jarofthoughts

For those of you following my blog you might have noticed that there has been a distinct lack of posts these last couple of weeks. The reason for this is that some three weeks ago I contracted the Swine Flu, not completely unexpected since I have an exposed profession (I'm a teacher). After coming home from work that fateful Friday I started getting a fever and before long I was sweating and freezing at the same time. Chalking this up as "flu" I hit the bed and did what people usually do when they have the flu. Stay warm and drink lots of fluids.

I was still not well come the following Monday and so I called a doctor to see if I might have gotten the Swine Flu, mostly because the recommendations state you should stay at home for a week to avoid the contamination of others. He confirmed that this might very well be the case and that I should stay home a full week just in case.

During the week my condition worsened and I was soon unable to keep neither food nor water down, puking it up not long after ingesting it. This was a problem since combined with excessive sweating I soon felt very dehydrated and so I went to see a doctor who gave me some pills for my nausea. This helped a little and I was even able to eat a little but by Friday I had another problem. I was having trouble breathing. Not trusting myself to take care of my own condition I called a close friend and asked him to come pick me up in a cab and take me to the doctor.

After doing a range of tests, including an x-ray of my chest the doctor soon concluded that he wanted me sent to a hospital for observation and thus I was send to Louisenberg Hospital in Oslo. There I was immediately put on oxygen supply in an attempt to raise the oxygen levels in my bloodstream. After about 24 hours it was concluded that this did not help nearly enough and my O2 levels kept falling. It was then decided that I should be put "under", as it were, in an artificially induced coma while they figured out how to best treat this. As it turns out I -had- contracted the Swine Flu which in turn had decimated my immune defenses allowing for a severe bacterial infection in my lungs. I was to stay under for about 7 days while they tried various types of antibiotics. During this time I was intubated through my throat to keep my lungs doing their job and to allow for a supply of extra oxygen.

A note on artificially induced coma: It is apparently quite common to have nightmares during this state, especially during the time it takes them to slowly pull you out of it. These nightmares are quite vivid and since you are drifting in and out of actual consciousness these visions are coupled with real events making your memories of them feel even more real. In my case it turned me into a paranoid wreck for a couple of days, probably making me a not-so-easy patient to work with, but there you have it. Thankfully I have a very supportive family and friends who were with me every day of my hospitalization and making the transition bearable. I daren't think of how it might have gone if I had had to go through it alone.

When I came completely out of my coma induced state and I actually got a grasp on reality again things went somewhat better, but I was still hooked up to any number of sensors, was fed through a tube in my nose, got multiple types of antibiotics through nodes in my arms and was being fed extra oxygen through a tube in my throat. I could not speak and my motor skills were shot to pieces due to the medication so I couldn't even write to let people around me know what I wanted. I've never felt more helpless in my life. Thankfully I had wonderful nurses who were at the same time understanding, friendly and extremely professional in every way and while I've always had a great respect for the job these people do, having experienced it first hand, my respect is now near bottomless. I have no idea what we are paying these people but it cannot possibly be enough.

Being somewhat stubborn however, I was eager to take over doing things for myself as soon as I could which probably helped what one of the nurses called the "fastest recovery from the respirator he had seen". Still, some things need to take their time and after almost a week it was declared that I was now infection free. I was released from the hospital last Tuesday and while I am now at home writing this it is clear that my body will take some time healing itself. I still have a hole in my throat from the intubation that will take up to a week to close itself (I can still talk though), my lungs aren't at full capacity and my general health needs some rebuilding.

So, what is one to take away from all this? First, my case was a freak incident. Getting both the viral and the bacterial infection at once is highly unlikely but not impossible (most of the serious damage was done by the bacterial infection), so there is no reason to expect this to be a normal turn of events should you contract the virus. Secondly, I've gotten a very clear and personal understanding of just how fragile both the human mind and the human body can be, and while we all know we are not indestructable on a logical level, actually seeing and experiencing it is something else. I was never that close to actually dying but it wouldn't have taken that much to change this turn of events into something a lot worse. And that's a bit of an eye-opener.

So I'll just once again encourage everyone to take the vaccine once it is available in your area. I am a young man with no preconditions and an overall decent health and it did this to me. Help build our herd immunity against this virus so that those who are worse off, or who cannot take the vaccine for various reasons can be protected as well.

Thanks go to the wonderful nurses at Louisenberg who have been nothing short of fantastic.
Also, thanks to my family and friends who have been there for me every day of my hospitalization.

The question about Darwins deathbed conversion comes up from time to time as if it would somehow constitute a scientific argument. Let's just get that nugget out of the way first. While he might not have called himself an atheist, there are indications that he thought the word seemed too confrontational, he was most certainly not a believer towards the later years of his life, known to have stated that: "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God". The rumor that he converted on his deathbed is also faulty and was refuted by those of his family that were actually present.

But does it really matter?
What if Darwin had converted to his childhood beliefs and refuted evolution on his deathbed?
Would that have changed anything? 

We have now literarily tons of evidence supporting Evolution, not only in the form of fossils, which aren't even the most convincing, but also in the distribution of animals, vestigial parts of present day animals, not to mention the DNA record which shows us a perfect tree of life in which the closeness of the relation of animals and plants fit perfectly with what we would expect if Evolution is true. In addition we have species evolving in our lifetime as well as bacterial development that has led us into an arms race to come up with better antibiotics. All of this evidence adds up. Not one piece is out of place, which is sort of amazing when you think about how easily Evolution could be proved wrong. All you'd have to do is find the fossil of a modern day rabbit in rocks dated to being older than 200 million years. Good luck finding that fossil though.
Science does not depend on messiahs. Arguments are made from evidence, not authority. And while we of course show respect and celebrate those who have brought our understanding of the universe that little bit further, science is in no way dependent upon their unblemished record to recognize whether their ideas were right or wrong.

This simple fact might seem infuriating for pundits of various kinds with personal agendas, but science is not a democracy. It is not based on appeal to titles or position, nor does being right belong to the one who shouts the loudest or even the one who is best at presenting their arguments. Science is very much a dictatorship in which evidence is emperor, dictator and king all rolled into one. If you have the evidence to back up your claims, we'll listen. If not, then all you have is at best an interesting idea and at worst a load of nonsense, neither of which will grant you that warm feeling of being right.

So, to come full circle, no, it wouldn't matter in the least if we were now to discover that Darwin converted on his deathbed, nor if we should be made aware that he himself lost confidence in his "dangerous" idea. Neither of these things would have any consequence whatsoever regarding how we view Evolution. Evolution is a fact, Darwin or no Darwin. But it would be nice if people could stop misrepresenting the old boy.

He deserves far better than that.    

Let’s step away from the seriousness of the world for a bit and have a look at some fun and games shall we. The British Isles (apologies to those who do not feel they should be counted as part of said isles, but that’s how the world perceives you) are full of bat-shit crazy people. We can all agree on that for several reasons, but if you are looking for proof, look no further than the completely insane pastimes they get up to when they have nothing better to do. Apparently these, for lack of a better word, sports go back hundreds of years and would probably count as tradition, but mainly they count as potential grievous bodily harm. In any case, they look like they contain enough entertainment value to actually make me watch the Olympics should they ever be accepted as sports under that label. So, let’s have a look at three British “sports” that might make me care about the Olympics.


Ferret Legging
Belonging to Yorkshire, England this “sport” mainly consists of putting a couple of mad-as-hell ferrets down your pants and trying to keep them there for as long as possible. I will assume that this started as some kind of drunken bet at some point. The current world record is held by a man named Reg Mellor at 5 hours and 20 minutes. No-one dared ask him if his genitalia were anywhere near intact at that point, but it is reasonably to think that he at one point decided he liked having ferrets down his pants. It would seem that the “sport” is illegal in Great Britain, which by the way, is the only place it is played, but apparently the police doesn’t bother to prosecute much because, after all, what more can you possibly do to a man who willingly put angry ferrets down his pants. Wikipedia states that: "The sport is said to involve very little "native skill", simply an ability to "have your tool bitten and not care"."
 

Shin Kicking
Originating in Cotswolds, England this sport is exactly what it sounds like. Two men (I have yet to find women stupid enough to participate) grab a hold of each other’s shoulders and proceed to kick the others shins off. The goal is to make the other fellow fall down and apparently the activity hails back about 400 years and was constructed by a guy named Robert Dover as a protest against Puritanism. I’m not sure how he thought kicking someone’s shins in would help but in any case it gave birth to a much more amusing sport than curling. The game is played as a best out of three variant and I assume being able to walk afterwards earns you extra points.
 

Royal Shrovetide Football
Apparently this sport, played only in the small village of Ashbourne, England, originated in 1300s using the severed head of an executed prisoner as a ball. The only rule seems to be “don’t kill anyone” and apart from that all is fair game. More or less the whole village participates in this yearly event in which the goal is to get a ball on to the other side of the village (which is separated by a river) and banging it against a post three times. The “goals” are two old mills on each side of the town some 2 kilometers apart and the playing field is the entire village. While called “football” there are no rules as such and the ball seems to change hands mainly thought the use of plain old violence, which puts a whole different spin on things.

I had almost given up on the media when it came to being the watchdogs of rampant nonsense. But it appears that there are still some journalists left who are willing to make a little effort to expose some of the non-proven, non-scientific bullshit that blatantly takes advantage of people in a vulnerable situation.

A round of applause is in order for Marianne Vikås and Francis Lundh who with a few phonecalls and a taperecorder exposed a number of doctors and so called alternative treatments.

The article can be read here: http://www.vg.no/helse/artikkel.php?artid=576012

PS: The article is in Norwegian. Appologies to my English readers. The article describes how named doctors and providers of alternative treatments offer non-proven, expensive and sometimes dangerous treatments to someone with terminal cancer.


The article has already reaped some storm as the newspaper has been sent a letter from a lawyer named Johan Haga, being effectively a "cease and disist", but this being Norway and not the US he will have little in the way of power behind his words. Other journalists should take note of this. As long as you stick to the truth, you'll be fine when exposing bullshit.

At least in Norway.


Link to the letter from the lawyer: http://www.vg.no/helse/artikkel.php?artid=576015

Link to another article by the same journalists dealing with the legal issues of alternative treatments...or rather the lack of legal issues: http://www.vg.no/helse/artikkel.php?artid=582342

"Science is not carried out by debates between teams. The community is open, and all ideas are considered, and those that deserve the test of time, and experiment, rise to the top. The great thing about science is that we don't have to continue to follow both sides of an argument, because ultimately one side is generally proved to be wrong."

- Lawrence Krauss

I have repeatedly said that people simultaneously are my greatest source of both annoyance and entertainment. On the one hand I am amazed at some of the wonderful and crazy stuff people get up to. Some of it is funny and silly, like when the guys at Mythbusters make a gigantic gas powered turkey canon. And some of it is just plain amazing and awe-inspiring, like the LHC or the Hubble Telescope. And then there is the annoying stuff.

As some of you might have gathered I live in Norway. Personally I think this is the best country in the world to live in, and apparently both the UN and Michael Moore seem to agree with me ( http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061109/un_countrylivein_061109?s_name=&no_ads= ). But we’re also, for some strange reason, still a monarchy. And I guess it wouldn’t be a proper monarchy without some crazy royalty…

Meet our very own Princess Martha. She woke up one morning and decided that not only could she talk to animals (apparently they also somehow talked back), but she could also communicate with…angels. Now, if I somehow got it into my head that I could talk with angels I would quickly decide upon two things; 1. I’ve gone completely nutters, and 2. There is no way I’m telling anyone, perhaps with the exception of a shrink. 

The Princess however, had a different idea. She decided that not only would she tell the world about her “discovery”, she would start a school where she could teach other people how to be just as nuts as she is. Granted, in order to actually enlist in this school I suppose you would have to be slightly off the edge already, but when people start charging money for the opportunity to spread their delusions I have a problem with it. There is after all such a thing as taking advantage of people that might very well be in a vulnerable situation, and when you use your title as royalty as a proverbial crowbar in the process…well, let’s just say that morality doesn’t even enter into it. But hey, perhaps the princess really believes the things she says and writes about. Wouldn’t that make it ok?

No. No, it really wouldn’t. See, this is a major problem with most people living in the world today. They have no ability for critical thinking. The reason I would most likely consider myself crazy should I ever encounter something that could be described as a supernatural entity, angel or otherwise, is simple plausibility. What is more likely, that I’ve somehow stumbled upon the most mind-blowing discovery of all time, the actual existence of God and the supernatural, something that has escaped science completely (and not for a lack of trying)? Or, that I’ve simply been hallucinating and should really consult a doctor of some kind? Do the math.

I’ll give you another example. I was at a party this weekend and I got to talking about such matters with a guy there, whose name I shall withhold in the name of decency. He claimed that when he was twelve years old both he and his mother had both had a dream about a white horse. Apparently this means that someone is going to die, and lo and behold, that very week one of his grandparents passed away. Sounds amazing, right? Well, let’s do a little digging and see where it leads us.
I asked him a little more about the details concerning this event and as it turns out both his grandparents on his mother’s side was hospitalized with terminal illness at the time of this dream. So it wouldn’t be completely out of the ballpark to think that perhaps at least one of them might not make it. Also, since his mother already knew what to expect when she dreamt about a white horse I will assume that she was, as we say, “into” this kind of thing, and as mothers tend to do, she would have talked about such matters with her somewhat impressionable twelve year old son. So, given those potentials, what is more likely, that since they both were aware that one of the hospitalized grandparents would likely die, and they both knew what kind of dream would “foresee” such an event that, they dreamed that very dream because of the surrounding events, or that the dream actually was of a precognitive nature? I know where my money would be.

The problem, in this and similar cases, is that people have no concept of the Law of Large Numbers. Let me lay it out for you. The Law of Large Numbers comes under the heading of Probability Theory and it is the reason scientists are looking for as large a sample number as possible when doing trials and experiments. Often more than one test is required to attain a useful result because no matter the precautions taken you are likely to get freak results somewhere along the line due to the randomness of your sample. What one expects, and usually gets is what is called a “regression to the mean” which means that overall, with a large enough sample base the freak incidents drown and are cancelled out. That is why when you roll a dice the mean will always, over time and with a large enough sample, revert to an average of 3,5. You might get freak series with consecutive rolls of sixes or ones or whatever, but given enough repetitions, the mean will end up roughly where we expect it to. It is only when it doesn’t that we have to rethink how stuff works and perhaps consider other factors.

I’ll try to illustrate with an example.

We’ve all heard the story about someone who dreamt of their uncle/grandma/friend/whatever the very night they died. Usually people take this as a sign of some kind of psychic connection or something equally silly. And they invariably forget to do the math. So I’ll do it for them.

In the US there are in the excess of 300 million people. Let’s be generous and say that about half of those people are adults, about 150 million. Now, how many of those people do you think dreams about someone close to them every night? One percent? Heck, let’s go all out and call it one tenth of a percent. That still leaves about 150.000 people dreaming about loved ones every night of the year. Now, in any given day, how many people die in the US? According to the CIA Factbook that number is 6,744. So let’s quickly calculate the chances that someone who died had someone dreaming about them the very night they kicked the bucket.
Each person in the US has a statistical chance of someone dreaming about them each night of 0,05% (150000 / 300000000 x 100). Multiply that with the number of people who on average die each night and you get in the excess of 300%. In other words, this should happen to around three people in the US every single night!!! Even given leeway for the fact that people often doesn’t remember their dreams this phenomenon should crop up pretty damn often. But these are only the hits. When doing science we have to keep track of the misses as well, and in this case we still have at least 6741 people who died without anyone at all dreaming about them. The problem is that we never hear about the misses.

There is no pattern here folks, and if there is such a thing as a psychic connection, this is not an argument in its favor. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and when you’re defeated by a simple probability calculation you soon end up looking a little silly.

We all have some delusion or other, whether it is the belief that Keanu Reeves is an actor or that the hot female waitress really likes you, but from time to time it can be good to face up to the facts of the matter and barbeque a camel. Or something. In any case, I don’t know what your pet delusions are, but for what it’s worth, here are some common misconceptions about the world in which we live.

E. Coli Bacteria is Bad For You
You see this on the news almost on a weekly basis. “Traces of E. Coli found in [insert random foodstuff]!” And this has given people the impression that anything E. Coli is tantamount to the plague. After all, how could the tabloid media be wrong? The thing is though that while traces of the bacteria in your food are not exactly appetizing it’s unlikely to do you much harm either. In fact without this ingenious little creature we would have serious problems surviving at all. How’s that? Well, consider this; your body consists of about 10 trillion cells, give or take, which is a really huge number. But guess what, your intestines contain more than ten times that number of completely benign E. Coli bacteria helping your digestive process along. Without the little bugger we could not digest several types of starches, sugars, proteins and fiber that are vital to our survival.

And it’s not in any way confined to humans either. Pretty much every vertebrate on the planet have their own little strain of this little family symbiotically helping them process their food. But what about the contamination you say? Sure, it’s not something we’d -want- but as mentioned, most of the strains we are likely to encounter will harm you not at all, and while there are some versions of the bacteria that can make you seriously ill, especially the elderly, small children and those with a defunct immune system, they are in the vast minority.


The Forests are the Lungs of the World
I blame this complete misconception on the WWF, and possibly on overenthusiastic grade school science teachers. Through ads like this one (http://science-learning.wikispaces.com/file/view/Lungs_of_the_World.jpg) and from teachers who -finally- figured out how photosynthesis works we have been spoon-fed the notion that without trees we would run out of oxygen. Which is at best a gross misrepresentation and at worst a blatant lie. Sure enough, green land based plants -do- produce oxygen…when the sun is shining. But they do a little switcheroo on matters during the night in which they reverse the process of photosynthesis and suck in on some of that sweet O2, and that is why you shouldn’t keep plants in your bedroom at night. Depending on who you ask land based multi-cellular plants only produce about 10-20% of the available oxygen in the atmosphere, which hardly qualifies as being our main source of the stuff.

So where, exactly, does all our oxygen come from? I’m glad you asked. Meet our friend the blue-green algae. While there are several different types of this family of cyanobacteria, the photosynthesis versions of them produce somewhere between 80 and 90% of all the oxygen in the atmosphere, which kinda puts a whole different spin on the subject of environmentalism. See, these little single-celled plants find their home mostly in the upper 100 meters of the ocean surface, and while there are plenty of really good reasons why we shouldn’t burn down the Amazon, perhaps we should also spare a thought to not spewing all of our industrial waste into the sea.


Microwave ovens/Mobile phones Will Give You Cancer
Ok, so maybe most people have gotten over the idea that microwave ovens will give you cancer, but it was all the rage in the late 80s, and it seems that for all intents and purposes mobile phones have taken up the torch and are running for the opening ceremony at the Hysteria Olympics. So, just to make doubly sure, let’s have a look at both cases and why they are complete fabrications. First off, microwaves work by using high-frequency radio waves (called, you guessed it, microwaves) to make the molecules in your food move very fast, creating heat. Now that might sound scary , especially considering that one of the features that makes this so damned effective is the ability to bypass paper, plastic and glass while being absorbed by the food.

Without getting too technical, you need to know that there are two main types of radiation: ionizing and non-ionizing. Types of ionizing radiation would be X-Rays or nuclear bombs while microwaves comes in under the heading of non-ionizing. Put simply this means that microwaves do not contain the necessary energy to mess with your DNA, and thus they will not cause cancer. Still, there are a number of regulations and safety measures when it comes to this little wonder-box in your kitchen and that is because while the rays won’t cause an early death they can still burn you (cook is probably more accurate, but meh…) which is why the oven door has a nice non-shiny metal grid on the inside. Now mobile phones have suffered from the same kind of treatment and while it may seem like a sweet incentive to get your teen children off the damn phone for a while there have been numerous studies on the subject in which none have been able to show any correlation between cancer and the use of mobile phones. Sorry parents of teenagers, but it seems this one is about to fall too. We'll keep you posted.


Columbus Proved That the World is Round
This is another nonsense story that way too many people have been told in school, and if anything Columbus was about 1800 years too late. Aristoteles already took care of that in 330 BC and the fact of the matter is that hardly anyone with any sort of education thought the world was flat even in 1492. The main reason that so many people were skeptical about the quest to find a new route to India was that they rightly thought Columbus had miscalculated the size of the Earth, and thus that he would run out of food and water long before he got there. It would seem though that dumb luck provides for the stupid and while the Santa Maria never got to the shores of India it did land on the beaches of America. So while people take time to celebrate Columbus day (October 12th if you’re interested) and the “discovery” of America, what he really should be remembered for is being a sucky navigator.


You’ll Catch a Cold if You Stay Out in the…err…Cold
First off, what we call “the common cold” is actually caused by at least three different strains of viruses which goes a long way towards explaining why curing it is not that easy. Also, being caused by a virus, it is hardly affected by temperature at all, and if anything it won't become more agressive with colder weather. The reason this myth has arisen is probably because of the seasonal flu which tends to come around wintertime in most countries and also that since it is cold, people have had a tendency to clump together indoors which makes the spreading of the virus all that much easier. The fact of the matter is that getting out into fresh air might be good for your health rather than the opposite, especially if there are sick people in the house. Oh, and while warm milk with honey might make you feel better, it does absolutely nothing at all for your cold.
 

For a moment, I would like to draw your attention away from baffling theories and cold data to celebrate the man behind one of the most powerful explanatory ideas ever presented, Also consider this definite proof that science not only is beauty but can also inspire more beauty.

I give you The Darwin Song Project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3IltZ51ZnE&feature=channel

The last couple of months the media channels have been going mad over the swine flu, sometimes referred to as H1N1. And while hysteria is usually not a good solution to anything, it might be time to have a look at why the WHO gets so worked up about this. So, with that in mind let’s do a little FAQ on the whole mess and try to figure out what the fuzz is all about.


They say it’s a pandemic! That’s really bad, right?
Yes and no. It is important to know what the word actually means before you go off to write your testament and clamp down in your “end-of-the-world” bunker. “Pandemic” is actually just a description of how widespread something is, and in this case refers to the fact that the swine flu can be found on all the six major continents. Apparently Antarctica doesn’t count, and who cares about penguins anyway. When a disease has been labeled as a pandemic it says nothing at all about the number of people who have been affected, or about how serious it is. The term merely indicates geographical spread. So, for instance one could easily say that having the hiccups is a pandemic condition, but that probably wouldn’t worry too many people. However, isolating a disease geographically is a major step towards eradicating it, so when a disease is pandemic that means at the very least that getting rid of it might be tricky.


Will I die if I get it?
Most likely not. According to the WHO as of July 6. 429 people had died out of 94,512 confirmed infections giving it a world mortality rate of about 0,45%, a lot of which have occurred in countries with very poor health care systems. That is still a decent percentage when compared the regular seasonal flu types which clock in at about 0,12%, but it’s tame compared to for instance measles which has a mortality rate of almost 1,8% worldwide. Yup, you read that right. On a global scale, you are more likely to die from common measles, should you contract it, than you are from swine flu. In most western countries it’s not much of a problem since the vaccine costs about 1$ per child, but if you are born in, say, Kenya you might just be out of luck.


So it’s not that dangerous then? Can I stop caring?
Not exactly. There are a couple of things that worry us about the swine flu, first and foremost its infection pattern. It appears that unlike the common cold (which is really at least three different strains of flu) it infects fairly easily from one host to another. The reason this is potentially bad is twofold.

First, there is the potential number of people infected to worry about. Let’s say that the common cold infects 1 in 5 of the potential hosts it encounters. If you start with a group of 5, that means that one person will get it. That person meets 5 more people and infects one of them, and now you have two people who are sick. Those two meets 5 people each and infects once from each group, and after three generations there are 4 people with the sniffles. Not too bad and fairly easy to control should it become truly dangerous.   

Now let’s run that same example, only this time we say that 4 in 5 potential hosts get infected. In the first group of 5 there will be 4 people who are sick. They all meet 5 people each adding another 4 x 4 = 16 people to the tally and we now have 20 people with fevers and snot. They all meet 5 people, infecting 4 giving us 20 x 4 = 80 additional people with the infection, bringing the total number up to 100 people with the disease after three generations. And while these examples are arbitrary they show clearly that a disease that infects more easily is exponentially harder to contain.

Now on to the second part of why we worry, namely mutations, and by that I don’t mean that the swine flu will turn you into some kind of pig-human hybrid with the superpower of being able to sniff out truffles. Rather we are a bit concerned that the virus might mutate into something with a higher mortality rate. This is related to the infection pattern in that the more generations and exposure a virus gets the higher the chance that somewhere along the way it will pick up a mutation. The virus has already mutated once, making it capable of being contracted by humans, and we have no way of knowing what will happen if it mutates again.


But…it’s just flu, right?
Yeah, it is, but keep in mind that the common cold kills between 250.000 and 500.000 people a year. That is between 685 and 1370 deaths per day!  Also you might have heard of a little thing called the Spanish Flu. You know the sniffles epidemic that killed off a third of the population in Europe at the end of WWI.

In just two years.


Holy shit! We’re all going to die!!!
Well, yes. Death and taxes are commonly thought of as the only two certain things in life, although it seems that taxes are at a decline, at least for the rich and wealthy who can afford the best tax lawyers. But there is no reason to panic over the swine flu. Our scientists have worked out a vaccine for the whole thing and it should be available worldwide in a couple of months.


Right. So what should I do in the meantime?
Mainly, get on with your life and chill out.

Should you get sick watch for these symptoms in combination: Fever, runny nose, sore throat, diarrhea, lethargy, lack of appetite, coughing, nausea and vomiting.

If you think you have contracted the swine flu contact your doctor. Some countries prefer it if you phone this one in rather than coming down to the office but check with your local health station for details. Otherwise, deal with it as if it was just another cold and do as your doctor tells you. As previously mentioned, very few people have actually died from this disease and for most it’s just another bout of the sniffles, so there is little chance of any real danger.


Should I take the vaccine when it becomes available?
Yes! Seriously, this whole “I-don’t-need-vaccines” movement has got to stop, and it has already produced some really damaging results. Remember what I said about the measles? Well, partly due to a completely unsubstantiated MMR vaccine scare we now have about 12.000 cases of measles in the UK, Romania, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, a disease we had hoped to eradicate by 2010. No, vaccines will not give your children autism, and yes they have been thoroughly tested. The thing about vaccines is that if not everyone (or close to everyone) gets them, the disease can still linger in the background only to spread back up at a later time.

So, yes, you should get your flu shot!


Fair enough. Hey, I have this antibacterial soap. That will help, right?
No. Not unless it also covers viruses. See, viruses and bacteria are two completely different things and what works on one will not necessarily work on the other. This is why, when you have a virus infection the doctor will not be prescribing antibiotics. Cause they wouldn’t work. Many of these soaps will kill both bacteria and viruses, but it should say so on the label if it does.
Also, unless you are sick there is no reason to wear a mask or carry gloves. Don’t be hysteric. The virus can only survive on open air surfaces for a few minutes, so there is no need to fear doorhandles and the like either. It might pay off though, to be a little attentive to personal hygiene for a while (I'm sure everyone around you will agree), and washing your hands regularly is never a bad idea.

This debate has reached a level of absurdity and outright lies that I feel unable and unwilling to comment on.
So in the name of decency I will just leave you with a quote that sums it up fairly well:


'The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system.

Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".'


Let us also not forget that Hawking did not get his ALS diagnosis until the age of 21, and that in his youth he was active in the Oxford rowing team and enjoyed horseback riding. So, unless the NHS has a policy of killing off seemingly healthy newborns on a whim the Investors' Daily would still be, for lack of a better word, wrong.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-republicans-religion-and-the-triumph-of-unreason-1773994.html

Let’s step away from the science for a bit and talk about a concept that scares the living daylights out of a lot of people. And the strange thing is that we usually talk about it as if it is something we all want for everyone, yet, when we get right down to it, hardly anyone REALLY wants it. At this point you probably wonder what heck I’m talking about, and rightly so. I’m talking about one of the scariest concepts in all of human philosophy, namely Freedom.

There are many kinds of Freedom and we sometimes like to tie those Freedoms in with another concept we have dreamt up called Rights. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for having Rights, but let’s be honest about this for a moment. If they really are Rights then no-one should be able to take them away from us, but that isn’t really the case, is it? What we have are Privileges, which puts a whole different spin on things, and which is a concept that ties a lot better in with the idea of Freedoms. I’ll get back to the connection between the two in a moment.

So let’s talk Freedoms. Sartre claimed that "either man is wholly determined or else man is wholly free" and both options carry with them certain implications. I’ve earlier written a piece on determinism, and while I stand by everything I said there I don’t see that as an argument for lack of responsibility, quite the opposite. None of us live in a bubble in which our actions affect no-one else, and if we want to look at it from a Newtonian angle, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In short that means that whatever you do, even if you do nothing, it will have an effect on the world around you. So let’s say for a moment that man is wholly free. What does that mean exactly?

Sartre has something to say on this too, and it’s worth quoting:
“The essential consequence… …is that man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being. For I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing responsibilities. To make myself passive in the world, to refuse to act upon things and upon Others is still to choose myself, and suicide is one mode among others of being-in-the-world."

Right. So if you are live in this world (Chances are that if you are reading this that is the case. If not, drop me a note…) that means that you have to relate to the world in general. Not just the parts you want to relate to, but everything around you. Anything you do or don’t do will have an effect on something outside of you. And it’s all your fault, for better or worse. There is nobody else to blame for what you did or did not do. Phew… That’s a lot to swallow all at once.

Do you still think complete freedom is a good thing?

Most people don’t, even when they claim they do. Sure, they talk about it, but when the chips are down they usually want someone else to take charge and to take responsibility. It might be god, the president, or some other real or imagined figure of authority, but the fact of the matter is that people in general want to be led, they don’t want to lead. They want someone to tell them what to do, and more importantly, what is right and what is wrong. Leadership doesn’t just mean you get the credit when things go right, it also means you get the blame when things go wrong. And instead we get all kinds of people trying to influence people without really jumping into the boat and taking the lead, wanting the power but not the responsibility.

This logic applies to both general choices that you make as well as moral decisions, and that is where the true terror comes in. If there is no-one to tell you what is right and wrong, what if you are mistaken? And if you are, how do you deal with that? Well, that is what we call "facing the music", "waking up and smelling the coffee" or any other number of silly metaphors. If you mess up, you clean up your own mess. If you make a bad moral call, you have to go back to the mirror and change that opinion. The upside is that if you can pull through all this you will come out the other side as a stronger and better person. But the downside is that you will have to accept that since -every- decision, whether made by you, or by the person you follow, is done by a fallible human being, then by extension that decision can be wrong. You will have to accept that there is no pure evil or exhalted good. The world is a lot more complicated than that. And for what it's worth, you are, at the end of the day, alone in making your own choices. There is no ultimate authority from which you can extract perfect meaning or onto which you can place the blame if things go pearshaped. The nasty ugly truth is that you made a choice, and that choice was either to do or not to do, follow or not to follow. Having the Freedom to choose is a Privilege, and that Privilege has a price. That price is responsibility and accountability.

So where does that leave us? Is there nothing we can count on? Is there nothing we can risk taking a stand for? Sure there is, but we have to keep checking and rechecking our own morals, our own choices and our own opinions and always be open to the possibility that we might be mistaken. And if we indeed are mistaken, there can be no hiding or shifting of resonsibility. You may not wish to express this to the world in general, but if you want to remain true to the concept of freedom, at the very least admit it to yourself.

And when you find something that you think is worth taking a stand for, remember that Gandhi, for all his flaws, got it right when he said; “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” In other words if you really believe in your own Freedom and have the conviction of your opinions, you have to face up to the consequences of that choice. To put it simple, you have to practice what you preach, whatever that might be.

And that is, for a lot of people, a horrifying concept.