The Washington Post claimed last week: ‘Swine flu’ strain returns; dramatic rise in deaths of young adults, children. But CDC does not collect info on young adult deaths. It does collect info on child deaths, however. And it collects data on hospitalizations. It is actually the 50-64 year olds who are suffering more hospitalizations this…
This article is also based on documents from the Guardian’s Snowden cache. How can people believe that NSA, GCHQ and their ilk are not storing all phone calls (full audio files, not just metadata) when it takes so much more storage to college webcam information? Let’s get real. Every digital signature you have left during…
From ABC News in NYC: The outbreak of the mumps at Fordham University has spread from one campus to another. There are now 13 reported cases, 12 at the Rose Hill campus in the Bronx and one at the Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan. The symptoms are similar to the flu, but the virus can…
Alexander Lebedev penned the following NY Times Opinion piece. He is “a businessman and former senior officer in the K.G.B., is an owner of the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta and publisher of The London Evening Standard and The Independent” according to the Times. He suggests that $30 trillion (yes, with a T) has been embezzled worldwide…
CDC notes the following, where P stands for pneumonia and I stands for influenza: Among 14,628 P&I deaths reported through the 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System from September 29, 2013 to February 8, 2014, a total of 571 (3.9%) were influenza-associated (i.e., they had influenza listed on the death certificate as an underlying or contributing…
Whistleblowers have some protections under US law. In fact, those who report on corruption that costs the government money are entitled to a large chunk of what $ is recovered as a result of their whistle-blowing. This often results in multimillion dollar payouts from what are termed “qui tam” or False Claims Act lawsuits. But…
Today’s Washington Post headline reads “‘Swine flu’ strain returns; dramatic rise in deaths of young adults, children.” But the data do not bear this out. Swine flu isn’t really “back”– since 2009, it never left, but there are more cases this year than the last two, relative to other flu strains. After the 2009-10 swine…
David Kelly was the UK WMD expert and weapons inspector who was found “dead in the woods” in 2003 after he told a BBC reporter that the Blair government memo on WMD did not conform to the facts, and specifically that Saddam could not hit the UK with a nuke in 45 minutes. This undermined…
The UK Guardian published the following chart in October 2012. PPP stands for purchasing power parity, or how much the minimum wage is able to buy in its country. In terms of PPP, we are still beaten by every nation with a higher minimum wage, except Japan. So we cannot say the US’ low minimum…
The World Press Freedom Index is issued yearly by international NGO Reporters Without Borders. The methodology for ranking nations is described here. 180 nations are included. At #46, the US is assessed as having less freedom of the press than Papua-New Guinea, Romania, Slovenia, Latvia, and South Africa, to pick a few. However, we did beat…
I gave a “super-easy” cooking class this morning. Why is a doctor giving cooking classes? Because the quality of the ingredients in processed food is so poor, I believe it is ushering in an age of chronic ill health. At least when you cook from basic ingredients, you know what they are. I may have…
It is great to have this long-awaited EU report on corruption make the news around the world. Yes, corruption is now visible almost everywhere, from petty officials demanding bribes from anyone to the awarding of major government contracts. We knew that. Now this is an estimate of size. However, when you estimate the magnitude of…
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