Swine flu deadlier in those aged 5 to 59, 32 percent developing severe pneumonia

One report targeted the initial flu outbreak in Mexico, which included 2,155 cases of swine flu reported by the end of April. Researchers focused on the 100 people who died and what caused those deaths.

They found that 87 percent of the deaths and 71 percent of the cases of pneumonia were seen in people aged 5 to 59 years. That's unlike what is seen with seasonal flu epidemics, in which, on average, 17 percent of those in that age range who are seriously ill die and 32 percent develop severe pneumonia.

"The main finding is the capability of H1N1 of producing severe damage to previously healthy individuals," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Rogelio Perez-Padilla, from the Mexico City institute.

"Do not disregard the epidemic as mild or irrelevant," Perez-Padilla urged

SHOOT: Meanwhile the media feeds our compacency by saying the symptoms are consistently mild. 32 percent develop severe pneumonia. That's coughing up blood. That's painful and it's not no big deal.

Just in: Pregnant Spanish woman dies of Swine flu.

clipped from www.forbes.com MONDAY, June 29 (HealthDay News) -- With a worldwide pandemic under way and more than a million Americans sickened by the new swine flu, the special nature of this disease is becoming better understood. Several articles published online Monday by the New England Journal of Medicine show that, unlike seasonal flu, the new H1N1 flu strain attacks younger people and can be more severe and deadly in that group. The reports suggest a possible vaccination policy and also account for some reasons that this strain of flu appears milder than that of other pandemics. "These findings are in keeping with the fact that new strains or pandemic strains tend to be more deadly in younger patients," said flu expert Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University's Langone Medical Center in New York City.

South Africa has 7 swine flu cases confirmed

SHOOT: It's really cold here now, so the stage is set for a runaway infection. Remember: Don't Panic. And don't worry about striking doctors. Everything is going to be okay. Just don't get sick.

clipped from www.iol.co.za "We now have seven confirmed cases in total," said Hadebe. "Three new cases were confirmed over the weekend." The fifth and sixth patient are believed to be displaying mild symptoms and the department was still gathering information on the seventh patient's condition. The third and fourth cases, which were confirmed on Friday, were of patients who had travelled from London and the United States. Their treatment is being managed at home in accordance with WHO and health department guidelines and people they were in contact with will be consulted. Among the seven cases, is rugby player Brian Liebenberg, according to Beeld newspaper. "To prevent spread, people who are ill should cover their mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing, stay home when they are unwell, clean their hands regularly, and keep some distance from healthy people, as much as possible."

Swine flu strikes Wimbledon

SHOOT: It's interesting that they're not testing for swine flu. Flu in the middle of summer in England...a bit odd don't you think. But of course the organisers don't want to know, even if it is. Ignorance is blitz.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Four ball boys and girls at the Wimbledon tennis championships have shown symptoms of swine flu. The All England Club, which organises the competition, confirmed that some staff were showing flu symptoms. They were told to stay at home. But spokesman Henry O'Grady said no cases were confirmed as swine flu, adding: "They haven't been tested for swine flu and they're not going to be." People with flu symptoms were asked not to visit Wimbledon as spectators. The All England Club did not confirm the age or gender of those affected.

Get to know Michael Jackson in his own words...

Oprah Interviews Michael Jackson - Fascinating Insights. he says: "Do not judge a person without having met them one on one."

"I'm a black American. I'm proud to be a black American. I'm proud of who I am."

"I'm never pleased with anything. I'm a perfectionist."

"The press loves to start trouble. Please do not read the tabloids."

Swine flu demonstrates resistance to our bestweapon - the Tamiflu anti-viral, but er...DON'T PANIC

SHOOT: Intwisting. The pandemic is barely a few months old and our magic bullet is already proving ineffective. You can't outgun a pandemic virus. It is evolving faster than anything we throw at it. There is diddly squat we can do about it. So relax and enjoy the ride.

clipped from news.yahoo.com ATLANTA – For the first time, a case of swine flu has proven resistant to Tamiflu — the leading pharmaceutical weapon against the new virus, international health officials said Monday. The resistance was seen in a patient in Denmark, who has recovered. "The goods news is they just found one," said Dr. Carolyn Bridges of the U.S. Centers for Disease control and Prevention. Tamiflu resistance has not been seen in nearly 200 swine flu samples tested in the United States, Bridges said. But the resistance has been seen in other types of flu. Late last year, CDC officials reported that the most common flu bug circulating at the time was overwhelmingly resistant to Tamiflu. Health officials have believed it was probably a matter of time before a swine flu sample tested resistant, too. "It is possible to see occasional reports of resistance while a drug remains largely effective," said Terry Hurley, a Roche spokesman.

YAAAY! SHOOT hits 250 000

This website has come a long way since it's inception as an Ironman training diary in the icy satellite of Ilsan, one october day in 2004. It started off with about 10 hits a day, most of which were my own, but steadily gained a small but core following. The thrill of putting something online that could theoretically be seen by millions was an inspiration, although Of course, a few months later, in March 2005, having completed the Ironman in South Africa, the blog - then called 3rd Time Lucky (and I was) - went through its first makeover.

It became the existential, the philosophical: The Road to a Home. The title was based on the knowledge that driving and properties were about to undergo fundamental change. This was based on my understanding - yes, 4 years ago, in 2005 - of Peak Oil. The blog dedicated itself to energy issues then, and many articles and images depicted various road scenes and run down homes. Of course, 4 years later, the subprime crunch came, taking many people by surprise.

Once in South Africa, I moved to Johannesburg to work for a Media Company, and decided to brand the blog more decisively. This I did, as NVDL. Initially I took each initial and dedicated N to Nature, V for Virtue, D for discipline (alternating at times for discernment) and L for Logic, or Intelligence. I represented this branding with an image of Ryk Neethling's sister Jean Marie's arm lit by rainbows as it was submerged in a swimming pool. Even then I had the idea of the pristine purity of truth, of light pervading our illusions.

It was in 2009 that I made the current change to SHOOT. I wanted a short, sharp, decisive iconography, but also flexible enough to carry themes ranging from energy, to Lance Armstrong, to economics, to our crazy celebrity culture. I liked the interchangeability of the word SHOOT. It is conventionally taken to mean a photographic shoot, and the pretense and glamour involved. We also use the term, colloquially, when we ask someone to explain a point of view, or an idea. And then there are the other associations - something young and growing (like ideas about sustainability, climate change, pandemic disease, peak oil), and then there is the violence associated with economic hardship. In general though, SHOOT refers to the gathering of images or film to render some kind of truth.

Currently SHOOT has amassed over 11 000 unique users, and attracts, on average, over 500 hits each day. That's not bad for a site run by an individual. SHOOT has gone over 3000 page impressions on single days, and has grown 400% over the past year, accumulating the bulk of the last 150 000 hits over the past 18 months alone.

The site has recently added a number of additional features, including various columns, a monthly cover (to represent the brand as an online magazine) and a twitter feed.

I would like to say that the most popular stories on SHOOT are some of my columns [such as The View from my Bicycle - published each Monday] but smut still reigns supreme. This site is not a peddler of smut, however it does occasionally provide information that is not easily found online, and it is usually information in demand.
The most popular story by far is: 13 year old gets 15 year old pregnant. The site has provided more useful information, particularly during the 2008 Hurricane season, with an advisory on Hurricane Ike making the top 10 most popular reads over the course of a year. Two weeks ago I published a story on Barry Tannenbaum. Many in the mainstream media were reluctant to mention his name and ponzi scheme in the same sentence, and like all crooks, Tannenbaum denied any link to the loss of billions of Rands, the biggest swindle in this countries history so far (would anyone really expect the biggest con artist to raise his hand and say, "Okay, you got me, I did it.")

It occurred to me after this story that the biggest swindler in the USA was Jewish (Madoff) and the biggest in the UK (Robert Maxwell) was also Jewish. People were quick to write off the links between these fine, upstanding gentlemen as anti-semitic. The simple truth is that all three were Jewish, all three involved massive swindles, incredible greed and excess was involved, and fractions of the loot was recovered. If we are going to defend these people, and argue they are not greedy, then please explain where the money has disappeared?

In May I published perhaps the most disturbing images on SHOOT that I ever have or ever will publish. Again, it is easy to dismiss the post on Nikki Catsouras as blood-and-guts porn. As a cyclist who has seen corpses in situ in car wrecks, and who has had my own knee sliced open in a car wreck, I believe our romance with the motor vehicle needs an urgent wake up call. These pictures show a side to fast cars and fast living that more people ought to see.

Ashley Callie, also a very popular story on SHOOT, is a reminder that car wrecks claim lives on any given Sunday.

Over 1.2 million people die each year in the world. It's an ongoing holocaust, and no one thinks that getting into your car each day is probably the most life threatening thing you can do, and the most environmentally damaging of devices out there. Cars also have put entire countries in service to our addiction to the oil that runs them. And war is simple part of assuring that we can get a fix whenever we need one.

Then there was the Joost sex video. I believed Joost was innocent, that he was framed. This was based on news reports and blurry images. Once I saw the video myself, there was little doubt that it was him. Joost was South Africa's Michael Jackson in some ways - a man pretending to be a lot of things that weren't really true.

I was correct though, about Swine Flu. It is interesting to note that in South Africa, on the eve of the Confederations Cup, there wasn't a single confirmed case. Two weeks later, the day after the final, there were suddenly seven cases. I have predicted on this blog several times that the 2010 World Cup won't happen, certainly not as we'd like to envisage it. The world is rapidly contracting, with many processes changing fundamentally, and systemic contractions underway. It is crazy to imagine that a year from now we can just host thousands of tourists, welcoming them to our airports, when a pandemic, by then, will be well underway. In South Africa we have a crisis in our health care system - with doctors who are striking, with a TB and AIDS epidemic, and a cholera epidemic next door. South Africa is a tinderbox for an epidemic to spread through like wildfire. Expect to hear those words DON'T PANIC many more times in the coming months. A high level of concern is entirely justified.

As for the future, as our troubles increase, I expect the smut (13 year olds making 15 years pregnant and the like) to make way for content that increasingly will call our survival into question. Does that sound grim? Does that sound like too much gloom and doom? Many have accused this blog of being negative, yet those same people were caught completely by surprise by the markets. Reality isn't negative or positive. Truth isn't relative.

If you have a truth to share, or you shared a truth or two on SHOOT that means a lot to me, email me here and I'll pst your comments up here. Thanks for visiting, and it really does mean a lot when I get feedback saying how my efforts here have deepened or changed your understanding for the better, even if the knowledge of this points towards a worsening of our prospects. Jim Kunstler starts one of his books with this epithet: If a path to the better be; it begins with a full look at the worst." Thomas Hardy, 1887.

I aim, with SHOOT, to get us on the path to enlightenment, to better living, but most of us have a long to go before we will even begin contemplating that things are, perhaps, not so comfortable for us anymore, after all. I've hoped to communicate that reality before it breaks over us like a meteorite shower or a tsunami. SHOOT will continue to be here and there, covering the urgent issues facing us, visit here often for your daily dose of truth serum.

I expect to hit 500 000 by December 2010, if not sooner.

Lance Armstrong on top of the Col du Columbiere

Demand Media Video -- powered by demandmedia.com

SHOOT: If Liam can do it, so can Luke.

Michael Jackson: A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot

James Kunstler: In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century.

SHOOT: Here James Kunstler provides an unsentimental obituary to a man, and a country, and both are sorely needed since both are so utterly devoid of living in the real world. Here's more truth serum:

James Kunstler:A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf.

clipped from kunstler.com Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.  Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn't seem to affect his credibility as a borrower.  When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks. Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history

Health authorities say: "We're abandoning the containment of this virus."

Officials in both areas announced on Thursday they had abandoned attempts to contain spread of the virus, instead opting for a policy of managing the outbreak.

SHOOT: In a pandemic scenario, containment and vaccination simple don't make sense, because the scale becomes too great to control. Few people actually imagine this, since it falls out of their personal scenarios and experiences.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The number of confirmed swine flu cases in England has jumped by nearly 20% in a single day, latest figures show. The Health Protection Agency statistics show that 535 new cases were confirmed on Friday, bringing the total to 3,364. Scotland registered another 72 cases on Friday, an 8.5% rise, bringing the total to 922, and a 25th case was confirmed in Northern Ireland. With 12 cases confirmed in Wales, the total number of confirmed UK cases now stands at 4,323. He predicted tens of thousands of cases of swine flu could be emerging each week by the autumn. The West Midlands remains the most badly affected area of England, with 158 new cases confirmed on Friday, bringing the total to 1,516. Some hospitals in that region have created triage areas to cope with complaints of symptoms. London is the other swine flu "hotspot" in England, recording 225 new cases on Friday, taking the total to 985.

The Oil Intensity of Food

Although attention commonly focuses on energy use on the farm, agriculture accounts for only one fifth of the energy used in the U.S. food system. Transport, processing, packaging, marketing, and kitchen preparation of food are responsible for the rest. The U.S. food economy uses as much energy as the entire economy of the United Kingdom.

The 14 percent of energy used in the food system to move goods from farmer to consumer is equal to two thirds of the energy used to produce the food. And an estimated 16 percent of food system energy use is devoted to canning, freezing, and drying food–everything from frozen orange juice concentrate to canned peas.

Food staples such as wheat have traditionally moved over long distances by ship, traveling from the United States to Europe, for example. What is new is the shipment of fresh fruits and vegetables over vast distances by air. Few economic activities are more energy-intensive.

SHOOT: More energy is used to move food to us than to actually grow/produce it. But the real culprit is us, once we get the ffod.

The most energy-intensive segment of the food chain is the kitchen. Much more energy is used to refrigerate and prepare food in the home than is used to produce it in the first place. The big energy user in the food system is the kitchen refrigerator, not the farm tractor. While oil dominates the production end of the food system, electricity dominates the consumption end.

clipped from www.theoildrum.com Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year. Fertilizer accounts for 20 percent of U.S. farm energy use. Worldwide, the figure may be slightly higher. As the world urbanizes, the demand for fertilizer climbs. As people migrate from rural areas to cities, it becomes more difficult to recycle the nutrients in human waste back into the soil, requiring the use of more fertilizer. Irrigation, another major energy claimant, is requiring more energy worldwide as water tables fall. In the United States, close to 19 percent of farm energy use is for pumping water.

Here's the World's Ugliest Dog

SHOOT: Dogula.

clipped from news.yahoo.com PETALUMA, Calif. – A prominent under-bite, scrunched face and floppy ears are the hallmarks of a winner. The winner of the World's Ugliest Dog contest, that is. Pabst, a boxer-mix rescued from a shelter by Miles Egstad of Citrus Heights, Calif., won the annual contest on Friday at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Northern California. It was an upset victory for Pabst, who beat former champion Rascal, a pedigree Chinese Crested. Pabst's owner took home $1,600 in prize money, pet supplies and a modeling contract with House of Dog.

Northwest Airlines A330 flying from Hong Kong to Tokyo provides frightening parallel to Air France crash

A Northwest Airlines A330 flying from Hong Kong to Tokyo earlier this week, for example, ran into a situation which investigators believe may be a similar to what took place on the flight deck of the Air France jet.

The Northwest crew reported entering a storm in daylight and running into turbulence; in less than a minute their primary and standby airspeed indicators showed the plane had slowed dramatically. Other systems that automatically maintain speed and altitude also disengaged. "The master warning and master caution" indications flashed on the instrument panel, according to one crew member's written description, "and the sound of chirps and clicks (followed) letting us know these things were happening."

Things didn't return to normal for three minutes as the captain flew the aircraft out of the rain, according to information gathered by U.S. safety officials.

The scene inside Air France Flight 447 may have been more ominous from the beginning.

SHOOT: I think we've all been in these big planes through storms and wondered how they weren't pulled to pieces.

clipped from online.wsj.com Based on initial physical evidence and information from automatic maintenance messages sent by the aircraft, these people said, the plane bucked through heavy turbulence created by a thunderstorm without the full protection of its flight-control systems -- safeguards that experts say pilots now often take for granted. Relying on backup instruments, the Air France pilots apparently struggled to restart flight-management computers even as their plane may have begun breaking up from excessive speed, according to theories developed by investigators. An international team of experts is building a scenario in which it believes a cascade of system failures, seemingly beginning with malfunctioning airspeed sensors, rapidly progressed to what appeared to be sweeping computer outages, according to people familiar with the probe. The Airbus A330, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm 26 days ago, killing all 228 aboard.

Michael Jackson with his three children [PHOTOGRAPH]

Jackson was rushed to UCLA Medical Centre, where doctors shocked his heart and inserted a breathing tube to try to revive him, but were unsuccessful. He was declared dead at 2.26pm.

The new detail came as disturbing questions were raised about Dr Murray, who became Jackson’s personal physician three years ago and was due to accompany him on tour for a lucrative salary.

Public records show he had a string of financial troubles and a deeply complex domestic life, in which he is said to have fathered several children through different relationships.

SHOOT: Resembles mother and children.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk In a further development, it was reported that although his body has been released to them, his brain has been retained for medical examination as part of the investigation. The aim will be to carry out further tests as police wait for the results of toxicological analysis. The star was bald, barely eating and his stomach contained only partially-dissolved pills when he died, according to leaked details of the official autopsy. Pathologists reported that the 50-year-old only had 'peach fuzz' covering his scalp and was wearing a wig when he died. He revealed that Prince thought his father was messing around when he collapsed on the living-room floor but stood ‘in a trance’ as the King of Pop’s personal physician tried to revive him. That morning, Jackson had been preparing to go to London for his series of 50 concerts there. He was already starting to pack. At around 11.30am, he was given a shot of Demerol painkiller - and collapsed on the living-room floor.

Michael Jackson's death stretches internet capacity to breaking point

SHOOT: There's 'death by chocolate' and 'death via the internet'. I think I prefer the former, but if it wasn'ty for the latter, no one would know. But would that really be so bad?

clipped from www.crn.com Both Google and Yahoo -- the No. 1 and No. 2 search engines in North America -- confirmed record-breaking search traffic following to the Jackson news, as well. Google reported an unprecedented number of mobile searches, with five of its top 20 searches having to do with Michael Jackson. And Yahoo, in a blog post, confirmed that a story on Yahoo.com about Jackson being rushed to the hospital notched 800,000 hits inside of 10 minutes, with another story confirming the pop icon's death reaching 560,000 hits in 10 minutes.

Revisiting 'My Obituary' - written January 28 2008

SHOOT: Quite an interesting read. Probably needs updating, especially in lieu of the past few weeks, and months events. Everyone should do this.

clipped from www.nickvanderleek.com It’s not the end of the world that I’m gone – well, it’s the end of mine. I’m not going to pretend; my life wasn’t quite what I thought was destined for me, I had expected a lot more, but it was still fun in an ironic Bart Simpson sort of way. For a good few years it was a fairy tale wasn’t it; it had all the elements too: plenty of adventure, romance, castles, wild faraway places and animals, and all the family privileges of princes and princesses. The dragon though was mysteriously absent, or so we thought. I had high standards once upon a time, and I saw these slip starting in ’89 and ’98, despite a lot of best efforts to keep the show on the road. Instead of giving up I realized there was a level of functionality I was prepared to tolerate, even if I didn’t always accept it. Perhaps I got into the habit of making concessions. To my family – I knew you all a great deal better than you know, and loved you all a lot more than any of you realize.

Tooele County, Utah, suffers worst ever hopper plague

"Just their sheer abundance can make them a pretty destructive insect," said Clint Burfitt, an entomologist with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

"I think you could say it's the worst-ever in Tooele County. I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that," Greenhalgh said. Tooele County sits in a valley about 30 miles west of Salt Lake City.

Arriving with the grasshoppers have been flocks of hungry seagulls keen on bite-sized grasshopper snacks.

SHOOT: Grasshoppers also make good chicken feed, if they can keep up.

clipped from news.yahoo.com "I'd call this the closest that I've seen to a plague in a long time," Halligan said. Grasshoppers are regular summer visitors and a perennial crop-eating pest for farmers, but this year's invasion in Tooele County west of Salt Lake City is worse than anyone can remember. Tooele County commissioners have been swamped with calls about grasshoppers, particularly by people living next to undeveloped land where grasshoppers hatch — sometimes up to 2,000 per square foot. "There's like 100 times more grasshoppers than what we're used to," said Bruce Clegg, a county commissioner whose family has lived in the area for generations. Many of the culprits this year are clear-winged grasshoppers, which began hatching several weeks ago and have moved like an unyielding wave across the parts of the landscape ever since. Northeast of Tooele, the grasshoppers showed up suddenly and attacked Leana Jackson's backyard garden, infiltrated her lawn and even found their way into her house and car.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is very sexy [PHOTOGRAPHY]

SHOOT: Love this shot.

clipped from www.newsoftheworld.co.uk

Why did Jackson's cardiologist wait 50 minutes before calling 911?

Four injection sites were found above or near to Jacko’s heart.
All appeared to result from attempts to pump adrenaline directly into the organ in a failed bit to restart it.
Three of the injections had penetrated the heart wall — causing damage — but a fourth missed and hit one of the 50-year-old star’s ribs.
The autopsy also found unexplained BRUISING on Jackson’s knees and on the fronts of both shins. And there were CUTS on his back, indicating a recent fall.

SHOOT: Answer, because he was profitting from Michael's malaise. As long as Michael wasn't in good health, he had a job.

clipped from www.thesun.co.uk Harrowing leaked autopsy details show the singer was a virtual skeleton — barely eating and with only pills in his stomach at the time he died. His hips, thighs and shoulders were riddled with needle wounds — believed to be the result of injections of narcotic painkillers, given three times a day for years. And a mass of surgery scars were thought to be the legacy of at least 13 cosmetic operations. Pathologists found his stomach empty aside from partially-dissolved pills he took before the painkiller injection which stopped his heart. Samples were sent for toxicology tests. LOST virtually all his hair. The pop pin-up was wearing a wig when he died and pathologists said little more than “peach fuzz” covered his scalp. A scarred section of skin above his left ear was entirely bald — apparently the result of a 1984 accident when his hair caught fire as he filmed an ad for Pepsi.