Saturday, September 03, 2005

Katrina and Public Health Truths and Myths Hat Tip to Revere at Effect Measure During the anthrax episode, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson repeatedly provided incorrect information to the news media on the number of spores required to produce an infection. The same misinformation was often repeated by public health authorities. Failure to communicate the fact that the risks from even a small number of spores could result in infection may have contributed to the deaths of two postal employees at the Brentwood facility in Washington, DC. Misinformation from those who should know better is also occurring in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. DHHS Secretary Leavitt, for example, has warned of the risk of "typhoid and cholera" as a result of contaminated water, while others have talked generally of mosquito-borne disease and the hazards caused by dead people and animals. It is time to separate the real risks from the phantom risks. Diarrheal disease from contaminated water is a concern, but not cholera and probably not typhoid. In order to get these diseases the water has to be contaminated with the organisms that cause those diseases, neither of which is endemic in that region. What is more likely is gastroenteritis or hepatitis A from enteric viruses or bacteria. Most are spread by the fecal-oral route, which means they are not spread directly person to person. If they get in a contaminated, piped water supply they can cause an epidemic, because piped water is an efficient way to distribute pathogens to a population. But localized contamination of flood waters is not. Individuals can get serious diarrheal disease and even die of consequent dehydration, but there is not likely to be a point source epidemic of cholera or typhoid or even diarrheal disease, only sporadic cases (which may be relatively numerous but not epidemic in nature). Lack of clean water and food can produce a risk of diarrhea and dehydration and must be attended to quickly, but not to prevent an epidemic. Similarly the presence of dead animals and people is not a health hazard. Dead animals decompose naturally in the environment. Unless they were infected with a contagious organism before death, they will not themselves become the source of disease. The persistent concern in mass disasters over unburied bodies is an urban myth. Mass disasters like floods rarely cause epidemic disease and to suggest otherwise results in misplaced concern and potential diversion of resources from more important issues. Mosquito-borne illness is a potential concern for some, but needs to be properly understood. Being bitten by mosquitoes is not a health hazard. The mosquitoes themselves must be vectors for a pathogenic agent like malaria or West Nile. Almost all malaria cases in the US are in people exposed and infected elsewhere who travel to this country and become sick shortly after arriving. We do not have endemic malaria, at least not at this point (global warming might change that, of course). West Nile is a possibility, because there are an unknown number of infected birds and possibly other animals in that region. However the mosquitoes that multiply in the wake of the flooding have to be the kind that both bite infected birds and bite humans. We don't know what the disaster did to the ecological niches of the potentially infected animal population nor do we know whether any increase in s specific mosquito population will be in the kind of "bridge vector" capable of biting both humans and whatever existing infected animals are around. So even a huge increase in the mosquito population does not necessarily, or even probably, mean an outbreak of West Nile or other mosquito-borne illnesses. This is important because the fear of "an epidemic" might encourage interventions that themselves carry undue risk, such as broadcast spraying of pesticides to kill adult mosquitoes. Mosquitoes reproduce exponential quickly and these techniques have not been shown to interrupt the transmission of human disease. They have the potential to just add one more biologically active toxin to the environment. The biggest health hazards may well be those we would classify under "injury." Heat-related illness might be at the top of the list here. As body core temperatures rise above 105 degrees F., mortality increases quickly. The high heat and humidity of the area, coupled with dehydration are a significant health hazard that requires intervention by providing fluids and cooler shelters. The many sources of physical injury, whether from feral animals (snakes, alligators, etc.), sharp metal debris, falls and injuries in an environment where the hazards are numerous and not easily visible can result in substantial accumulated morbidity and even mortality. The only remedy is removal of people to a safer environment, which should be the top priority. this is also true for the many chronically ill and vulnerable people who require medication, external support from power dependent devices and supervision. The situation is complex but the bottom line here is simple: mobilize resources to remove people from the area as quickly as possible, while providing fresh food and water to those waiting evacuation. This is something a well-organized military force, like the National Guard, should have been equipped to do from the outset. If they can plan how to put hundreds of thousands of soldiers to invade an area in a twelve hour period, they can also plan how to remove civilians in a three day period. Or can they? categories: Mind Other Stories according to Google: Researcher dispels Myth of Dioxins and Plastic Water Bottles | The Great Influenza of 1918 | Scoop: The Truth Behind Speight's Racial Myths | News.com Extra | CNET News.com | Chiropractic anti-vaccine - Why do they wage all out war on public | Secondhand Smoke | Study: Immigrants not swamping health system - Health Care - MSNBC.com | USATODAY.com - Legal myths : Hardly the whole truth | Scotsman.com News - Children's Diet - Fat or fiction? The truth | Voice of Reason: Fact vs. Fiction on Obesity 7:44:47 PM    Earl Bockenfeld

Houston: Bush Administration Has A PR Problem "W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives." Rightous indignation, Gilliard style: Well, motherfuckers, and that means you, fat ass Goldberg and your master, Rich Lowry, PNAC Bitch Beinart, the racist wannabe white Malkin and the little fucktards at LGF, Bareback Andy and "Diversity" Instacracker, all you backstabbing, fag hating uncle tom ministers, you can see Dear Leader in action. America's largest port is gone, maybe forever, gas is $5+ a gallon and FEMA is coming. Whores come faster with old men than FEMA is getting to NOLA. How did your wartime President react? Like Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded in 1944, with corrupt indifference. Bush, the man your fever dreams built into the next Winston Churchill when he is really the live action Chauncey Gardiner, has failed to everyone, in plain sight, without question. Rick Perry is trying to save his ass, but it ain't working. NOLA looks like ANGOLA and that ain't flying. Say 9/11 changed everything now, motherfuckers. Ooops, 9/11, 9/11. 9/11. Doesn't work anymore? Gee, maybe the sea of alligator MRE's once known as the citizens of New Orleans has something to do with that. Now you can shut the fuck up about 9/11. Bush just proved what would happen with another 9/11. Dead Americans as far as the nose can smell. This is one of the finest (and awful) moments on TV. And it was on FOX. And involved Geraldo in the "Horror Show. Basically, Shepard Smith has been stuck on the I-10 overpass near the Convention Center. People have been dying, no one has been rescued, and there's no aid given. There is, however, and outpost manned by the military that turns back any person wanting to take the only was out of New rleans they can access. They are leaving these people to die inside the city. So Hannity went to Geraldo, to see if he was going to be a ray of sunshine. Geraldo was even more grim. He said that no one has been rescued from the Convention Center, no one is being allowed to leave. He grabbed babies from women and stuck their faces in the camera - honestly, it kind of reminded me of Ethiopa in the 80s (the babies weren't that emaciated, of course, but I'm referring to the situation in general) - in a desperate plea for people to see the reality of what in going on there. He said that people can't change their clothes, babies' diapers can't get changed, people don't have anywhere to go to the bathroom. Hannity blurbled something, and Geraldo basically just yelled, "Let these people walk! Let them get the hell away from this!" So Hannity tried Shep, and tried to get him to talk "with some perspective" on how great the National Guard coming into NO had been today. Shep said, "Perspective? This is all the perspective you need! People are dying here!" It was incredible. And so horribly, horribly frustrating. But I figured kudos to Geraldo and Shep, and thank god this was on FOX. Maybe someonewatching this will wake the fuck up about the state of the government in this country. Thankfully, Paul Craig Roberts is ignoring the pleas for sotto voce commentary in a time of tragedy. "Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war. "There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting. "The situation is the same in Mississippi. "The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fool's mission in Iraq. "The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconservatives in the Bush administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job. "After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps. "Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes. "The mayor of New Orleans was counting on helicopters to put in place massive sandbags to repair the levee. However, someone called the few helicopters away to rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed the massive pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared under deep water. "What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi war – one of our oldest and most beautiful cities, a famous city, a historic city." "It didn't have to be this bad. The entire city of New Orleans needed have been lost. Hundreds of people need not have perished. Yet, it now seems clear that the Bush administration sacrificed New Orleans to pursue its mad war on Iraq." Driftglass show us how New Orleans now is "the poster child" for the GOP Owership Society".  A tinder-dry world where every uptick of the price of oil and every flap of every bird's wing strikes ominous sparks, and yet the fire extinguishers have all been hocked by you idiots for a few hundred bucks in tax cuts.  Read the whole thing. No, this is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell that a lot of people in this country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they're also worried and pissed off. They're making the connection between the money, manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue effort has been in the Gulf. If you don't say it now when people's nerves are raw and they're paying full attention, it'll be too late once the waters receded and the media-emoting "healing process" begins. categories: Outrages Other Stories according to Google: Skeptics Society--eSkeptic | POLITICS-US: Houston , We Have An Image Problem | George W Bush | Houston , We Have An Image Problem by William Fisher | HoustonChronicle.com - July 1: Allison aid wins praise for Bush | Asia Times Online - The trusted source for news on Central Asia | #489: 07-16-04 BUSH ADMINISTRATION HOSTS FIRST NATIONAL TRAINING | Faking It | Bush Money 2:26:17 AM    Earl Bockenfeld

Gulf Oil Operations Still in Disarray An oil well damaged by Katrina spilled oil into coastal waters Wednesday near Port Fourchon, 100 miles southeast of New Orleans. The Gulf of Mexico, the nation's largest energy center, was still reeling yesterday, four days after Hurricane Katrina, crippling gasoline supplies in some pockets of the country. In the face of the turmoil, the government stepped up its release of strategic oil stocks to refiners. The Bush administration said it approved a loan of six million barrels from the emergency reserve to Exxon Mobil, and another one million barrels to Placid Refining. A third company, Valero, will receive 1.5 million barrels. The new supply is, however, far less than what is needed to make up for the expected loss of production from the gulf - a region that accounts for over a quarter of domestic oil supplies. Much of the gulf area's production and refining remained shut yesterday, but the first signs emerged that at least some parts of the region's intricate energy infrastructure were slowly coming back. Two important pipelines that supply oil products to the East Coast began limited operations again, supported by emergency power supplies. And a huge oil-importing terminal in Louisiana provided reassurance that it would resume receiving oil tankers soon. Still, nine major Louisiana refineries remained without power, according to the Energy Department. At least four others were running at reduced capacity. In all, at least 1.8 million barrels a day of refining capacity is still down, or about 10 percent of the nation's total. Retail gasoline prices have surged in recent days to over $3 a gallon in many parts of the country. Prices increased as much as 50 cents a gallon overnight, with Illinois, Michigan, Texas and Pennsylvania reporting some of the biggest increases. The nationwide average for premium fuel was $2.95 yesterday, up from $2.88 on Wednesday and $2.42 a month ago. Two days before the Labor Day weekend, when millions of people typically hit the roads for the last big summer holiday, President Bush asked Americans to curb their gasoline consumption. "Americans should be prudent in their use of energy during the course of the next few weeks," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "Don't buy gas if you don't need it." But while tapping the reserve and bringing in additional imports will provide a quick injection of oil into the system, they will do little to get refineries hit by the storm up and running again. What is certain already is that Hurricane Katrina produced what economists had feared most, a dislocation of oil and gas supplies on a global scale and the prospect of even higher energy prices. "We have lost a lot of supplies at a time when we were very vulnerable," said Roger Diwan, a managing director at PFC Energy, an oil consulting firm in Washington. "How high prices go will depend on how quickly refiners can get back on." PFC Energy estimated that 820,000 barrels a day of refining capacity was badly flooded and would remain without power for weeks. The prospect of a sustained drop in refining operations pushed the price of oil products on the New York Mercantile Exchange up again yesterday. Gasoline futures for October delivery closed at $2.409 a gallon, up 15.37 cents. The September contract expired at $2.61 a gallon on Wednesday. Crude oil futures closed at $69.47 a barrel, up 53 cents. Gasoline stocks have fallen for nine consecutive weeks and are at their lowest since November 2003. Last week, they dropped by 500,000, to 194 million barrels - enough to supply the country's total gasoline consumption of 9.4 million barrels a day for about 20 days. "The United States is facing a major gasoline crisis and is starting from a nearly empty tank," Barclays Capital said in a note. The White House has already approved more loans from the strategic oil reserves than the 5.4 million barrels it released after Hurricane Ivan, which hit the gulf last September. The administration also relaxed shipping rules to allow foreign ships to transport oil and gasoline between American ports to make up for shortages in some sections of the country. "By utilizing the resources from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we will help minimize any potential supply disruptions as a result of the hurricane," Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a statement. But the real problem, said Frank A. Verrastro, the head of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "is the refining capacity, not crude." The first hurdle to overcome is the lack of electrical power. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, an import terminal with a capacity of 1.2 million barrels of crude oil a day, said it had suffered only minimal damage but had not been able to take deliveries from oil tankers because it was waiting for power to be restored to its onshore storage operation in Galliano, about 74 miles south of New Orleans. "I really feel confident that we will be going as soon as we have energy," said Tommy Martinez, executive director of the agency that regulates the terminal. Port Fourchon, which serves offshore rigs, platforms and the offshore oil terminal, is still struggling to get back to full capacity. Ships that use the port, which is about 100 miles south of New Orleans, still cannot sail through the clogged waterways that connect it to the Mississippi River and other shipping channels, said Ted M. Falgout, the port's executive director. Bridges along those waterways are not operating because they do not have power. The pipelines that transport oil or refined products to the Northeast, the Midwest and the Southeast reported some limited improvements. Valero, the nation's largest independent refiner, said it had restored power to its refinery in St. Charles, La., and that a quarter of its employees had managed to return to work. Initial reports from the company suggested that it would take as long as two weeks to restart the flooded refinery. Chevron said that that its refinery in Pascagoula, Miss., which has a capacity of 325,000 barrels a day, had escaped "catastrophic damage" thanks to a dike that has held up. But the plant remain shut. The delays at refineries and pipelines rippled through the system. One gasoline wholesaler, Petroleum Traders , reported it was being cut off by BP and Marathon, which have contracts that allow them to supply their own distributors first during supply shocks. Exxon Mobil and Chevron also warned of gasoline disruptions. To make up for the domestic shortfall, oil companies began taking measures to increase their imports of gasoline and diesel fuel from Europe. Bloomberg News reported that as many as 10 tankers were booked by companies, including BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, to ship about 130 million gallons of gasoline. But even if imports grow, much depends on how quickly oil production can be restored in the gulf. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 1.5 percent of global oil production but with little spare production capacity anywhere around the world, its impact is being felt far beyond the region's storm-hit coast. More than 90 percent of the gulf's daily oil output was still closed. Natural gas production was down by 79 percent, a slight improvement over Wednesday, the Interior Department reported. That did not ease the pressure on the markets, with natural gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange rising 2.5 percent, to $11.757 a thousand cubic feet. Since Aug. 26, more than 7.4 million barrels of oil, or 1.3 percent of the gulf's yearly production, has not been produced as a consequence of the storm. Another uncertainty looms over the gulf's energy infrastructure. When Hurricane Ivan hit the gulf last September, it created underwater mud slides that uprooted crucial underwater pipelines, delaying the return of full production for six months. In all, that storm cut oil production by 43.8 million barrels. So far, there is no indication of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the gulf's 33,000 miles of underwater pipelines, a seabed grid that links thousands of offshore platforms to refiners and storage tanks on the coast. "For all the talk of political uncertainty in Nigeria or Russia or Venezuela last year, the biggest single loss of production was from Ivan," Mr. Verrastro at the study center in Washington said. "Our definition of risk might be changing. The weather is becoming one of the biggest factors." With hundreds of thousands of people homeless, oil companies were facing more basic problems, even such previously simple tasks as contacting employees. Chevron is advertising a toll-free number for its workers. "On the top of our agenda is finding where our employees are," said Mickey Driver, a Chevron spokesman in Houston. "It's a major concern for us." categories: Politics Other Stories according to Google: The Iran-Iraq War | USATODAY.com - Katrina cripples 95% of gulf's oil production | CENTCOM Operation Iraqi Freedom Briefing - 12 April 2003 [ Gulf | CENTCOM Operation Iraqi Freedom Briefing - 28 March 2003 [ Gulf | Network World: Compaq in disarray | TomPaine.com - Mapping The Oil Motive | Seizing Arab Oil (Harpers.org) | Britain, the United States and Kuwaiti Oil in the 1930s | Business and Financial News - New York Times | Is It All About Oil ? 1:14:35 AM    Earl Bockenfeld

© Copyright 2005 Earl Bockenfeld.

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