Gloomy Economic News

I saw many articles this weekend that the global economy is not recovering any time soon. We may have wait several years for the "sun to come out tommorrow."
No End in Sight to Global Jobs Crisis: UN Agency

"The global employment market that shows no sign of recovering, the International Labour Organization said on Sunday. In advanced countries, especially in Europe, employment is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels of 2008 until the end of 2016"

95 Percent Of The Jobs Lost During The Recession Were Middle Class Jobs

A higher percentage of Americans are working low income jobs than ever before, and the cost of living continues to rise at a very brisk pace. This is causing an erosion of the middle class unlike anything we have ever seen in American history. ... [for] college graduates, the future is not so bright. Last year, a staggering 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

Hugh Hendry On Europe "You Can't Make Up How Bad It Is"

We have reached a profound point in economic history where the truth is unpalatable to the political class - and that truth is that the scale and magnitude of the problem is larger than their ability to respond - and it terrifies them.

But what about the polar bears?

The foundation of Science is good measurements that can be independently verified. Consider the following two charts on historical temperatures:

These two charts could hardly be more different and yet both are produced by Climatologists who stand behind their accuracy. The first shows that we have climbed quite a bit since 1600 but that was an extreme cold dip;  AND our current high is less then 1100 BC before the carbon crisis AND we seem to be on a downward dip since 1998.

The second chart is the famous hockey stick graph cited by Al Gore in his documentary as proof of modern global warming. Wikipedia has a detailed discussion on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Bottom Line

The wiki article cites many recent papers as supporting the hockey stick with results like warmest in the past 400 years or warmest in the past 600 years. But this is only proving that it's warmer than the start of the "Little Ice Age".  Temperature data older than this is still rather fuzzy but getting better with ice cores, etc.

So it may be fair to say the question is still open. What caused the Medieval warming period of 1000 years ago? Why is the modern warming different? or is it?

What price progress?

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not."
— Dr. Seuss (The Lorax)

I came across this interesting photo on BoingBoing.com with this caption:

These pillars—located outside a rest area off Highway 80 in Adair County, Iowa—represent the topsoil Iowa has lost since large-scale farming began 150 years ago. In the 19th century, Iowa had 14-16 inches of topsoil. Today, it has just 6-8 inches of the stuff, and more is being lost all the time.

Bottom Line

The "West" achieved incredible progress during the Industrial Revolution and up to the present. But we did it by consuming vast quantities of resources such as topsoil. Think back on the extinction of the passenger pigeon which once darkened the skies or the near extinction of the American Bison. Look at the depleted fishing grounds around the world. Is "peak oil" in the near future or already in our past?

Will we find different resources to exploit in the future or will there be a day when we "run out"? What do you think?

Global Food Shortage?

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
- lyrics to America the Beautiful

Lately I've been seeing a lot of stories about inflationary food prices and possible food shortages globally. World production is not much greater than demand so if there is bad weather, fungus, insects, or anything destroying crops on a large scale, it tips the world balance to shortage.

For a look at big picture check out the Food Prices page at the Financial Time (FT.com). The site does require registration but there is a free option if you scroll the screen all the way to the right when registering. Sadly FREE is limited to 10 stories a month.

Here's a summary from one of the lead stories.

The world has moved a step closer to a food price shock after the US government surprised traders by cutting forecasts for key crops, sending corn and soybean prices to their highest level in 30 months. The price jump comes after the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation warned last week that the world could see repetition of the 2008 food crisis if prices rose further. The trend is becoming a major concern in developing countries.

And this gloomy forecast is actually optimistic!!! The US projection of expected World harvests does not account for future weather problems. “There’s just no room for error any more. With any kind of weather problem in the upcoming growing season we will make new all-time highs in corn and soy, and to a lesser degree wheat futures.”

See also Dinner Without Onions In India?

Bottom Line

This looks like a good time to stock up on rice and grains before prices rise further.

Global Land Grab

"Plant a kernel of wheat and you reap a pint; plant a pint and you reap a bushel. Always the law works to give you back more than you give."

-Anthony Norvell

America has always been an insular nation, looking inwards at itself, rarely outwards at the world. When I watch US news broadcasts I'll see stories on the US President, US celebrities and sports stars, US companies and unions, and maybe a few minutes for foreign wars that the US is engaged in. Or I can watch BBC World and learn what is happening in the other 96% of the world (by population).

Consider the story, The backlash begins against the world landgrab, from the British Telegraph.co.uk. Have you seen any mention in the US press of a global land grab? Or of food riots in 2008? (I've covered this at Possible Wheat Shortage? and  Global Food Shortages?)

"As is by now well-known, sovereign wealth funds from the Mid-East, as well as state-entities from China, the Pacific Rim, and even India are trying to lock up chunks of the world's future food supply. Western agribusiness is trying to beat them to it. Western funds - many listed on London's AIM exchange - are in turn trying to beat them. The NGO GRAIN, and farmlandgrab.com, have both documented the stampede in detail." - Telegraph.co.uk

In Argentia 7% of the land is owned by foreigners. Brazil is passed a law limiting foreign ownership but land grabbers get around this by purchasing through local puppet companies. "Brazilian land must stay in the hands of Brazilians," said the Farm Development Minister, Guilherme Cassel. In Madasgascar, the government "fell" in 2008 when the citizens learned that acerage half the size of Belgium was being leased to Korea's Daiwoo Logistics to plant corn. "Madagascar's land is neither for sale nor for rent," said the new president who revoked the lease.

The World Bank says we must lift global food production by 70% by 2050 to meet converging demands of extra mouths, rising use of grain as animal feed as Asia moves up the affluence ladder to meat-based diets, and the conversion of grains to biofuel. Farm productivity has flattened out in the US but there is room for improvement in other nations; in Russia, for example, farms are only 50% as productive as the US. Globally there is an additional 450 million hectares of land (on top of the existing 1.5 billion hectares in production) that could become useful farm land with improved irrigation. Both these improvements and more will be needed to reach the 70% target.

In 2008 there was a hint of what the future may hold. Countries that rely on food imports were shocked when Russia stopped exporting wheat due to a poor harvest (Russia decided to feed its own people first.) There were bread riots in Egypt, Indonesia, and a string of states in Africa. This year it is happening again. Russia has imposed a grain export ban and there was a food riot in Mozambique.

Nations with money and corporations learned a lesson in 2008 and are now buying farmland like crazy where ever they can.

Bottom Line

Since 2008 the World Bank estimates that the number of people who go to bed hungry each night has risen from 830 million to more than 1 billion. That is an increase almost equal to the population of the US. It also means 1 in 7 people in the globe is not getting enough food.

In the future those who own the farmland won't go hungry. Everyone else will have to pay dearly.

Global Impact of Volcano

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
- lyrics to "Windmills of Your Mind"

In our global economy everything is interconnected. And with "Just in Time" warehousing there is little margin for error in delivery schedules. CBSNews.com has listed some of the global side effects of the volcano in Iceland:

• The lack of refrigeration facilities at the capital airport of Ghana has hurt pineapple and pawpaw farmers who are unable to fly their produce to Europe.

• Kenya has thrown away 10 million flowers since the eruption. Asparagus, broccoli and green beans meant for European dinner tables are being fed to Kenyan cattle instead. Thousands of day laborers are out of work.

• In New York City's Flower District, thousands of dollars worth of tulips, peonies, daffodils and other varieties from the Netherlands are not arriving. Last weekend's weddings didn't have Dutch flowers.

• The U.S. economy is losing approximately $130 million per day in travel revenue. Every international flight bound for the U.S. is worth an average of $450,000 in spending from travelers.

• Three Nissan production lines in Japan will stop all day Wednesday because tire pressure sensors from Ireland have not arrived, 2000 vehicles will be delayed.

• A group from Sierra Leone and Liberia had to abandon a fact-finding trip to The Hague for the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.

• Cambridge University's modern and medieval languages faculty delayed oral exams after students and examiners were left stranded last week.

Bottom Line

Expect price increases in flowers and produce.

Three Strikes in Chile

"We are nine meals from anarchy."-docudrama After Armageddon

On Feb 27 a magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit the country of Chile. This was 500 times stronger than the quake in Haiti and the sixth largest quake measured in modern times. At first glance it appeared that Chile was well prepared with about 700 dead and 2 million homeless (compared to 220,000 dead and 8 million homeless in Haiti). "The Government is up and running, the stock exchange is running, the newspapers are out." – ABC news. Fifty years ago the worst quake ever-recorded devastated Chile (magnitude 9.5 in 1960) and a new infrastructure was built to be earthquake resistant. (Haiti is also a high-risk zone for quakes but poverty and government corruption has not promoted safe building codes.)

But now for the rest of the story. The Chilean earthquake was followed by two additional catastrophic events:

1. Tidal Waves: many seaside towns in Chile were struck by surging waves several meters high that washed away homes and carried an untold number of people to their deaths. Most of the deaths in Chile occurred AFTER the quake with the tsunami. The entire Pacific was then put on alert for coastal evacuation. Fortunately the waves were only 3-4 feet high by the time they reached Hawaii and barely noticeable in Japan.

2. Looting: Chile Battles Lawlessness, Desperation After Massive Earthquake
“Many looters made off with food and basic supplies. Others saw an opportunity for large-scale theft, carrying away home appliances on their backs.” Everything has been stolen from the supermarkets, the small shops, and the pharmacies. Hundreds of looters have been detained and troops have been forced to fire tear gas to stop mobs from pillaging shops and homes.

The situation in parts of Chile is now considered "desparate".

Bottom Line

A disaster or catastrophe means, by definition, that the normal order of things has been overturned. Life will NOT soon return to normal. You cannot rely on local, state, national or international government to quickly come to the rescue. Hence the recommendation to have at LEAST one week of supplies in your home. As Chile shows you can survive the quake, survive the tsunami, and then starve because a mob has grabbed all the food while looting.

PS

The situation in Chile highlights a problem with food storage – a mob may steal it from you. It’s charitable to share your food store if you can, but you might want to lie low and not advertise that you have food storage if you fear mobs and lawlessness. You might also consider breaking up your food storage and hiding portions of it. This way some might remain after the rest is stolen. [Unless neighbors discover the “hidden treasure” of food and ransack your entire house in a treasure hunt.]

Another option is to create/join a neighborhood group to repel looters and “outsiders”. Some towns in Chile have gone this route.

Bad Science

“While human-induced global warming is not going to turn present-day Earth into present-day Mars, global warming is dire enough that our most distinguished scientists recently concluded that as many as 1 million species on the planet could be extinct by 2050 if affairs do not change.”- Jay Inslee

When Former VP Al Gore Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, he shared the prize with the “distinguished scientists” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their published reports have been filled with stories of the Himalayan glaciers melting, African farm lands drying up, rain forests disappearing, polar bears without ice, and so on. Now it appears that much of the evidence for this is of low quality or non-existent. Though ignored by the U.S. Mainstream Media, the papers in London have daily front-page news of IPCC scandals. See The Great IPCC Meltdown Continues.

1. The IPCC has claimed that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, have repeated this in speeches. Now Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team, tells reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim.

2. IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers ...The claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was based upon a flimsy chain of events. The source was not peer-reviewed scientific literature – but a media interview with a scientist conducted in 1999. An offhand quote by a scientist was picked up the World Wildlife Conservancy and then became “common knowledge”. India is so upset that it has set up it’s own scientific group to study the glaciers since it has lost all faith in the IPCC.

3. The Dutch government has demanded that the IPCC correct its erroneous assertion that half of the Netherlands is below sea level. Actually, it’s only about a quarter.

4. An IPCC prediction about the impact of sea level increases on people living in the Nile Delta was taken from an unpublished student dissertation.

5. The IPCC report contained inaccurate data about generating energy from waves and about the cost of nuclear power (this information was apparently taken without being checked directly from a website supported by the nuclear power industry).

Now scientists make mistakes, sometimes really big mistakes (like seeing canals on Mars). But the purpose of the IPCC is to peer-review other scientists and separate the wheat from the chaff. To identify climate claims that are accurate and true so the United Nations can act upon facts instead of opinions. They have failed miserably in this job.

Bottom Line

I’m not opposed to the idea of global warming. I am opposed to bad science. When you ask nations to change the global way of life and spend billions or even trillions of dollars, you had better have your facts right. You must accountable and completely open to scrutiny and verification. Instead we’ve seen refusal to release data in FOI requests, data deletion, loss of original data sets, loss of verifying documentation, and so on.

I fear we are not seeing science but rather scientists with an advocacy agenda. Some may have the best of motives at heart, but others have profited greatly with millions in dollars of research grants to “save the glaciers”. Either way, the climate scientists have crossed a line and their unscrupulous behavior may weaken public respect for science for a generation.

New Rice Price Spike

“Without rice, even the cleverest housewife cannot cook” - Chinese Proverb

In March to May 2008, there was a “super-spike” in the global price of rice. Droughts in major producing countries like Australia created a shortfall of rice that resulted in panic buying and stockpiling. The price of rice returned to normal once everyone realized that there was still enough rice to meet global demand, i.e. no storage.

Fast forward to this year and the return of the spike. The weather this year was terrible for rice. India had its driest monsoon season in four decades and has halted all rice exports except for high quality basmati. India will eat all the rice it produces. A series of typhoons destroyed crops in the Philippines so that country is going on a buying spree. Other rice countries experienced droughts because of El Niño. Global rice stockpiles are at their lowest since 1976. “It feels a little like early 2008,” said Frederic Neumann, an economist at HSBC in Hong Kong. “Prices can quickly escalate if jittery consumers and public officials see supply risks looming, even if these are more perceived than real.”

Rice traders are divided on what to do. The world’s largest rice buyer, the Philippines, is buying now for 2010 but others are waiting for the spike of 2009 to fall like it did last year. However 2009-2010 might be worse than last year. According to the US Department of Agriculture, global rice output will fall to 432 metric tons in 2009-10 while demand is estimated at 437 metric tons. A small gap but a true shortage.

Bottom Line

If you can buy rice cheaply for food storage, do so. Otherwise wait until 2010-2011 for this new “spike” to hopefully fall.

Global Food Shortages?

'Each month is gay, each season nice, when eating chicken soup with rice.' -Maurice Sendak

The April edition of Scientific America asks the question, Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? The author states:

For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. ... Yet I have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization. I can no longer ignore that risk. ... As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets.

In the past century, spikes in grain prices were event driven and temporary. For example, in 1972 the Soviets quietly cornered the world wheat market before the rest of the world learned about their poor harvest. Wheat prices doubled that year but returned to normal with the next harvest. Other event-driven price increases included drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, and crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt.

But Scientific American believes the price increase in grains from 2007 and 2008 are different. These are caused by trends that are not likely to change:

• Ongoing addition of more than 70 million new people a year to feed. Yield gains in the 60s and 70s were amazing (+2% annually) but the "Green Revolution" has run its course. Global crop yields are now increasing at 1% a year while population grows at 1.2%.
• More money in China & India is allowing people to move up the food chain from a grain diet to a meat diet. It takes more grain to raise cows or pigs or chickens then to feed people directly.
• Massive diversion of grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries. The price for lower US fuel costs is more expensive global grain costs.
• Irrigation, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater, in many countries is now pumping water out of underground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up.
• Topsoil is eroding faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. The UN predicts that the African nation of "Lesotho faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility.”

Bottom Line
We don't see much said in the news but there is a growing global panic over food shortages.
- In 2007 leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports. Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter, stopped exporting for several months.
- In response, nations like the Philippines are signing multi-year contracts for rice from Vietnam to ensure delivery.
-In Thailand villagers must guard their rice fields at night with loaded shotguns from “rice rustlers”.
-In Pakistan an armed soldier escorts each grain truck.
-In the first half of 2008, 83 trucks carrying grain in Sudan were hijacked before reaching the Darfur relief camps.

False Alert with Swine Flu?

“With Mexico saying the worst may be over and the new H1N1 virus starting to look more like a seasonal flu strain in the United States and elsewhere, critics are going to start asking if public health officials overreacted to the outbreak.” – Reuters news

Again I hate to bash the media but it seems that most TV/Radio/Newspaper coverage has only two modes: “full coverage emergency” and “not worth discussing”. In just over a week swine flu has gone from “The End of the World as We Know It” to “never mind, just a normal flu, nothing to worry about”.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Was this a false alert like the Swine Flu of 1976?
No. The President Ford swine flu was found on one military base in NJ and did not spread. In contrast, the swine flu of 2009 is very contagious. Thousands of cases in Mexico and within a few weeks it had spread to over a dozen countries around the world. The World Health Organization rightly classified this as phase 5 (Pandemic Imminent).

Is this swine flu dangerous?
Yes. One thing I’ve learned from this emergency “drill” is that “normal” flu is dangerous. How did it happen that 2000 yearly flu deaths in NYC and 36,000 deaths annually in the US are considered “normal”? Consider the mothers protesting against the Iraq War and the deaths of their sons. In six years since 2003 the numbers of US casualties has been 4284. During the same period there were 216,000 flu deaths, 50 times the number of soldiers killed. Why don’t we see mothers protesting for better flu drugs?

Was it wrong to close schools, etc?
No. Consider the game of Russian roulette. Is it safe because 5 times out of six, nothing happens? When this flu appeared it spread fast and its potential was unknown. Suppose we treated it as “normal” and allowed it to spread and THEN discovered it was a killer. By that point the horse is out of the barn and there is no going back. The right time to stop a potential pandemic is at the beginning.

Is this swine flu just a “normal” flu?
Unknown. The death toll in Mexico was overstated with many sicknesses related deaths misclassified as swine flu. Scientists now think this is NOT a “killer” flu but it may be stronger than your average flu. The medical studies are still being done to exactly classify this flu strain.

Won’t my flu shot protect me? What about the drug Tamiflu?
No. Flu shots work by giving you a small sample of dead flu viruses so your body can learn the shape and create antibodies before the live virus invades. The Mexican swine flu is a new variant that no one is yet protected against. There are also some reports from Mexico of doctors & nurses who had taken Tamiflu but still caught the flu. For swine flu Tamiflu may be better at relieving symptoms than in prevention.

Bottom Line

Is the danger over?
As stated in the article, Scientists dig for lessons from past pandemics, “In each of the four major pandemics since 1889, a spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. This was true in 1889, 1957, 1968 and in the catastrophic flu outbreak of 1918”.

Flu viruses are constantly evolving and changing – hence the need for a new flu shot each year. A global killer virus needs two things – the ability to spread and the ability to kill. The current swine flu shows it has the ability to spread quickly. As thousands or millions or even billions of people become infected, the likelihood of mutations increase. Most mutations will be harmless. But it takes just one bad roll of the cosmic dice to change swine flu into a deadly & contagious virus. We can hope this won’t happen but we should prepare now in case it does.

WHO can you trust?

Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
- lyrics by The Who

The flurry of stories over Swine Flu has certainly been educational; almost like a global safety drill with a chance to evaluate the key players. There has been a wide range of public and official reactions from “head to the hills” to “nothing to worry about”. So whom can you trust?

Many studies have shown that people are a poor judge at putting risks into proper perspective. My current commuting book on CD, “Predictably Irrational”, details the many ways people are wired to act in ways that defy “rational” behavior. For example, use the word “free” and people will mob and sometimes riot to get something they don’t really need. When it comes to diseases, the word “death” triggers similar irrational behavior.

Yesterday it was announced that the first person (an infant) had died of Swine Flu in the US. Panic!!!! Well, no. Since the majority of US cases are in New York City (Queens), mayor Bloomberg held a press conference and told the public that 2000 New Yorkers die every year from flu. Death from flu is normal and part of everyday life that no one usually thinks twice about.

So why the hyper-reaction over Swine Flu?

• We are past the normal flu season so deaths from this strain stand out as unusual.
• The media has given it a name and made it their top story for ratings.
• This flu (Mexico only so far) has killed healthy adults. This is serious news and makes this strain different than “normal flu”.

Once reliable source for judging the danger of influenza is the World Health Organization (WHO). They publish a global risk level for a pandemic (from all known flues) on a scale of 1 to 6.
Phases 1-3 represent flu in animals (like Bird Flu) that spread poorly to people.
Phase 4 means there is verified human-to-human transmission of an influenza virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks.” There is a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion.
Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries. Declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent.
Phase 6 means the disease is a pandemic affecting many countries.

Bottom Line
On April 28 WHO raised the pandemic risk level from 3 to 4. On April 29 the threat level was raised to 5. WHO advises preparing for a pandemic but oddly does not yet recommend closing boarders or canceling travel plans. Personally I think that is under-responding and favoring the interests of business over people. So far most US cases have been traced back to someone visiting Mexico so it seems prudent to stay away until the flu is under control. Why visit a country that has declared itself a National Health Emergency?

Prepare, take precautions, and odds are you'll be OK. During the Spanish Flu of 1918 40 million people died which sounds like a lot. But 73% of Canadians and Americans NEVER contracted the Spanish flu. 97.5% of those who were infected, managed to survive and recover. With modern medicine the rate of surviving is higher today. WHO estimates that a modern pandemic would kill 5 million globally instead of 40-50 million.

Proper Ways to Handle Swine Flu

“Panic is quite rare. What's quite common is denial; denial is why panic is rare. We are organized such that, when we're about to panic, we trip a circuit breaker instead and go into denial.” - Peter Sandman, Risk Communication Specialist

My column yesterday could be viewed as a form of denial. I suggested ignoring the media-hype and twitter panic on swine flu and calming preparing for a possible pandemic that was unlikely to happen. Since then I’ve done more reading from the opposing view point of “don’t risk your life, respond now.”

The NYT Health section this week includes a well-written article on Assessing the Danger of New Flu. It discusses the complications in judging how dangerous flu might be and then looks at Hong Kong as a model for proper government response.

Contagion and virulence
Two measurements describe flu or any disease. Contagion = how easily does the disease spread from person to person? Virulence = how deadly is it? (i.e. what percentage of people die from catching the disease?)
- The Spanish influenza of 1918 had a mortality rate of ONLY 2.5% but was very contagious and killed tens of millions.
- Bird Flu (global/current) kills 61% of those afflicted but so far infects mostly birds, rarely people. The total number of fatalities is 257.
- SARS (Hong Kong 2003) was virulent (17%) and spreadable. But it killed only 299.
It is not easy to figure out which flu bugs will be pandemics and which ones won’t before it is too late.

Lessons Learned
Hong Kong (HK) learned much from SARS about how to respond to an epidemic:
- By weeks end, HK will have six laboratories studying the genetic markers for Swine Flu to allow for rapid detection and diagnosis of new cases
- HK has tens of thousands of doctors and nurses, including retirees, on standby and ready to be mobilized. (The US has a similar program called the Medical Reserve Corps created under President Bush.)
- HK has contingency plans to keep public transport, electricity, food supplies, telecommunications and other vital services running if large numbers of people fall ill.
- Since SARS Hong Kong has added 1,400 respiratory isolation unit beds to hospitals.
- HK with a population of seven million people has stockpiled 20 million treatment courses of Tamiflu. The US with 300 million people has 50 million courses of Tamiflu.
- HK is quickly passing a law to require all health professionals to notify authorities of any suspected cases of Swine Flu. This allows the disease to be accurately tracked.
- HK has broad and detailed legal powers to quarantine possible cases. The US (after six years) is still debating how to handle legal issues during a possible pandemic.

Bottom Line
Several articles today have suggested that a little panic is good for public health. As discussed above it is very hard to know which flu bugs will fade quickly and which ones will be deadly killers. By the time authorities do know, the bug may have already spread widely making quarantines useless. The safest course for individuals and the public is to follow the example set in Mexico at the first hint of a new flu virus. Order the public to stay home and close the schools, non-essential business and all public events. If you must go out, wear a facemask.

Staying home and sitting out the flu will save lives but at terrible economic cost in lost business, lost jobs, etc. While you and I may value our life over money, not so for governments which feed on tax revenues. Since governments exist to prevent panic and to promote business, they will placate, lie, under report illnesses & deaths, over promote actions & cures, etc, to keep the peace. So Mexico deserves credit for putting the people first by declaring a National Emergency and quarantine.

Updates
WHO Raises Swine Flu Alert Level but stopped short of declaring a global emergency.
The suspected number of deaths rose to 149 in Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak with nearly 2,000 people believed to be infected. The number of U.S. cases rose to 48, the result of further testing at a New York City school, although none was fatal.

Swine Flu

How quickly can Swine Flu make you sick? About 90 minutes of CNN should do it. -American Digest

There is nothing better for a news company than FEAR. When they can sell the idea of "Watch our news or you might die", ratings improve and they make money. Too bad if the alarm was false or too extreme and you ended up wasting your time and your money.

Last night I was watching some conference talks from TED.com online. (Highly recommended!) One speaker from Africa described how his team put together a text messaging emergency alert system to cover riots, government-police actions, etc. It worked very well. In fact too well. The amount of public created "emergency" traffic from tweet and texting far exceeded the ability of responders to read it. In version 2 of the system they had to install ratings to judge the accuracy and reliability of senders to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Now Swine Flu is real and it is back. It is not yet a pandemic but people are acting as if it were. AmericanDigest.org shows how The Virus Does Not Travel at the Speed of Tweet, But the Tweet of the Virus Does. Panicked Tweeters were publishing "breaking news" from the CDC (Center of Disease Control) claiming that the virus was spreading and "could not be contained." USA Today reports Swine flu spreads panic in Mexico City. With 81 possible deaths in all of Mexico since April 13, health officials ordered some 500 cultural and sporting events cancelled. According to Bloomberg.com, the Mexican President declared an emergency April 25 and canceled school at all levels in Mexico City and the state of Mexico until further notice.

Precaution and preparation is important - for example Mexicans are urged to wear face masks in public. But keep a sense of perspective. In the US (2001 data) 2525 people died every day from heart attacks and 120 died every day from auto accidents. Why don't we see panics and government emergencies over butter and cars as agents of death? Every year the CDC estimates that 36,000 people in America die of "normal" flu but people still refuse to get "normal" flu shots. Blogger Ryan Sager writes

Our brains are pretty bad at assessing risk — we worry about flying (which is safe), while we love driving (which kills far more people); we worry about terrorism (which kills virtually no one), while we die of heart disease (No. 1 killer in the United States) — and so we vastly overestimate the chances that we, personally, might get swine flu.

In the article, Risk Communication Before and During Epidemics the author notes that there is a very low correlation between risk/harm and outrage/perceived risk.

Whatever your measure of harm, across a wide range of risks, the correlation between how much harm [a risk is] going to do and how upset people are going to get is this absurdly low 0.2 correlation.

Swine flu may get worse but right now driving your car is 40 to 100 times more deadly.

Bottom Line
Swine flu is serious but the 20 known cases in the US appear to be a mild strain. Watch the blogs and Internet for news but filter it for truth vs bias and rumors. Prepare but don't panic. If you have flu symptoms see a doctor and get tested for Swine flu, don't go to work or school and share the virus with others. Avoid people who are coughing or sneezing and wash your hand frequently. If you are very concerned: avoid crowds or wear a face mask (very common on Japan!)

Don't rely totally on the US government for information (and never rely on evening news casts). Governments will under AND over react. The Washington Post reports that U.S. public health officials did not know about a growing outbreak of swine flu in Mexico until nearly a week after that country started invoking protective measures, and didn't learn that the deaths were caused by a rare strain of the influenza until after Canadian officials did. (This despite our huge Department of Homeland Security!) Now with 20 mild cases of Swine flu in NY and CA and TX the US Department of Health declared "a public health emergency" on April 26. According to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napilotano, the emergency declaration is standard operating procedure and enables 12 million doses of the drug Tamiflu to be distributed from Federal stockpiles to states that need to deal with a flu outbreak. The terminology here is terrible! An "emergency declaration" is standard operating procedure? What will the goverment call a real pandemic and crisis?

Update

US government claims it is prepared to handle Swine Flu despite the fact that after Obama's first 100 days we have no Surgeon General, no Secretary of Health and Human Services, and no appointees in any of the department’s 19 key posts.

NYT Story - To quarantine or not? Lesson from the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

Resources
The CDC Swine Flu website is www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm
CDC Health Advisory, April 25, http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/pdf/HAN_042509.pdf
CDC Travel Advisories: http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/notices.aspx
World Health Organization (WHO) Epidemic News: http://www.who.int/csr/don/en/
Health Map: http://healthmap.org/en
Swine Flu News: http://health.einnews.com/news/swine-flu

Google Alerts: create an email alert of "Swine Flu" news as soon as it hits the internet.
Amazon has a site for a Bird Flu survival kit www.amazon.com/Bird-Flu-Survival-Kit-Basic/lm/RWDK3B57W2U2Q/

Troubled Times

“I was reminded that when we lose and I strike out, a billion people in China don't care.” - Reggie Jackson

Here are two recent articles demonstrating that the world is becoming increasingly unstable.

Unrest in China Worse Than Widely Reported

Bankruptcies, unemployment and social unrest are spreading more widely in China than officially reported, according to independent research that paints an ominous picture for the world economy.

Vladimir Putin faces signs of mutiny in own government as protests break out in east

As Russia's economy begins to implode after years of energy-driven growth, Mr Putin is facing the germs of an unexpected power struggle … Mounting job losses and a collapse in the price of commodities have triggered social unrest on a scale not seen for at least four years, prompting panic among Kremlin officials more accustomed to the political apathy of the Russian people.

Bottom Line

With stories like this, I remain skeptical that the economy has hit bottom and will soon improve. We could experience a global depression lasting many years.