infoworld enterprise computer newspaper reports that working outside the office is a new employment perk.
The H1N1 pandemic is pushing companies to upgrade their secure remote access capabilities in order to enable more employees to work out of their homes and other remote locations in an emergency.
Vendors of remote access technologies are reporting an unexpected increase in demand for their products over the past several months as a result of H1N1-related concerns.
Being honest, the lack of contact with other humans and their coughing is one sure way to reduce chances of infection. It will, however, lead to severe withdrawal from the physical pleasures we enjoy in life. And so, the need for SimSuits is born in Viral Times.
Viruses shape shift, says National Institute of Health
There’s nothing like discovering that a sub-microscopic organism is smarter than pharmaceutical science. TV news reported this week that the H1N1 virus is probably already evading the Swine Flu Vaccine (SFV) which the government has rushed to anxious, uninfected people in the US.
The SFV never had a chance of stopping the flu. Scientists are talking about antigenic drift, now that people are interested in how viruses evolve. The drift takes place as a virus moves through hosts (that’s you and me), changing its proteins to evade antibodies that could kill it. At least that’s what scientists think happens. They’re not sure.
“No one is sure exactly how the antigenic drift of flu viruses happens in people,” says Dr. Jonathan Yewdell. He wrote a paper with two other experts that was published in Science, but at the moment the only hard evidence comes from testing mice with a virus from 1934. The National Institute of Health reports on the leading theory at its Web site.
According to the prevailing theory, drift occurs as the virus is passed from person to person and is exposed to differing antibody attacks at each stop. With varying success, antibodies recognize one or more of the four antigenic regions in hemagglutinin, the major outer coat protein of the flu virus. Antibodies in person A, for example, may mount an attack in which antibodies focus on a single antigenic region. Mutant viruses that arise in person A can escape antibodies by replacing one critical amino acid in this antigen region. These mutant viruses survive, multiply and are passed to person B, where the process is repeated.
These escape artists have been drifting for thousands of years. Pharmaceutical research creates a flu vaccine every year before the drift occurs. If enough people catch and then transmit a flu, the virus is well on its way to changing its shape — so only your natural immunity can hope to neutralize an organism that makes you ill once you breathe it in.
