chikv comments

This should be common sense, if your only options are to call an ambulance or wating in pain or fear for a day most people will not hesitate in calling an ambulance, even if its not really necessary. An after hours clinic where people can go and have a simple treatment or an evaluation so they can see if their problems are dangerous its a necessity.

The patients get treatment, the doctors in big hospitals can focus on real emergencies, the doctors running the small after-time clinics make an extra buck for their dedication and the government saves money by dedicating only the necessary amount of resources according to their urgency. How anybody can think this is not necessary?

The police should investigate the JT commenters

JT is nothing special, in any place where news about gropers are commented you will find a lot of people saying that unfortunately running away appears to be the only real defense against a false accusation.

@notagain

No one should be listening to music, using their phone or doing anything else distracting while cycling.

In this case I do understand the rule is not that you should avoid music but avoid being distracted or being unable to hear your surroundings. So the same as when driving, hearing music is not bad by itself as long as you can prove you can still hear properly.

Nevertheless, is not clear this earphones count as not blocking your hearing so I don't think the police would be happy with cyclists wearing them.

As every year the people with the irrational fear of masks keep appearing...

The same as every other health measures mask are extremely useful when used properly and do help preventing contagions, I still keep wondering why people keep treating them as some especial things that never works even when used properly.

Its exactly the same as washing your hands, if you do it properly it helps a lot, if you don't do it properly it has no value, but then again I don't see people giving bad advice like "people should just stop washing badly and just never go to the toilet nor touch anything".

I you wait until you can identify someone with flu close to you to take preventive measures you will be too late. That is the meaning of announcing the flu season, so people will dedicate significant resources to prevent it.

Some things just suck, and Japanese face masks are at the top of that list.

Again, as every year, with the people with the irrational fear of masks or vaccines. Used properly, masks (even 100 yen ones) can be a very effective measure to prevent new infections. Used improperly not so much, but that is the same with all other measures.

Lots of people don't wash properly their hands, but the solution is NOT to ask people to stop washing their hands completely, the solution is of course to educate people to do it properly. Its easier to learn how to wear a mask properly than to wash your hands properly.

How much active ingredients are in pills, compared to juice?

googling for a minute got me "72 mg total, equivalent to 20 ounces of cranberry juice"

The choosing of patients its of course expected, if you want to study UTIs you have to go to groups of people that frequently present them, else you would need to enroll thousands of healthy volunteers to get a couple of dozens with infections during a year. There is no need to adjust for their situation because the supposed effect of cranberries is not dependent on the patient ability to take care of themselves but on the alleged production of hippuric acid and proanthocyanidins. The authors anyway did a really good job with detailed criteria to evaluate symptomatic infection in this specific population in order to make it objective so its not just checking if the patient had little or lots of pain.

As explained before you have to make it a blind study if you want to get any significative results, there is nothing in the process of making the pills that would make it different for UTIs than the juice but that will mask the taste so the patients will not know what are they taking that is why you can't just give them juice or water

And yes this is only one study (not the first of course) but statistically the results can be demonstrated as significative therefore the value of the study is very high, if you have absolutely no information about the effect then you can understandably think it might be useful to drink the juice, but if you search carefully and find nothing in a well designed study you would need an even bigger and better study to recommend it to patients.

Anyway you can read more directly from JAMA http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2576821

In theory vaccine production for Zika is not expected to be difficult, with diseases of related viruses such as Yellow Fever and Japanese encephalitis it has been a simple and effective approach to defeat the disease and for now nothing indicates that Zika will be different.

If anybody can get a prototype for an inactivated vaccine next year (and by the results on medical journals it will be the case) then less than 3 years is a safe estimate for a vaccine coming to the market and eliminating most of the risk of microcephalia.

One of the best things about science is that it does NOT matter who says what, but how much evidence there is to support whatever someone is saying.

There are mountains of evidence of the usefulness of the flu vaccine, produced by laboratories and universities all over the world, its trivially simple to prove that Dr Morris was wrong (or had other priorities for his declarations instead of the reality). Nevertheless conspirationists prefer to believe that thousands of professionals that dedicated their lives to public health are actually liars and on it for the money. See the data, the evidence.

Like in this case, do you want us to believe that diabetes patients are also part of the conspiracy? the records are there for other people to check so the only possibility is that the patients hide their health problems if they received the vaccine in order to make it seem better, realistically speaking its impossible to believe.

Are these GMO or not? I don't think Monsanto will allow this to continue.

They are modified genetically, but in the "natural" way using breeding, never mind that the results are much more unpredictable and that the risk of unintended hidden characteristics appearing is higher (it has happened all the human story) still people will accept them better than a much more limited and controlled modification, mostly because most people are not interested in evaluating the real risks, just listen to their irrational fears.

And that belief on Monsanto being an all powerful, all reaching company that controls every single kind of advancement in food is typical of the irrational conspirationist crowd. In reality a lot of people all over the world are working in "Biofortification" using many kinds of techniques (GMO and non-GMO) so there is nothing a single company could do to stop it.

You're making a lot of assumptions about what I know and don't know chikv.

When you make huge mistakes on clear texts (that is no assumption, many people have demonstrated your mistakes and you could not defend yourself against it) there are two possible reasons, one is that you ignore what you are talking about, (an understandable situation) the other is that even knowing that you are mistaken you would prefer to lie (not so fine), I assumed the better of those two options, but if you would prefer to be called a liar its also OK with me, the main point is that what you conclude from what you read is completely false.

Why would you so vehemently defend a mistake, that should almost be considered a criminal mistake, that the company has made?

I did not defend anything, its just you that apparently can't comprehend what you try to read, I have said that that mistake should not happen and that more control is necessary to avoid it because it could lead to other mistakes and those may actually be dangerous. What I did was correct you misconceptions/lies (for example when you said that this was a problem with a vaccine, because it is not). Thinking that correcting you when you said something false is the same as defending the mixing of strains then that is unfortunately once again you not understanding what you try to read.

And to say that by not taking a vaccine that is 50% effective, the most, I somehow endanger others is the most asinine, idiotic thing I have ever heard.

But is still true, and there are studies that prove it and that is why people working on hospitals and with elderly people are required to vaccinate, to avoid endangering their health and even lives. Your beliefs are wrong and is your position the one that can be demonstrated as false.

Pure fear mongering from someone who is probably benefiting one way or the other from the flu vaccine industry.

Pure gold, you begin by saying that assumptions are not good (even when I choose to assume an honest mistake instead of willing intent to deceit) and then you begin to assume things, do this mean that you recognize you have no more valid arguments? or that suddenly you called yourself a liar?

I have never taken the flu shot, have never had the flu or if I did my immune system dealt with it the best way possible. By killing it and building antibodies which it can rely on in the future, should I get the flu (the same or similar strain).

That is exactly the same that happens with the vaccine, except that you choose to have a higher probability to have complications and even die with the natural strains, all because of imaginary risks. Following your example of the lottery, You are choosing to buy a ticket that is more expensive, have less chance of winning and for a smaller price, but since in your mind you are right you will never open your mind to the possibility that you may be wrong.

50% efficacy, which is questionable as it is, is not worth the chance of getting narcolepsy, Guillain-Barré syndrome, etc.

Again a biased opinion because of limited information, why you put a link with scientific sources and then you choose to ignore them? may it be because they make your argument worthless? the flu-narcolepsy relationship has been studied deeply and it was found that the problem is an autoimmune reaction that happens because the strain used in the vaccine have an antigen that is very similar to a protein in the brain of some people. What is the importance of this? that the narcolepsy is related to the contact with that antigen, which includes not only the vaccine but also the natural strain, and even more, for those people that contracted the natural infection the risk is even higher than those that were vaccinated. With the added value that the vaccine can be reformulated to avoid the risk, but the natural strain doesn't care about the narcolepsy so people that still refused the new vaccine were actually increasing their risk of getting that complication.

Usually, you'll need nothing more than bed rest and plenty of fluids to treat the flu.

Weird, when they say that "usually" vaccines have absolutely no important side effect then its not good enough for you, it has to be 100% safe. But when they say that "usually" the flu does not kill then suddenly that is proof of perfect safety. A lot of people get dangerous complications and die every year from the flu, and the vaccine does help reducing this. And even without complications, getting the flu is HARD, even a 50% of getting rid of a painful and miserable week of your life is still a huge advantage.

So go ahead, knock yourself out and take the shot, spend your money and have you body absorb the chemicals in it year after year

What chemicals? those that your body naturally produce by itself like the formaldehyde, or those that you absorb a thousand times more just by being alive and eating like the aluminium salts? may it be that you ignored this? or is it that even knowing it you prefer to lie because you don't care about endangering other people as long as you can defend your irrational fears?

So who is right here, you or the them? My money is on them

Again you read without understanding and then reach totally false conclusions precisely because you did not understand anything. Yes mixing the strains of viruses and then releasing it into the wild increase the risk of finding a host susceptible for both so reassortment could occur, its not likely in this case (either the release and the coincidental infection of a viable host) but the possibility of course exist. That does NOT change the fact the humans are NOT this host so inoculating it into humans is not one of those "dire consequences" (that would be the result of at least three more steps before reaching the human). Also it does not change the fact that this mixture of strains happens naturally in all regions where they can be found. You really need to read better.

"People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted."

Do you even read what you quote? mixing strains of course its bad, so it should not happen, even if in this case the mixing is already happening in the wild, the mixture was used in a controlled and isolated environment and the danger of reassortment is astronomically low, Why? because its a sign that better controls should be used by that company for their management of experimental materials because maybe next time the mixture could be more dangerous than this time.

Again, this does not happen for vaccines (that have many other extra controls during the production) so still your argument is based on huge ignorance and completely invalid.

My opinion was that the influenza shot is ineffective at best and dangerous at worst."

The problem is that your opinion is based on willful ignorance and a closed mind, you can't prove its dangerous (at least more than the disease it helps prevent) but you will not accept this because you are not interested in the real situation but prefer lies that make you feel better. You put yourself and people close to you at higher risk but unfortunately you don't care enough to really inform youself.

Here is what the governement says about it: "....the flu vaccine reduces the risk of flu illness by about 50% to 60%...

And why did you cut the quote? the next part is "among the overall population..." which of course include people that don't get vaccinated for plenty of reasons. Meaning, that if a certain percentage of the population get vaccinated all the population will have 50% to 60% reduction of the risk of contracting the disease since the epidemic will be interrupted.

Then again the people vaccinated have other very valuable advantages that you keep ignoring but still exist, for example, much milder and shorter disease, much less probability of dying because of complications of the flu, and also they transmit the disease to other people with much less frequency. Even if the vaccine did not prevent the infection those extra advantages would be enough to recommend the general vaccination.

You have a one in two chance of getting better. not exactly the efficacy I expect from a vaccine

and the other chance (1 in 2) is of what? of not getting better like in dying? reducing the possibility of death from 100% to 50% for the price of a flu shot its a very nice offer I would think. I am trying to say that you don't only need to read better, but also write better.

On the topic, you keep misunderstanding, you have an EXTRA 50-60% of not getting the infection, that is above the percentage you get from not having other diseases, being hygenic, and so on. And then the vaccine will make you have a much milder and less dangerous disease even if you manage to get it, and will protect those close to you even if they are not vaccinated themselves because you will not transmit the disease as easily as an unvaccinated person. All these facts are well know, but either you ignore them or you try to pretend they don't exist, both options leave you in very bad light.

So, it looks like I was correct after all.

Not at all, again you failed to understand anything you read, even the simple fact that an experimental material is NOT a vaccine and unfortunately you don't even understand what advantages you can get from a vaccine.

Just to be sure, what things you do in your daily life have a perfect 100% efficiency? because according to what you write, everything is like playing the lottery to you, from wearing a seatbelt to avoding walking on the middle of the traffic (since nothing you do can prevent anything at 100%)

if it sin't about "tainted vaccine" I don't know what is..

That is precisely the problem, you don't know, but surprisingly that does not stop you from guessing (wrongly) what it "may" be. And worst of all you feel completely sure of something that actually you don't know the first thing about.

Influenza virus strains are used in many different things other than vaccines, they are a well characterized tool and their genetic material organization allow for them to be used to study other viruses. Laboratories around the world have influenza virus strains for many purposes and only one of them is to make vaccines.

Its not expected that everybody would have to know these kind of things, but when you immediately assume they can only be used for that small thing you do know you make a huge mistake, people who dedicate their lives to study this topic would of course know more about it than you.

""Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.""

Again is a subtopic so its not so important, but mixing H5N1 and H3N2 viruses happens frequently in nature, so an accidental mixture in a strictly controlled environment is much less risky. Even if this mixture of viruses were inoculated in a human (no real chance of that happening but lets assume it did) there is no risk, the danger for flu is the reassortment of genetic material, but that happens inside of the cell (after it was infected) the asian flu can enter the human body without too much trouble, but not so easily infect the cells, so the reassortment does not happen (only one kind of virus enter the cells), for that you need an organism where both viruses can enter the cell at the same time (like pigs).

Baxter admits flu product contained live bird flu virus.

So in order to prove that vaccines are bad today you have to dig something that happened once 7 years ago, that did not cause a single human case and that it was not even a vaccine?

Yes its bad that a company mixed strains of virus and everything, but vaccines are NOT treated at all as experimental products. Your example is like trying to sue McDonalds because you got sick after eating some new paperbags they where trying for the food.

A vaccine has to pass very rigorous test during production, and every lot has to be examined for efficacy and safety before being authorized for use. Thinking that a vaccine produced professionally may be treated the same as these experimental materials just because both come from the same company is nonsense.

I for one would never take the flu vaccine but you guys do as you wish.

The problem is not so much that you don't vaccinate yourself (after all, there are lots of people that can't do it) the problem is that you do it for illogical and false reasons. You actively ignore proven facts and replace it with easy to research lies putting yourself and those close to you in HIGHER risks by not vaccinating. That is easy to prove as long as you keep an open mind but unfortunately that does not seem to be the case. I just hope that you are never in a situation where you irrational beliefs put you or a loved one in the hospital or worse.

The flue virus mutates every year, they can only make the vaccine using last year's strain

You really need to improve your sources, that is NOT at all how the vaccine is made, actually last year strain is the only one that is sure NOT to be included in the next vaccine because most people at high risk of infection already have immunity against it.

There is a lot of work that is done every year to identify the strains that are beginning to spread. Yes there is some degree of luck involved, but its not just throwing darts to a panel, each strain profile is studied including what are the new antigens, how they compare with the other recent strains, how easily they are spreading, what is the action of the antibodies already produced by humans and very long etc.

Sometimes a new strain comes out of the blue to put all the effort to waste or the strains used in the vaccine are neutralized too well before the flu season begins so the cases come from a lot of other minor strains, but in most years the vaccine has an important positive value preventing a lot of lethal cases and giving vaccinated people a much shorter disease.

And if you have to go as low as mercola (a site that even between anit-vaxxers is considered full of lies) that can only mean that you really need to improve your sources of information.

This is not really a "cell phone" bad effect, anyone looking at a light at night will lose the night vision, if you use only one eye this effect is easily noticed since the other will still be adapted to darkness (its the cliche for the eyepatch of pirates being used to get one eye used to darkness). If you look at anything illuminated using only one eye you will have the same effect, be it TV, a book, etc. As long as you use both eyes you will not notice anye blindness (since both eyes will be equally blind in darkness).

@albaleo

Is it the method of delivery (spray versus shot) or the contents of the vaccine?

Well, that is precisely the issue, they choose to include an extra strain since the delivery method was apparently better than the usual shot, so when things did not go as expected the people responsible have now an extra possible reason why.

For influenza is most likely a combination of factors, this year strains may not be so easily recognized by the immune system, they don't go so well with this delivery methods, the mixing of strains is not adequate (maybe because one of the four dominates the response and leave the body without defenses against the other three for example) etc. Unfortunately its much more difficult to find the reason why this is not working as expected the more the factors you have to consider. AstraZeneca took a risk and now will have to deal with this extra difficulty.

Wow, this kid is lucky. Lets hope is the last time he has this kind of terrible experience.

Why was not there control groups with other kind of breathing exercises? It seems very clear that the effect was minimal and close to non-existent and limited to the breathing training, so its extremely likely that Yoga had nothing to do with it. Refusing to include other breathing exercises seems very suspicious, almost as if they may had found a bigger effect if they did and the Yoga part of the study would then become irrelevant.

The article is very interesting, but the reports on the media are blowing the conclusions out of proportions. For example more antibodies are not always better, specially when they did not measure how effective are those antibodies for the virus neutralization.

Yes, of course it may be that morning shots could provide better protection, but its also possible that is only the side effects the ones that get a boost. This is a really nice exploratory study that lets us corroborate that an effect actually exist, but before saying "its better to get your shots in the morning" a lot of other data is necessary.

Wouldn't this actually increase the stress? I would find extremely irritating to be forced to use a mouse that is not the one I choose in order to do a lot of my desk work.

But more importantly, any employee that knows that their stress levels are being monitored constantly and would have repercussions in his future (because this is Japan) is bound to feel even more stress.

Beware of side effects -- horrifying ones.

Yeah, like living or being able to breathe by yourself.

It is also reported that people may become more rational and less likely to be deceived by ignorant scare mongers, but that may be because of a selection bias between normal people and antivaxers.

I would like it better if he went to the hypocenter, Peace Park or Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki. For anyone that has visited its obvious that the emphasis is never about the "Bad Americans" nor the "Poor japanese" victims of the bomb but as an atrocity that humans did to humans and that the most important thing to bring back from the visit is that Nagasaki should be the last city ever to be subjected to an atomic bomb. That fits completely with Obama's purpose of Nuclear disarmament.

I am very curious about how this ruling happened, if the law is clear that representations without real children is not banned how could they justify a guilty ruling on a representation without any real children? Was it proved that images of real children were used? (punishing posesion?)

Big Pharma, not happy.

The opposite actually, if you just think what kind of medication are lost for people that die in their fifties but are gained for people who die in their seventies keeping people living healthy until then is a huge investment.

Bats will starve!

Not at all, from the dozens and dozens of mosquito species, only some of them drink blood, out of those only few drink human blood, and out of those only one is going to be affected. For humans it would be like losing one variety of Tomato, hardly something to starve for.

Life finds a way

We are counting on it, ecologic pressure will make sure that another mosquito species soon fills completely the space that a. aegypti loses and the effect of the human intervention will be magnified naturally. For the ecosystem one mosquito species is not really important since there are huge numbers of others to choose from to fill a spot, but for humans any other mosquito becoming prevalent is a huge success.

The problem is too common for nutrition science and consist on very poor peer review. In many other fields a manuscript being reviewed that don't discuss evidence contrary of what the authors want to prove would be rejected immediately in the grounds of insufficient arguments, but on nutrition everybody is happy with letting them publish anything ignoring whatever may prove them wrong. Unless that change, this kind of problems will be perpetually present.

@ Tessa

What if a Japanese mosquito bites an infected person right here in Japan, wouldn't it therefore become a carrier?

There is no Aedes aegypti mosquito population in Japan (every year some are found in traps around international airports so that may change), but the Aedes albopictus (tiger mosquito) is present in most of the territory and there is evidence that its a viable vector for Zika, if enough people come to the country in the season where we can find a lot of mosquitoes we could see an outbreak.

@kurisupisu

Having the virus as a pregnant female is the danger, not for males

The problem is that if you ignore the male cases you will get an outbreak for sure, also some cases has been reported where the transmission was done directly from male to female by sexual intercourse so that possibility also has to be taken in account.

@ warispeace

　Yet we should be aware that there is still no proof of a link to birth defects.

There is a case report where they found the microcephalia and Zika virus infection as the only risk factor, when checking the brain tissue of the fetus they found evidence of the virus (and not in any other part of the body) so it seems extremely likely that the relationship exist. Combined with apparent transmission by sex and that most of the infected adults have no symptoms this could become a huge health problem.

@ turbotsat

The link you provided just describes the characteristics for enrolled participants vs. persons screened out. The entire Conclusions section of that link is:

Obviously, since that publication is from 2015, and the results are joust being presented in a conference so there is no paper published with the full results yet.

There is a rough declaration of number of sex acts over a 3-month period prior to enrollment, for all participants. Was any examination made between number of sex acts, age, other factors, and individual failure to avoid HIV?

If you see table 2 there are a lot of factors being asked, using that information once it has been collected is trivial in comparison, so its completely reasonable to think they did it, especially since apparently everything else has been done very competently.

The question wasn't: Are any JT posters sure that any responsible scientist would have done examined age vs. frequency? It was: Did the study do so?

Because is the most basic things to do with HIV and since they DO have the data any minimally competent biostatician (such as the one that was necessary to calculate the power of the study to find a specific degree of difference) will do it. This is like asking from a doctor reporting a case "did you check if the patient was alive?" its something so basic it require extreme levels of incompetency to forget.

It'd also be nice to know what they found, if they did do that.

You can ask for anyone that attended the Retrovirus Conference in Boston, or wait for the paper to be published, it is news because it has just been found.

Also, another highly relevant data item is the HIV status of the primary partner... ...Shouldn't the authors actually test the primary partners instead of relying on the reports of various persons?

In a world with unlimited resources yes, in the practical world it is not expected to include every possible person that may become a parter of the participants in the foreseeable future (and make them sign in advance the informed consent, and the other bunch of ethical things that has to be done for all participants at the beginning of the study) I mean, you are suggesting a very unrealistic standard that no study with this many participants has ever done, its much easier to get a inexact but realistic evaluation based on the real situation (normal people don't go around doing the full HIV virological characterization profile tests and follow up for years for every partner they have). Its expected a bias, it can be controlled and the results are obviously not exact but still very useful.

Did the final study examine underreporting/overreporting of various factors as a cause of the age discrepancy?

The final study has not yet been published but I will comment back in the topic when I see it. For now very competent scientist have looked at the data and found no evident reason for the age discrepancy, if there is no described differences on under/over reporting in adults below and above 25 years of age in the literature its not natural to think that the discrepancy lies there.

Primary partner HIV status (All Countries: count, and percentage of participants) HIV positive 35 (1%) HIV negative 1444 (55%)   Participant does not know 1137 (43%)

I don't know what you want to say with this, obviously the percentages are rounded up, if you calculate them they are 1.337920489 55.19877676 43.46330275 and those do add up to 100%

It's not for me to disprove your faith.

It is not faith when its a completely rational, common thing that usually happens. If you go out after a storm and see some water puddles do you need faith to believe they come from rain water? even without direct evidence its something so obvious that there is no real need of faith to think it is true. A group of seasoned scientist that have worked for many years on HIV transmission, have published many papers of good quality in very stringent journals usually, normally, will not forget to add information about the sexual activity of the participants unless there is a very important and evident reason for doing so. In this case there is no special reason so expecting the situation to be "as usual" is not exactly having faith on them.

@ turbotsat

And yet, from what we can tell in the article, that is what we have. "A study based purely on age, without regards to the number of uses of the birth control."

To be fair, the variables you mention are so obvious that no study that ignore them could be published in any indexed peer reviewed journal and much less be presented in a conference where everybody would destroy it because of that mistake. Its like looking at an article titled "Zika Virus infection in Brazilian pregnant women" and wondering if they checked for trouble on the child.

Anyway the Trial characteristics have been already published.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26061040

And they do control for partners and sex, so if that was the explanation for the age discrepancy it would have been obvious.