Plagues
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Bizarro Earth

13 bald eagles found dead since Dec. 1; causes of deaths remain unknown

Bald Eagles
© Scott G Winterton/Deseret NewsBald eagles are perched at Farmington Bay Wildlife Management Area Friday, Dec. 20, 2013. Eagles are turning up dead and officials are working to find out the cause.
Salt Lake City - More than 12 bald eagles have died in Utah since the beginning of December, and wildlife experts don't know why.

"We've never had this many birds come in, of one species, coming in as quickly and in this short of time span and having them all die," said DaLyn Erickson-Marthaler, executive director of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah.

Since Dec. 1, at least 13 majestic bald eagles have died. The latest, a 1-year-old female, died Saturday, Dec. 21. She was discovered last week near Centerville by a jogger and was brought to the rehabilitation center in Ogden.

"It's frustrating and heartbreaking," said Leslie McFarlane, Division of Wildlife Resources wildlife disease coordinator. "It's really hard because you want to be able to do something right now and we just can't."

About all anyone knows so far is that all of the eagles were experiencing the same symptoms.

Arrow Up

Leprosy cases rising in Andhra Pradesh as govt ignores warnings

Hyderabad: Leprosy is increasing alarmingly in Andhra Pradesh with the government doing precious little to check the bacterial infection from spreading, experts said as a staggering 8,285 cases were reported in the state during 2012-13. As many as 239 new cases were detected in Hyderabad in the same period.

Health department officials said Andhra Pradesh now has the dubious distinction of figuring among the top 12 states with the highest caseloads of leprosy in the country. The proportion of new paediatric cases in the state was also among the highest in the country, experts said. Data from the National Leprosy Eradication Programme shows that out of the total new cases, a substantial 911 cases (11.34%) are of children, officials said.

Experts said the numbers have gone up particularly in the last two years. During 2011-12, 7,820 cases were detected, they pointed out and attributed the grim situation to the state government's apathy towards the health issue so much so that it is now regaining ground.

"We could not identify these cases well in time," said Dr Michael Sukumar, a WHO consultant who is working with the state leprosy cell here, underscoring a situation when agencies are sometimes helpless when local governments fail to read health warnings.

Health

Madagascar battles the Black Death

Image
© Peter StephensThe village of Mandritsara, where 20 people recently died from bubonic plague.
Plague leaves dozens dead after one of the worst outbreaks in years.

To most, the plague is a thing of the past - a relic from the Middle Ages, when the disease known as the Black Death wiped out a third of Europe's population. Yet despite being wiped out across much of the globe, it's still very much a reality in parts of Madagascar, where one of the worst outbreaks in recent memory has left dozens dead.

Last week, government officials announced that 39 people have died this fall from pneumonic plague - a rare and extremely deadly strain of the illness that affects the respiratory system. According to Madagascar's health ministry, pneumonic plague can kill a patient within three days of infection, leaving little time for antibiotics to take effect.

The announcement came just days after experts at the Pasteur Institute of Madagascar confirmed that bubonic plague killed 20 people in the northwest town of Mandritsara, and two months after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that Madagascar was at risk of a plague epidemic.

Comment: See New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection for an alternative view on disease propagation by celestial bodies.


Comet 2

New study suggests cometary activity preceded Justinian Plague, wiping out Roman civilization and Western Europe 1,500 years ago

Halley's Comet 1986
© NASA/JPLThis photograph of Halley's Comet was taken January 13,1986, by James W. Young, resident astronomer of JPL's Table Mountain Observatory in the San Bernardino Mountains, using the 24-inch reflective telescope.
The ancients had ample reason to view comets as harbingers of doom, it would appear.

A piece of the famous Halley's comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests.

This dramatic climate shift is linked to drought and famine around the world, which may have made humanity more susceptible to "Justinian's plague" in A.D. 541-542 - the first recorded emergence of the Black Death in Europe.

The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth.

"I have all this extraterrestrial stuff in my ice core," study leader Dallas Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Certain characteristics, such as high levels of tin, identify a comet as the origin of the alien dust, Abbott said. And the stuff was deposited during the Northern Hemisphere spring, suggesting that it came from the Eta Aquarid meteor shower - material shed by Halley's comet that Earth plows through every April-May.

The Eta Aquarid dust may be responsible for a period of mild cooling in 533, Abbott said, but it alone cannot explain the global dimming event of 536-537, during which the planet may have cooled by as much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). For that, something more dramatic is required.

Comment: Historical accounts record multiple air blasts, so more likely than one 'random' cometary event is multiple smaller blasts over a period of time. Read Comets and the Horns of Moses to see how cyclical catastrophe unfolded in the Dark Age that came before the post-Roman Dark Age. Same model, same story: the comets don't directly cause the famines which weaken the populations, followed by the plague. The populations are already weakened by 'climate change' and food shortages due to a corrupt and ensconced elite, then one or two larger chunks of space rock deliver the payload - a comet-borne virus or two that humanity has little to no immunity against.


Question

Mysterious disease kills 100 goats in Nepal

Rajbiraj: The death of scores of goats in the past two weeks in Rajbiraj has got farmers of Saptari worried.

The goats have suddenly started dying one after another in Sitapur, Tairahauta, Prasabanni, and Pato among other VDCs in the district.

According to Dik Bahadur Moktan, a farmer of Tairahauta-5, the goats die within two to three days after they start a fever.

"Their chins are swollen, they salivate excessively, and accumulate water in their lungs before they die," he added. Though we have informed the livestock service centre, they have not taken any initiative so far, he said.

Moktan, who has lost three dozen goats within a fortnight, said his family depended on the income from goats. "I don't know how to pay back the loan and feed my children now."

Likewise, Bishwonath Mandal has lost more than half-a-dozen goats in two days. "When we reported to the Livestock Service Sub-Centre Pato, they said there was no medicine available," he said. About 100 goats have died in the past two days in Pato VDC.

Rajlal Pandit, a technician at the centre, said the situation would not have gotten so bad if the goats had received timely treatment. He suspects the cattle might be suffering from PPR.

Arrow Down

Uncontrolled deforestation linked to deadly Madagascar bubonic plague

Madagascar Map
© Thinkstock
When most people hear of the bubonic plague they tend to think of the Black Death pandemic that swept through the western world in the Middle Ages, wiping out nearly a quarter of the world's population.

Black Death plague was the single biggest killer of people across the world from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, and surprisingly today, the bubonic plague is still a big problem in many parts of the world.

The latest outbreak has occurred in Madagascar, where an even more vicious strain of the plague than the one in the Middle Ages has killed 39 people so far, according to a government statement last Thursday.

A doctor with the government said that 90 percent of the cases seen were pneumonic plague, a strain that is more severe than the common bubonic plague, typically killing victims within three days, leaving little time for antibiotics to work their magic.

Authorities are issuing warnings to anyone with severe fever and headaches to consult a physician as soon as possible. The government said all drugs to treat the plague would be issued free of charge.

"There is an epidemic in Madagascar which is currently affecting five districts (out of 112). Eighty-six people have been inflicted by the plague, of which 39 have died," said the health ministry in a statement read to AFP.

Syringe

Should we hold those vaccinated against pertussis legally liable for whooping cough outbreaks?

whooping cough boy
© Unknown

The recent news articles to hit the mainstream media in the past week finally states what public health officials and epidemiologists have known for some time: those vaccinated against pertussis are carrying and spreading the bacteria and are responsible for most of the outbreaks.

This news raises the question:

Should we hold those vaccinated with the pertussis vaccine, legally liable for outbreaks?

And, if you look up scholarly articles about previous outbreaks of measles, you'll find academic papers on an entity termed "the paradox of measles"; a paradox because those vaccinated are the ones contracting the disease whilst the unvaccinated in many communities with outbreaks, are unscathed.

In addition, the rise in shingles over the past decade or so, is due to the chicken pox vaccine. This link is not denied in academic literature and was even predicted by mathematical biologists and epidemiologists, and was confirmed by another study funded by the CDC.

If vaccinated children and adults are capable of spreading disease, shall we hold them and their parents legally liable for outbreaks? Shall we mandate 'unvaccination' as a requirement for public school? Since we can't 'unvaccinate,' shall vaccinated children be kicked out of public school?

While the above statements seem absurd, they are equivalent arguments bioethicist, Art Caplan has and continues to make.

Caplan believes parents of unvaccinated children should be held legally liable for outbreaks of disease.

Mind you, Caplan is no regular academic bioethicist, he is a bioethicist who has made a good deal of money for writing pro-industry speak.

If you read about Art Caplan and his direct financial conflicts of interest, you'll also read Art believes these financial conflicts can be managed while producing unbiased work. He and his previous institution of employment, the University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioethics received mega fees from major pharmaceutical companies and the department of vaccine bioethics at U Penn was massively funded by the big vaccine producers.

Syringe

Pain, profit and politics continue this flu season

flu vaccine profits
© Unknown
According to all official health reports, we are now fully in flu season. It is that time of year when public health officials, physicians pediatricians and pharmacists warn that everyone over 6 months of age should protect themselves and get vaccinated. Most Americans, believing the government's propaganda about the safety and benefits of the flu vaccine, are joining the inoculation lines without pausing to consider the accuracy and legitimacy of health officials' and pediatrician claims.

The official government figure for the annual number of deaths caused by influenza infection remains at 36,000. Why this figure has not changed during the course of a decade is anyone's guess. However, there can between 150 and 200 different infectious pathogens - adenovirus, rhinovirus, parainfluenza, the very common coronavirus and, of course, pneumonia - that produce flu-like symptoms. For example, how many people have heard of bocavirus, which is responsible for bronchitis and pneumonia in young children, or metapneumovirus, responsible for more than 5 percent of all flu-related illnesses? This is true during every flu season and it will be no different for the 2013-2014 season.

If we take the combined figure of flu and pneumonia deaths for the period of 2001, and add a bit of spin to the figures, we are left believing that 62,034 people died from influenza. The actual figures determined by Peter Doshi, then at Harvard University, are 61,777 died from pneumonia and only 257 from flu. Even more amazing, among those 257 cases only 18 were confirmed positive for influenza.

A CBS Investigative Report, published in October 2012, exemplifies the unreliable and perhaps intentionally deceptive misinformation campaign steered by the US government health agencies every flu season . After the CDC refused to honor CBS's Freedom of Information request to receive flu infection data by individual state, the network undertook an independent investigation across all fifty states to get their infectious disease statistics. The final report contradicts dramatically the CDC's public relations blitz. For example, in California, among the approximate 13,000 flu-like cases, 86 percent tested negative for any flu strain. In Florida, out of 8,853 cases, 83 percent were negative. In Georgia and Alaska, only 2.4 percent and 1 percent respectively tested positive for flu virus among all reported flu-like cases. If the infection-rate ratios obtained by CBS are accurate, the CDC's figures are significantly reduced and flu season severity is overstated dramatically.

Question

Dozens hospitalized in Las Vegas with mystery illness

Norovirus
© Lightspring / Shutterstock
Dozens of children and adults who are in Las Vegas for the National Youth Football Championships have been hospitalized after coming down with a mystery illness.

The mystery disease shows flu-like symptoms, including vomiting. ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser says "norovirus" may be the cause.

"Norovirus is the largest cause of outbreaks of gastroenteritis stomach flu in the United States-- 20 million cases a year," Dr. Besser said. "This is the peak season."

"It's one of the nastiest germs around, 'cause it spreads from person to person through contact. It spreads through food, and also spreads from contaminated surfaces, so it's one of the most contagious ones we see," Besser said.

Health

Measles outbreak hits Queensland

Measles vaccine
© John Woudstra
Thirty-five people have now contracted measles in Queensland in one of the worst outbreaks of the disease in Queensland's recent history.

This year 30 of the 35 measles cases have emerged since August, with eight cases now confirmed at Woodford Correctional Centre.

Last year only four Queenslanders contracted measles.

Questions are being asked if the measles outbreak is linked to overcrowding in Queensland prisons.

The Department of Justice and Attorney General on Wednesday evening confirmed there were now 6432 prisoners in Queensland jails on November 6.

It is the first time in Queensland history prisoner numbers have been more than 6000.The extra 832 prisoners include hundreds "doubling up" in cells at several prisons in the Ipswich area.

Comment: Diseases usually flourish in conditions of overcrowding and poor nutrition. Coincidentally (or not), a measles fear-mongering campaign is also underway in the UK.