Ancient plauges

cross posted from my main blog


right now I'm listening to The-Fate-of-Rome-Climate-Disease-and-the-End-of-an-Empire on Scribd.

Scary.

The theory is that various plagues resulted in depopulation in the Roman empire, and the climate variations (volcanic?) caused famines.

Plagues that weakened Rome includes the Antonine plague (? Measles? Smallpox?) and the plague of Cyprian.(measles? Smallpox? a viral Hemorrhagic fever?)

Measles can be very serious in malnourished people and in adults, and can kill even today. But it may have mutated to be less severe with time. Measles was first described by a Persian physician in the 9th century, but some historians wonder if it mutated (from Rinderpest of cattle or distemper in dogs) long before then.

Ancient mummies howeveer do show evidence of smallpox scars, so we know that disease has been around for quite awhile.

Cyprian's plague was blamed on that diabolic sect the Christians (/s) but one wonders if the custom of Christians for careing for the poor and sick might have resulted in converts too. No data on this: Just wondering.

Wikipedia on the Diseases of Rome. Don't forget Malaria, which was more widespread in "temperate" climates than most moderns realize.

from the article: Mapping smallpox, malaria and Leprosy:

Malaria deaths in the United States, 1870 census.

But the really big plague that probably stopped the swift recovery of the western Roman empire was the plauge of Justinian.

Justinian's plague was probably Bubonic plague, and began in Egypt/Ethiopia, although the black death probably started in China.
The germ does hide in various little critters: Gerbils, rats, etc.
So IHS docs would see a couple cases a year in the Navajo reservation, and there are spotted reports about cases in Islamic terrorists catching it probably from living in dirty caves.

DNA studies suggest that it was around in the silk road area long before then,

from Nature

and SciAm wonders if this might have encouraged locals to migrate to safer pastures (i.e. to Europe and India). But DNA suggests that this strain was a lot less infectious.

But the analysis revealed that plague might have been less transmissible in the early Bronze Age. The six oldest Bronze Age strains lacked a gene called ymt that helps Y. pestis to colonize the guts of fleas, which serve as an important intermediary. In outbreaks of bubonic plague, infected fleas (often travelling on rodents) transmit the bacteria to humans living nearby. Without fleas as a go-between, Y. pestis spreads much less efficiently through blood (where it is known as septicaemic plague) or saliva droplets (pneumonic plague).

yet one does wonder what was behind a lot of bronze age plagues in the Middle East.


and one wonders if this is what hit the Philistines after they stole the Arc of the Covenant ("Hemorrhoids" is the usual translation.) and if this might have been the plague that devestated the Hittites after they went against Egypt in the Battle of Kadesh and took home some POWs as slave (and the plague followed them).

but this article claims it was the Hittites who spread Tularemia via infected sheep and they caught it too. UKTelegraph article:

The method of attack was simple. The Hittites would leave the sheep outside the targeted city. Locals would bring them in and either breed them or eat them, spreading the disease.

and this article suggests it was Tularemia that hit the Philistines too.

Global Security has a history of the use of Tularemia as biowarfare, and mentions the debate if the Tularemia in German troops at Stalingrad was biowarfare or just from normal infections. Discussion here.

Tularemia makes one sick for a couple of weeks, and has a low (under 20percent) mortality, and luckily for modern man, responds to antibiotics.

whereas Y.Pestic (black plague) works quite quickly to kill you.

more on Justinian plague here.

HIV in China

AlJ has an article about the one million cases of HIV in China.

More than 820,000 people had AIDS or were HIV-positive at the end of June, up by 100,000 from the year previous,,,.

More than 40,000 new HIV/AIDS cases were reported in the second quarter alone in China, with 93.1 percent having contracted the virus through sex.

China has experienced scandals related to HIV transfusion through blood transfusions in the past, the number of HIV infections by blood transfusions has "essentially been reduced to zero", according to Xinhua.

In the 1990s, rural parts of China - particularly the central province of Henan - endured the country's most debilitating AIDS epidemic. It stemmed from a tainted government-backed blood donation programme and infected tens of thousands of people, including entire villages.

the article ignores the story of HIV via illicit drug use. 

After nearly three decades of being virtually drug free, use of heroin and other illicit drugs has re-emerged in China as a major public health problem. One result is that drug abuse, particularly heroin injection, has come to play a predominant role in fueling China's AIDS epidemic.

The first outbreak of HIV among China's IDUs was reported in the border area of Yunnan province between China and Myanmar where drug trafficking is heavy. Since then drug-related HIV has spread to all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. 

and of course, all the do gooders go on to blame the "Criminalization" of drug use that "marginalizes" people who inject drugs.

 sounds like Soros' "open society" is being sucessful, since one of their aims is to legalize ALL drugs.

The Showman who saved 6500 lives

via Atlas Obscura: When Infants in Incubators were sideshow attractions:

The premise of the attraction was straightforward enough: pay an entrance fee to see something you wouldn’t usually be able to see.

What set Couney’s sideshow apart was that his subjects were premature babies in incubators, receiving care that hospitals did not provide.

The entrance fees he collected went toward his operating costs, including round-the-clock care and wet nurses. Couney did not charge the parents of his tiny patients.

Couney visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo with his baby incubators, 1901. PUBLIC DOMAIN

Reporting in 1903, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the “seriousness and value of the system shown.” A visit to Couney’s showcase revealed rows of warmed, glass-fronted incubators supplied with filtered air, containing “little pitiful pinched looking waifs… the only things that indicate that they are alive are the healthy color of their little faces and the faint flutterings of movement which are perceptible on closer inspection.”

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NPR story of one of these children:

Lucille Horn was one of them. Born in 1920, she, too, ended up in an incubator on Coney Island.
"My father said I was so tiny, he could hold me in his hand," she tells her own daughter, Barbara, on a visit with StoryCorps in Long Island, N.Y. "I think I was only about 2 pounds, and I couldn't live on my own. I was too weak to survive."
She'd been born a twin, but her twin died at birth. And the hospital didn't show much hope for her, either: The staff said they didn't have a place for her; they told her father that there wasn't a chance in hell that she'd live.
"They didn't have any help for me at all," Horn says. "It was just: You die because you didn't belong in the world."
But her father refused to accept that for a final answer. He grabbed a blanket to wrap her in, hailed a taxicab and took her to Coney Island — and to Dr. Couney's infant exhibit.Dr. Martin Couney holds Beth Allen, one of his incubator babies, at Luna Park in Coney Island. This photo was taken in 1941.Courtesy of Beth Allen"How do you feel knowing that people paid to see you?" her daughter asks.
"It's strange, but as long as they saw me and I was alive, it was all right," Horn says. "I think it was definitely more of a freak show. Something that they ordinarily did not see."
Horn's healing was on display for paying customers for quite a while. It was only after six months that she finally left the incubators.
Years later, Horn decided to return to see the babies — this time as a visitor. When she stopped in, Couney happened to be there, and she took the opportunity to introduce herself.
"And there was a man standing in front of one of the incubators looking at his baby," Horn says, "and Dr. Couney went over to him and he tapped him on the shoulder."
"Look at this young lady," Couney told the man then. "She's one of our babies. And that's how your baby's gonna grow up."

What are kids actually doing?

The NYTimes is asking people to relate stories of their sexual escapades in high school and colleges.

They will then presumably presume this survey is significant: but it's not, since anecdotes don't give you an idea of what is going on, and of course, people will lie and make up stories.

If you want hard data, check the CDC data: Youth Risk Surveillance survey which I cited below to put the pedophilia crisis into perspective.

Nationwide, 45.3% of students had had sexual contact with only the opposite sex, 1.6% had had sexual contact with only the same sex, 5.3% had had sexual contact with both sexes, and 47.8% had had no sexual contact (Supplementary Table 5).

So yes, there are virgins in high school.
....
and yes, date rape happens

Nationwide, 7.4% of students had ever been physically forced to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to (Supplementary Table 34). The prevalence of having been forced to have sexual intercourse was higher among female (11.3%) than male (3.5%) students; higher among white female (11.2%), black female (11.7%), and Hispanic female (11.2%) than white male (3.3%), black male (3.4%), and Hispanic male (3.6%) students

.................
and date rape rates varies according to your sexual orientation:

Analyses based on the question ascertaining sexual identity indicated that nationwide, 5.4% of heterosexual students; 21.9% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students; and 13.1% of not sure students had ever been physically forced to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to (Supplementary Table 34). .

.........
rates vary widely in different areas:

Analyses of state and large urban school district data indicated that across 34 states, the overall prevalence of having been forced to have sexual intercourse ranged from 5.7% to 19.2% across state surveys (median: 8.3%) (Supplementary Table 35). Across 20 large urban school districts, the prevalence ranged from 6.8% to 11.9% (median: 9.2%)

............
and a lot of kids are assaulted or forced into sexual situations short of rape. Note that this analyzed only those who were dating, so cut the percentage in half to see the actual percentage of all kids.

Among the 68.3% of students nationwide who dated or went out with someone during the 12 months before the survey,¶ 6.9% had been forced to do “sexual things” (e.g., kissing, touching, or being physically forced to have sexual intercourse) they did not want to do one or more times during the 12 months before the survey by someone they were dating or going out with (i.e., sexual dating violence) (Supplementary Table 38).

and the rate varies according to who you are dating, i.e. heterosexual vs homosexual vs not sure;

Analyses based on the question ascertaining sexual identity indicated that nationwide, among the students who dated or went out with someone during the 12 months before the survey, 5.5% of heterosexual students; 15.8% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students; and 14.1% of not sure students had experienced sexual dating violence

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so kids are all promiscuous, right? uh, not really:

Nationwide, 9.7% of students had had sexual intercourse with four or more persons during their life (Supplementary Table 137). The prevalence of having had sexual intercourse with four or more persons was higher among male (11.6%) than female (7.9%) students; 

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but what about normal intercourse? a lot of statistics ask who has had intercourse at any time, but the actual number who are routinely sexually active is lower than you think

Nationwide, 28.7% of students had had sexual intercourse with at least one person during the 3 months before the survey (i.e., currently sexually active) ,,,,The prevalence of being currently sexually active was higher among 10th-grade (24.9%), 11th-grade (35.3%), and 12th-grade (44.3%) than 9th-grade (12.9%) students;

This pretty well agrees with what I saw in practice: younger teenagers are at great risk for problems, including pregnancy and STDs, and that group continues to have problems:

but a lot of more mature teenagers are having intercourse with regular partners. Since in my day, I have had friends who married at age 16 to 18, I figure this is just the same behavior as their grand parents, except they don't marry nowadays.

In summary:

 there is also a subgroup of teenagers at risk for sexual coercion.

You just can't arrest every time this is done, but school and public health authorities need to address this (as do churches).

This behavior to be addressed, but it is not universal.

By the way: The survey also has statistics on bullying, threats of violence, kids carrying guns, using alcohol and tobacco and drugs, were depressed, thought about suicide, and if they ate their veggies.

 Nationwide, 26.6% of students had eaten vegetables (green salad, potatoes [not counting French fries, fried potatoes, or potato chips], carrots, or other vegetables) two or more times per day during the 7 days before the survey

cook stoves with wood or coal cause asthma etc

SciDaily article...

About three billion people around the world live in households that regularly burn wood, coal or other solid fuels to cook their food. Solid fuels emit very high levels of pollutants, especially very small particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs. Typically, these households are found in the rural areas of low- and middle-income countries. Although China is rapidly urbanizing, one third of its population still relies on solid fuels.

here, I had to increase the salary of my maid so she could buy LPG gas for cooking because I got tired of treating her son for respiratory infections.

In Africa, they tended to cook outside, but in cold weather, they heated the huts with wood fires, so we saw not only respiratory illness in kids but severe burns from accidents.

Calorie lables mean people lose weight?

UPI Headline:


Calorie counts on menus are helping people lose weight, study says

then you find the details:

"We conducted an experiment with over 5,500 diners in real-world restaurants and found that calorie labels led customers to order 3 percent fewer calories," said study author John Cawley. The drop amounted to about 45 fewer calories consumed per meal. 

 "This was due to reductions in calories ordered as appetizers and entrees," he added, with little change seen in the calorie count of either drinks or desserts...

uh but don't desserts have a lot of calories? Shouldn't they be cutting these out instead of appetizers?

 "In interpreting that, it's important to remember that people will change their behavior when the information is new or surprising," he explained. "People may have already known that desserts are high-calorie and not cut back, but been surprised by the number of calories in appetizers and entrees, and so reduced calories there."

or maybe they cut out the appetizer so they wouldn't feel guilty about eating that calorie filled dessert...


what is not explained: if the 45 calories was in everyone, or if they added up everyone and divided it by the number of people. So a person omitting a high calorie appetizer (say, 1000 calories) but 24 people not doing anthing would amount to an average of 40 calories less per person.

even if this was true for everyone, and everyone cut their calories by 45 calories, how much weight would they lose?

Cawley calculated that over a three-year period, the calorie cut would lead to weight loss in the range of one pound.

assuming they don't go home hungry and then scarf down some potato chips and beer.

a third study was done in real time: with young 30 something white men.

Maybe biased toward the health obsessed?

Headlines you might have missed

Lifestyle changes could lower need for high blood pressure medicine.

Duh. Hippocrates knew this. The problem? Given the choice between a pill and diet/exercize, most people prefer the pill.

Lolo jogged until he hit age 88, but he wouldn't give up his soy sauce/patis/salty Fiilipino dishes.

and of course, for severe high blood pressure, mere diet and exercize doesn't work.

For some of us, exercize is hell. (arthritis, fear of ridicule). My only exercize is to walk George the cat killing Labrador, but even then, I go with the cook for fear of falling/being pulled down by the dog).

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Probiotics are useless. the study was in healthy people.

dirty little secret: Most medicines are useless in healthy people.

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another cholera epidemic in Harare (Zimbabwe).

The problem? infrastructure collapse from not repairing it.

The government is saying that it is doing what it can, but say it is hindered by the current economic crisis. The opposition blames the lack of resources on decades of corruption and mismanagement.

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two cases of monkey pox in the UK in people returning from Africa.

not usually fatal and not easily transmitted person to person.

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After every typhoon, we have a minor epidemic of Leptospirosis. It is easily treated with antibiotics, but often people don't seek help in time.

Article about the problem HERE.

Flu or MERS?

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the flight that was stopped in NYC with a lot of sick people. What caused it? Influenza is what is being told. Then why were so many people (10) hospitalized? Or was it a precaution?

BusinessInsider article says what I was thinking: Thank God it wasn't MERS.

And it appears that the illness might have been spread from pilgrims returning from last week's haj celebration.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating illnesses that sickened dozens of passengers on three separate international flights headed into the US this week. It looks like many of the sick passengers were traveling from Mecca, where the Hajj was recently underway, and massive crowds of millions of people gathered.

nor was that flight the only one.

First, there was an Emirates flight from Dubai that landed at JFK airport Wednesday morning and had to be quarantined... Nearly a dozen passengers on board that flight were hospitalized and given anti-viral drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said "preliminary tests indicate that some patients tested positive for influenza and/or other common respiratory viruses." But the agency isn't quite sure this was the common flu. 

 Then, on Thursday, two flights coming in to Philadelphia from Paris and Munich were briefly held upon arrival because of passengers on board with sore throats and coughs. As NBC reported, those sick passengers were all traveling from Mecca, Saudi Arabia where the annual Hajj pilgrimage was underway in late August. It's not too far from where the first plane took off (in the United Arab Emirates).

Infectious disease is always a worry for hij pilgrims, many of whom come from poor countries (poor people often are offered free pilgrimage paid for by richer Muslims).

But there are many requirements for the pilgrims, including vaccinations for infectious disease including seasonal influenza.

One problem being, of course, that the seasonal influenza varies from year to year and sometimes the vaccines don't cover that strain of the virus.

In contrast, MERS has similar "flu like" symptoms, but is a different virus, one related to SARS.
WHO LINK

Approximately 35% of reported patients with MERS have died.

Although the majority of human cases of MERS have been attributed to human-to-human infections in health care settings, current scientific evidence suggests that dromedary camels are a major reservoir host for MERS-CoV and an animal source of MERS infection in humans.

However, the exact role of dromedaries in transmission of the virus and the exact route(s) of transmission are unknown. The virus does not seem to pass easily from person to person unless there is close contact, such as occurs when providing unprotected care to a patient. Health care associated outbreaks have occurred in several countries, with the largest outbreaks seen in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and the Republic of Korea.

we had at least one scare here: and would be at major risk, not just because of returning Haj pilgrims but because we have so many caregivers in that area.

Influenza spreads quickly in crowded areas which is why during flu season they often stop visitors to nursing homes and even close churches and theatres to stop the spread of the flu.

In contrast, MERS requires close contact and does not spread easily person to person.

the source seems to be camels, and along with all the usual infectious disease precautions, there were campaigns about not kissing your camel.

cross posted from my main blog

Microwave attacks

BoingBoing reports that Cuba's "sonic weapon" that has caused cognitive problems for those in American embassies were microwaves.

The notion that our brains can perceive certain microwaves as sound isn't new, nor is the idea of using them in weapons. 'Directed Energy Weapons' have long been a thing. Russia uses them against drones. The United States militaryhas developed sonic weapons and used them on protesing Americans, but microwave attacks?

Yup.

Strikes with microwaves, some experts now argue, more plausibly explain reports of painful sounds, ills and traumas than do other possible culprits — sonic attacks, viral infections and contagious anxiety.

In particular, a growing number of analysts cite an eerie phenomenon known as the Frey effect, named after Allan H. Frey, an American scientist. Long ago, he found that microwaves can trick the brain into perceiving what seem to be ordinary sounds.

The false sensations, the experts say, may account for a defining symptom of the diplomatic incidents — the perception of loud noises, including ringing, buzzing and grinding. Initially, experts cited those symptoms as evidence of stealthy attacks with sonic weapons.

Members of Jason, a secretive group of elite scientists that helps the federal government assess new threats to national security, say it has been scrutinizing the diplomatic mystery this summer and weighing possible explanations, including microwaves.

more at the NYTimes.

the Pill changes women's brains

From MSNLifestyle via Instapundit:

In men, the androgens released at puberty are known to remodel the brain. This is also true in women, where relatively small quantities of testosterone can cause certain areas to shrink and others to grow.

so did anyone bother to check it out?

...One of the first such studies was conducted only eight years ago - after the pill had already been in use for 50 years. Dr Pletzer recruited a mixture of men and women on and off hormonal contraception, then scanned their brains. What she found was striking. The scans revealed that several brain areas were larger in the women on the pill, compared to those of women who weren't.

These areas just so happened to be larger in men than women, too. The study involved a relatively small sample and didn't separate androgenic and anti-androgenic contraception, so Dr Pletzer cautions against reading too much into the results. But other research has hinted that both types of hormones actually may be changing our behaviour.

It turns out that women taking pills with androgenic progestins have lower verbal fluency. They were also better at rotating objects. This makes sense, since men are thought to be slightly less articulate than women in certain situations and have better spatial awareness. Other studies have found that women on oral contraception remember emotional stories more like men - recalling the gist more than the details. They're also not as good at recognising emotions in others, such as anger, sadness, or disgust - just like men. It looks suspiciously like certain types of pill are "masculinising" women's brains....

As Dr Pletzer wrote in 2014, when athletes take steroids we call it 'doping' - it's considered abuse and strongly condemned by society. But we are happy for millions of women to take these hormones every day, sometimes from puberty to menopause. Scientists do not yet know if any of the pill's effects on the brain have much of an impact on our behaviour. But perhaps it is time we put it to the test. - 

on the other hand, the alternative might be ten kids, or ten abortions, so maybe it's okay.