General

Flu Update

Roche just announced they are sub-licensing Tamiflu broadly. WSJ picked up the story (subscription required) and noted that some countries aren’t waiting and have allowed generic production infringing Roche’s patents.

I was able to obtain some more Tamiflu today here in Austin at my local People’s Pharmacy. While there is apparently tremendous pressure on Roche at the international level, it looks like the rest of the supply chain has not yet picked up on the coming shortage and telegraphed the price rise. Gas prices these are not.

With no human to human transmission yet, it is hard to produce a vaccine because we do not know what the final pathogen will look like as it has not mutated yet. The risk is that it will spread quickly, but another risk is that it will not spread at all unfairly delegitimizing everyone who raised the warning.

It’s a lot to ask people to st0ckpile their own Tamiflu (40 doses is about $300 enough for two acute courses if you show symptoms or 40 days worth of deterrence). But it lasts for three flu seasons. Spending $100/person per year would be $30 billion/year. Roche might part with a license to sell at a few cents a pill in those volumes and the post office distribute it getting the price down to a few bucks a person a year.

But who will st0ckpile it for you if you don’t do it yourself? All it takes is 1% of families to buy to make personal st0ckpiling bigger than Roche’s US sales in a single flu season. There were only 13,000 prescriptions last year. So if 1% of families bought demand would be increased by a factor of a hundred. Then maybe the wheels of government would move to build some more “push packs” for flu and not just bioterror.

While we are talking good public health policy, maybe we could use Tamiflu prophylactically every year in hard hit regions and not wait for bird flu. This and other measures like more widespread vaccination outreach may even cut the tens of thousands of deaths from regular flu seasons down to the 160 of a typical hurricane season. It would also give the Center for Disease Control good practice.

Administrative

Back In Town

But just for a day or so. I got back yesterday, but I’m on a flight for California this afternoon, where I’ll be working, attending a workshop on DoD responsive launch initiatives, and going to the Space Frontier Conference this weekend (which you should attend as well, if you’re interested in this stuff). Blogging may be light.

I’m also keeping the house buttoned up in case Wilma pays a visit while I’m gone (though Patricia will be here). I had hoped that I could take down the shutters, and take down the ugly steel front door, and put on the pretty one, but I guess it will have to wait until the end of October now. This has been a long hurricane season.

Satire

Press Outraged Over Staged Flagraising

March 3rd, 1945

IWO JIMA (Routers) Controversy has erupted among the press corps in the last few days as news has spread that the now-famous picture of the “victorious” flag raising over Iwo Jima a couple weeks ago was staged. Many believe that, as the huge number of casualties mounted in the ill-fated and pointless invasion of this tiny island, the Roosevelt administration, desperate for a bit of pro-war propaganda, arranged to have the photo taken for dissemination to the world’s news services.

It has been revealed that the picture was actually of a “recreation” of an earlier flag raising of a much smaller flag, though even that event has now been cast into doubt by the apparent attempt to mislead the press.

There is abundant evidence that the picture was not only unspontaneous, but orchestrated on orders from higher ups.

“None of the men in the picture actually carried the flag to the top,” one reporter noted. “It was brought up by a lieutenant in charge, probably at White House orders.” In addition, none of the men in the picture had even been injured in the fighting to that point.

The latest propaganda ploy from the administration comes in the midst of doubts about the war strategy, with many thinking this latest bloody adventure particularly misguided. Several thousand Marines have died already in the invasion, and many more have been injured, many losing limbs. Moreover, despite the “victory” implied by the “flag raising,” the brave Japanese continue to resist in caves dug deep into the volcanic rock of the doughty little island, with continuing “Allied” casualties. One Republican staffer on the Hill declared that it was Roosevelt’s attempt to prematurely declare “major combat operations over,” when it was clear that the Japanese were going to continue to fight on to the last man.

Beyond the distaste at what now seems an obvious public-relations ploy, some military strategists argue that the Iwo Jima invasion wasn’t worth the cost in resources and blood, or even necessary at all, since the only reason the island is desired is as an auxiliary air base for emergency landings of “Allied” bombers attacking the Japanese homeland.

Some of the anti-war groups are particularly outraged. “We’ve killed tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, and several thousand of our own, just so we can save the lives of a few American air crews while they kill hundreds of thousands of helpless Japanese civilians,” read a press release from one of the more prominent groups. It continued, “Now we find the Roosevelt administration attempting to cover up its criminal actions by staging events meant to hide the fact that we’re losing this cruel war, with massive casualties on all sides.”

The White House, of course, attempts to defend its actions. A spokesman points out that no claims have been made that fighting was over, and that the photo was a depiction of a real event that had occurred shortly before, but not been captured by the cameras. He also noted that Mount Suribachi was in fact taken that day, and had not been relinquished since.

This does not satisfy critics in the press or the anti-war movement, however.

“It’s important to demonstrate the perfidy and mendacity of this administration now,” said one leading spokesman, “before it becomes fixed in the mind of the public as an American ‘victory,’ or something to be admired and emulated in the future. If we don’t set the record straight now, who knows how history will record it? For all we know, they’ll decide to put up a bronze statue in Arlington to commemorate it, or something.”

General

Spanish Flu Published

Charles Krathammer noted today in Washington Post that any terrorist can now obtain a digital copy (electronic or DNA) of the Spanish flu that killed tens of millions in 1918-1919. The powers that be felt that the study opportunities given its similarity to avian flu outweighed the risks. The evolving flu pandemic may provide a stark test of my (Sam not Rand) hypothesis that democratic capitalism protects itself.

I joined Bill Joy in raising an alarm about the publishing of the human genome back in 2000 in my own little way contributing my own Op-Ed piece (not accepted). I have since changed my view. Simon’s The Ultimate Resoure 2 changed my view. When we have a bad actor like a terrorist who wants to kill millions, there are trillions of dollars mobilized to combat it when the threat becomes imminent.

That is, if bird flu broke out, there would be massive quarantines, crash vaccine and anti-viral drug production programs, virus safety instructions, massive scientific study and so on. The people in harm’s way will pay thousands each to buy black market antivirals, head for the hills, or whatever course of action is open to them.

Capitalism is kind of like if you need a taxi ride to the hospital to save your life you start waving hundred dollar bills to attract a cab. Democracy means we have a government that can field an army if capitalism falters due to breakdown of property rights and rule of law.

You can improve your chances and possibly capitalism’s chances if you do the following. Ask your doctor to prescribe a 42-day prophylactic course of Tamiflu. Don’t start taking the prophylaxis course until bird flu is sighted in your area. Tamiflu also can be used for 5 days (at twice the dosage) for acute treatment if you start to show symptoms. Track avian flu’s spread from chicken to Turkey at the World Health Organization.

There won’t be enough Tamiflu if bird flu is a big hit. Unless the price starts to rise now. Unless capitalism’s wheels start to turn to produce a lot of it. Unless democracy steps in and does mandatory licensing so every pharmaceuticals manufacturer can produce tamiflu.

“The flu virus, properly evolved, is potentially a destroyer of civilizations,” depending on how resiliant they are.

Continue reading Spanish Flu Published →

Administrative

Off The Air

I’m going on vacation to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I’ll have a laptop, so I can do some writing, but networking may be problematic. I’ll certainly be back by the seventeenth. Meanwhile, lots of good stuff in the blogroll to the left.

Space

No More Giggle Factor

Alan Boyle has an interesting report from New Mexico:

The “giggle factor” that often dogged the space tourism industry in the pre-SpaceShipOne era is gone forever. “Now the idea of personal spaceflight can come out of the closet,” Michael Kelly, vice president of the X Prize Foundation, told an audience of more than 200 at New Mexico State University here.

Jeff Greason explains the importance of these kinds of events, and the suborbital industry, despite the foolish naysayers who think it has nothing to do with orbit:

“We don’t know how to make spaceships that can fly a couple of times a day, every day for years,” he said. “We don’t know how to fly so safely and so reliably that we can fly people as a business. We don’t know how to make money yet. … If we’re ever going to free ourselves from the kinds of fits and starts, one spurt of energy per generation, little incremental bits of progress that characterize government funding in space, we’ve got to start making a profit. And we don’t know how to do that yet. We don’t know any of those things. But we think we have pretty good ideas about how to solve them, and we aren’t the only ones.”

He also had some good news:

“We are off the back burner [with the Xerus project], but we don’t have enough money that I can confidently say we can finish working on the vehicle,” Greason told MSNBC.com.

Other interesting news:

Tai told the audience of rocket entrepreneurs and enthusiasts at Thursday’s symposium that Virgin Galactic wasn’t necessarily locked into using SpaceShipOne design exclusively, just as the Virgin Atlantic airline isn’t locked into using a specific kind of airplane.

“We want to partner with all of the people in this industry. … If you have a better spaceship than Burt Rutan, then Virgin Galactic wants to operate that spaceship,” Tai said.

In other words, they want to be a spaceline.

War Commentary

“Please Send Money”

Read about this letter from Al Zawahiri to Al Zarqawi:

Zawahiri also complains about Zarqawi’s all-out war against the Shiites of Iraq, saying the Arab man in the street doesn’t understand why suicide bombings are killing so many fellow Muslims.

The letter also indicates Zawahiri’s life in hiding has left him cut off from news and financial support. He asks Zarqawi to provide him more information about operations in Iraq, saying he should know at least as much as the enemy knows, and he even asks Zarqawi to send money.

Well, maybe Zarqawi is losing Zawahiri’s support, but he’s still got Michael Moore and Ted Kennedy in his camp…

I have to say, though, I don’t know what it is that CBS finds “chilling” about the letter.

Then read this (long but worthwhile) report from Mosul by Michael Yon, if you want to know who’s winning, and who’s losing, this war.

[Update on Friday morning]

Dan Darling has further thoughts.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!