Knockin' On Heaven's Door

Some, perhaps most, of you would have seen the Youtube video of the cheerleader who was paralysed after receiving the Swine Flu vaccine. The caption even stated, "experts claim serious side effects of flu shots amount to about one in a million - well this is what that one in a million looks like."

If that sucked you in, you seriously need to consider doing more critical thinking. Here's why. From April to August, 593 deaths and 9079 hospitalisations from H1N1 swine flu were reported in the US. That puts the death rate at 2 per million Americans, and serious cases at 3 per 100,000. Furthermore, this is based on the entire American population, where many live in rural areas where contact with the virus is much lower. If you are in a city, chances are those numbers are lower than a conservative estimate would be. Plus, that's only up to August. If you don't live under a rock, you would have noticed that lately the situation has escalated. Hence, comparatively, one in a million chance of developing severe side effects to the vaccine doesn't sound too bad to me.

If you were brainwashed by one of those anti-vaccine groups. Here's an article for you to read. It dispels most of their claims. Just because Jenny McCarthy has big boobs doesn't mean you should always listen to her. (Megan Fox would be harder to resist.) There are no adjuvants or thimerosal in the H1N1 vaccine. Do the research for yourself and decide.

Then again, these anti-vaccine people aren't necessarily a bad thing. Although I believe everyone has equal rights to life, less stupid people in the world never hurts. And when an epidemic strikes, it will be those unvaccinated who dies. Win-win. Your choice.

False Pretense

The more I come into contact with the private healthcare system, the more disheartened I get of the system in place. Everything in the system seems to depend on only one thing. Money. The general feeling I get from the people working in the system, be it the doctors, nurses or the receptionist, is that, no matter what happens, as long as there is a profit, everything's fine.

They don't really care if you live or die, as long as you pay your bills. For all they care, even they've killed hundreds of patients, it doesn't matter, as long as new patients keep coming and the law suits are under control. At the end of the day, it is the billion dollar profit they care about, not you, the patient. The patient is only a means to an end. The end, I would state again, is money.

For quite some time now, I have been a staunch supporter for a health care system whereby the universal health care coverage provided by the government should co-exist with the private sector. I believed such a system would bring about healthy competition to keep each other in check. At the same time, people who can afford the private health care should be allowed to opt for a faster, more efficient service, while the poor still get the essential health coverage from the government. But my recent revelations have led me to think that maybe this isn't such a good idea at all. After all, do you think a doctor would run as fast to a cardiac arrest of a patient he does not care about, as he would to a patient he sincerely cares for? No. In other words, you are jeopardising your health by submitting your care to such a doctor, motivated by only money.

However, little can be done as of now, because the public hospitals are terribly under-funded, has severe staff shortages, and many are operating at near capacity. These all lead to a decrease in quality of care. Hence, opting for public health care really isn't going to improve your care.

For as long as I can remember, the subject of money has been a taboo when an aspiring doctor is asked "why do you want to study medicine?" Be it during a medical school interview or when asked by a friend. Yet, the bureaucrats running the system are all about money. Maybe this hypocritical nonsense is something I have known for years, but have just been desperately hoping it wasn't true. Maybe it's time I get out of my denial phase and accept the fact that the health care system is just like any other industry, motivated only by money. The pharmaceutical industry has long since sold out. There is no reason why the health care industry, one of the largest industry in the world, would not.


TY
Next post is likely to be about secularism. Religious leaders sitting on government committees in a country that openly declares is a secular country, is plain absurd. And a picture post about Canberra too, if I'm not lazy.

America

Do you think Americans are stupid? Or the smart Americans just don't give a rat's ass about polls?

I am of the idea that it is one or the other.

Here, have a look at this.

A healthcare system such as the American's cannot even be close to good, if you ask me. They spend the most money per capita on healthcare but their system has been ranked in the 30s by various studies. If that is good, my fart smells like roses. Not to mention the 50million who don't even have healthcare coverage.

Then again, Americans also have this remarkable belief.

"God created man in present form" - A whopping 44%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

44% of Americans still think we descended from Adam and Eve!!!
You tell me!!

The debate isn't even between Creationism and Evolution anymore. Most creationists have taken the side of Intelligent design since overwhelming evidence have shown WE ARE FROM APES!!!

Would you Americans please accept the fact that we are all once upon a time from Africa, and very probably had dark skin colour. Not some guy and girl with English names. Are you trying to believe in the contrary to show that your brain has not evolved, hence evolution does not exist?

Oh and your health system is fucked. Stop saying it's "excellent" just because you don't want higher tax. Don't kid yourself.


TY

Old Newspaper

My horoscope tells me to be selfish. It says I should keep my altruistic idealism aside and prioritise myself.

Awesome. I can now do those selfish things guilt-free.

In other news, marking Year 9 exam papers is the best job you can get if you need a confidence boost in your command of the English language. I thought my grasp of the English Language was bad but wait till you see how 15 year-olds spell greatful, oh I mean grateful. Seeing it spelt that way 1500 times has made me confused as to which is the right one.

And a letter to Kim Jong Il.

Dear dictator Kim,

If you would so kindly develop missiles that are smaller in size, and aim it at the swine flu virus, it would be much appreciated. That way, other countries can buy those missiles from you too, and you will be rich. On top of that, you can always decline to sell them to our northern friends who speak funny and produce TV stars named after capital cities and tries to sing but really can't sing, but dominates your TV sets anyway, be it on the news or on mtv, just because her father owns hotels. When you do so, they will die of the virus because they have sent all their bullets to Iraq and have none left, which I'm sure would make you a very happy man.

Take care. Leave me a comment if you need help.

Yours sincerely,
TY

Who's Gonna Save Us

After several weeks, I still cannot get over the fact that authorities renamed the latest Flu pandemic as H1N1 Influenza A, or something long and scientific along those lines.

The 1918 flu pandemic was named Spanish Flu, 1957 Asian Flu, 1968 Hong Kong Flu and 1978 Russian Flu.

So why the fuck can't the 2009 flu be named North American Flu?

Do you see the hypocrisy and the imbalance of power among seemingly "international" authorities like WHO? Now you know why so many countries are strongly against organisations such as World Bank and IMF.

Fuck the dictators who so vocally oppose dictatorships. Fuck the hypocrites.

On another note, do you think the people who coined the term common sense have seemingly little of it? Seeing as common sense is rather uncommon, it would have been stupid to name it as such, isn't it? It would have been better off as Seventh Sense. I'm pretty sure there are more people with sixth sense than common sense, whatever sixth sense is.

Now to weather, yesterday was the foggiest day I've seen around my area. Visibility was about 20-30m. It was fascinating yet slightly scary driving through the fog. Today isn't as foggy, there's even sun. Fogs are way cooler than floods though. Poor Queensland.

Shine A Light

PARIS HILTON'S LATEST STUNT!!!

Oh My God! Like so Totally Hot!



Hah, suckers! I bet I had 2 extra clicks on that link than I usually would get thanks to my "stunt".

Good article though, Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia, writes brilliantly about what I've tried unsuccessfully to write about in more than a 100 posts now.

You really shouldn't blame your boyfriend for treating you as an "object" rather than a person if you idolise Paris Hilton.

Hopefully she turned up on time for the New Year's countdown. I don't think there were many Sydneysiders sober enough to accompany her for the countdown to the first 1am in 2009.

Anyway, I haven't been writing in a while because I didn't have anything to write about. Lately I've been doing lots of reading and watching lots of DVDs, and that's about it. I'd like to mention one book in particular though, as it brings a glimmer of hope back to humanity, despite the world being dominated by people like Paris Hilton. It's aptly titled too.

The Hospital by The River : A Story of Hope

by Catherine Hamlin

Here's the Amazon page.

If you're lazy enough to click on that, it's a story about a husband and wife, both gynaecologists, that took up a job in Ethiopia back in the 50s, and eventually staying on there and establishing the world's first Fistula Hospital. It is an entirely free hospital that is sustained mostly by donations.

The first few chapters are rather boring but once they get to Ethiopia, the story was just amazing. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Africa, especially Ethiopia, as it does have quite a bit about Ethiopia in general and life over there, not just about the hospital.

In other news, I have been considering starting another blog. Not to replace this one, but in addition to this. To write perhaps, about my academic life. But so far the decision is leaning more towards "no", as I feel selfish occupying a blog address for one post a year - hardly anything interesting about molecules and bacterias.

Anyway, the blog title comes from a song of The Rolling Stones, which is also the title of a Martin Scorsese film that follows a gig of The Rolling Stones' themselves in 2006. Truly amazing film/gig. I ought to dedicate an entire post to one of the greatest Rock N' Roll bands of all time sometime soon.


TY

Breathe Today

If you haven't already heard, there was a transplant case in Germany a couple of days ago that could potentially lead to the discovery of a cure for AIDS(HIV virus). Yes, a "cure" not a "treatment".

ABC news article

For those not familiar with terminology.
Treatment is usually used to mean a therapy to suppress or control a disease, not necessarily eliminating it from the body altogether.
However, cure means exactly that.

So in the case of AIDS(HIV virus), there are plenty of treatments available these days that can quite reliably extend the patients life for as long as decades. However, these treatments are costly and would mean that the patient will require life-long care. With the discovery of a cure, which we hope will arrive somewhere in the near future, there will be obvious benefits to millions of people worldwide, especially to those in poor African nations. This of cause, would depend on the cost of the cure as well.

Anyway, this particular breakthrough, if I could call it that, banks on the method of gene therapy. (Read news article, I won't repeat). And to me, gene therapy is a method that has vast potential. If successful, this could potentially lead to the discovery of cures for many infectious diseases that are as of now "cureless", such as Herpes(cold sores), which infects millions.

The hope now rest on whether the required funding is put into research on this matter and hopefully the cure will come in the near future.

Hmm, this can be counted as part of my "coming soon" Global Health series, though unplanned. Kinda works as an introduction.


TY