Posts by Rich Lock
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Ricky Hatton had a reasonable career, by all accounts. He just should have retired rather than fight his last two fights.
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if petrol were as cheap here as it is in the US, and we had the effective subsidy on small truck chassis vehicles that the original SUVs had, and our roads were as wide as US suburban roads and freeways, I think we'd love SUVs just as much. Part of the SUV story in the US is the economic factors that made them an affordable choice.
...and if New Zealand made SUV's so Kiwi's could buy them locally, and if they were made locally and a whole bunch of trade tariffs were put around imports so the local product was a cost-attractive option to a consumer, and if there was a ready-made 'buy kiwi' mythology around these SUV's that advertisers could exploit, and if there weren't a whole bunch of slightly used but still nicely servicable ex-Japan station wagons arriving on the docks every week....
And about a bazillion other 'if's' that would have to be taken into account for me to actually agree with Matthew Pooles conclusion.
Seriously, your chain of logic is missing a few links between hypothesis and conclusion.
Having said that, Bill Bryson has a great anecdote in one of his books about cup holders. Apparently, Volvo attempted to enter the US market with a model that didn't have at least one cupholder per seat, thinking that features such as fuel efficiency and safety would be clear winners. It bombed. The designers had to frantically remodel the interior to include the requisite minimum number of cupholders before they could relaunch it.
Dunno if it's true, though.
They like to point to Germany's near or actual double-digit unemployment rate. In reality, the figures are skewed by the much higher unemployment rates in the former East Germany, which had the indignity of Joe Stalin foisting a puppet government on it.
Yes. Having to effectively deal with your existing population, plus the absorb the same again, especially when that population is generally made up of unskilled, unmotivated, traumatised people, living in a part of the country with effecively zero in the way of advanced technological infrastructure. Well, that tends to put something of a dent in even the best-running economy.
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WRT oseltamivir and zanamivir (Tamiflu and Relenza)
The reviewers asked two questions: do these drugs treat flu? And do they prevent it?
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The group treated with zanamivir were 24% more likely to have their flu symptoms alleviated than the placebo group, at a given time point. For oseltamivir the figure was 20%. It's alright. I'd take it. It's just not amazing.
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The prevention studies are a bit more exciting. Although patients had less of the virus on board, neither drug stopped patients from being infectious. In fact, neither had a protective effect at all against influenza-like illness, or asymptomatic influenza, even at higher doses.For preventing someone catching symptomatic influenza, the results were more impressive. A 75mg daily dose of oseltamivir was 61% effective compared with a placebo, and 73% effective when the daily dose was 150mg, while Relenza was 62% effective. In trials where researchers were looking at the prevention of influenza in households where someone was already infected, the drugs were also pretty good.
Things might be different in a pandemic, and the Cochrane review recommends them in such circumstances.
So:
- If you're one of The Infected and take your pills, you'll get some, but not a lot, of relief.
- If you're already one of The Infected, and you take the pills, you'll still infect others.
- If you're not infected, and you're taking the pills, and you come into contact with The Infected, you've got a reasonable chance of not becoming One Of Them. Although in a true pandemic situation, it might be a bit like trying to run through the rain and not get wet - some of the drops are going to miss, but even with an umbrella it's inevitable you'll get hit in the end.
And since we are already in the grips of a Pundemic, I give you for your reading pleasure:
The Aporkalypse.
Parmageddon.
Hamageddon
snoutbreak.
Hamdemic.All stolen from various sources.
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Meh. I've been wondering how long it'll take the 'I have a sniffle' panic crowd to die down at the doctor's.
I tried phoning the emergency number, but all I got was crackling on the line.
But it's alright, because I've heard that Lemsip will shortly be available in apple sauce flavour.
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Is the restraint slipping?
If it is, then it needs tightening up before she gets free. It would never do if she escaped before they had a chance to BURN HER!
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There's an interesting column by Ben Goldacre
Great column from him, as usual.
Loving the 'The Aporkalypse'. My new favourite word.
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Symptoms of swine flu include looking pale, weak and delirious and having a runny nose.
Well, he must have it then. Because those are clearly Swine Flu symptoms, and definitely not the symptoms of being a talentless crackhead.
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No, don't be daft! Lets just verbatim quote the UTTERLY UNINFORMED OPINION OF SOME RANDOM MOUTH WHO HAPPENED TO BE ON THE PLANE!
You would have enjoyed the Daily Show tonight. Jason Jones reporting from the "Center for stuff I heard from some guy".
What really got my goat about that particular article was the strong implication that if they had done what this guy suggested (which if I recall correctly was to dose all the passengers with Tamiflu at the arrivals gate, and then wave them off to their destinations), then this thing could have been nipped in the bud, and wouldn't have 'got loose' in NZ.
But since they didn't....OMG! It's loose! It can't be contained!
His opinion was quoted verbatim as if he knew what he was talking about - as if he was the uber-virologist from whom all viral wisdom springs. No counter-statements in the article, just his quotes, and Tamiflu was being discussed (well, blanket statements from him) as if it was some kind of magic cure-all.
But this guy was just some random.
So, would it have been a viable approach, or not?
Well, I've just done 5 minutes of research on wikipedia. I'll stress at this point that I know next to nothing about biology, viruses or whatever, so I may be grabbing the wrong end of the stick (but I've already done more research than whoever the reporters on that story were...)
Here's the article on Tamiflu. Very long and technical, but the first line says it's an antiviral. So what does an antiviral do?
Well, click through the link in the same article and here we go:
antiviral drugs do not kill the virus, they only stall their development.
Do. Not. Kill.
So, if an individual is taking Tamiflu, the drug will suppress replication of the flu virus in their system, but it won't kill it.
That implies to me that the infected individual can still infect others by the normal transmission methods, because the virus is still there (just in smaller quantities). Sure, it'll be harder for them to leave enough trace material on doorknobs, taps, etc to infect others, but still pretty good odds.
So Mr/Ms Infected-but-treated-with-tamiflu can still infect others, who aren't being dosed.
So dosing all the passengers up with Tamiflu, and then waving them off to their homes wouldn't (necessarily) have worked. It would have reduced the risk, but it wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination have eliminated it, or even come close to eliminating it.
That research took me 5 minutes or less. If I was a reporter, and I wasn't sure of those facts, but needed to confirm them (which I don't for the purposes of this post), I guess more or less any doctor could either confirm them, or set me straight.
Further, if I was a reporter, and not just some gumby who works for stuff.co.nz, I might be inclined to actually put that sort of information in my story, and possibly provide some answers to the unasked questions (like: would dosing all the passengers wiith Tamiflu have worked? Would quarantine have worked, or would that have been an over-reaction?). Y'know, things that are actually useful, accurate and informative.
And I'm also wondering if the random who was quoted at length would have been quite so keen on the quarantine course of action, given that he was a passenger on that plane....
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Ahhhh... so that's what a douchebag is!
Slightly off-topic, but he does have 'local' competiton
"owning commuter ferry operator Fullers Ferries, the bus company Howick & Eastern, both operating in Auckland, and 25% of Wellington bus operator Mana Coach Services"
Isn't public transport meant to be the attractive alternative?
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Still it was interesting to observe the senior health officials today emphasizing the importance of media coverage in getting the safety message out.
I have to say, the Heralds actual reporting hasn't been too bad (and I did see a Newstalk ZB release cut'n'pasted on there). Far better than the over-wrought nonsense on Stuff (stuff had the word 'panic' on their front page first thing this morning. Fortunately someone's removed it).
It's just a shame they had to merrily shoot themselves in both feet by opening it up to 'your views'. Way to trivialise the issue to the level of 'who should win dancing with the stars', guys.