Eye of the Swine Flu Hurricane...

The CDC is an amazing organization. It is populated by incredibly smart scientists devoted to public health. Dr. Ruben Donis is at the center of current swine flu situation. I sleep easier knowing he is on the job. Below is a rare interview with Dr. Donis.



World's Largest Scientific Society Trims Pubs | Main | On the Precipice of Pandemic

APRIL 29, 2009

Exclusive Interview: CDC Head Virus Sleuth

Virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke with ScienceInsider at length last night about the swine flu virus causing the current outbreak. CDC’s early analyses raise several provocative possibilities. The stage appears to have been set for this human outbreak by an outbreak over the past decade of flu viruses in swine that combine strains from several species. The first infected human may not even have been in North America, let alone Mexico. Patient samples from Mexico taken over the past several months reveal that this swine flu clearly exploded in late March, suggesting that it was not rapidly spreading in that country, undetected, for very long.

Donis discussed the genetics of the virus—the clues in this mystery—in detail. These include several of its eight genes, which code for surface proteins hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N), the matrix that surrounds the nucleus, the nucleoprotein itself, and three polymerase enzymes called PA, PB1, and PB2.

—Jon Cohen

Q: What do you know about this swine flu virus?

R.D.: We know it’s quite similar to viruses that were circulating in the United States and are still circulating in the United States and that are self-limiting, and they usually only are found in Midwestern states where there is swine farming. There’s only one well-documented case where the infection spread from one human to another. What we know is that it is not common that there is sustained transmission in people.


Q: Christopher Olsen published a paper that looked at the literature back to 1958 and only found 50 cases of humans infected with a swine influenza.

R.D.: If we have two documented cases a year, maybe that’s just the tip of iceberg. Maybe there are 10 times more or 50 times more. But still, it’s only swine to human, and it stops there.


Q: Have you completely sequenced this virus?

R.D.: Yes, 2 weeks ago. Very soon after we received specimens from California and Texas. Hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, and matrix, the three genes that have the most public health interest, were sequenced, and then the whole genome was completed.

Q: How large is the genome?

R.D.: It’s 14 kilobases.

Q: It’s only a little larger than HIV. You could sequence it in hours.

R.D.: Yes. It’s tiny.

Q: How close is it to the closest strain you know of?

R.D.: Depends which genes. You have similarities of about 94% in the hemaggluttinin [H] to the nearest strain we know.

Q: Is it of swine origin?

R.D.: Definitely. It’s almost equidistant to swine viruses from the United States and Eurasia. And it’s a lonely branch there. It doesn’t have any close relatives.

Q: How about the neuraminidase gene?

R.D.: It has close relatives in Asia. It’s also swine.

Q: The matrix gene?

R.D.: The same as neuraminidase.

Q: So where are avian and human sequences?

R.D.: We have to step back [to] 10 years ago. In 1998, actually, Chris Olsen is one of the first that saw it, and we saw the same in a virus from Nebraska and Richard Webby and Robert Webster in Memphis saw it, too. There were unprecedented outbreaks of influenza in the swine population. It was an H3.

Q: They were dying from it?

R.D.: No. It was not very severe in healthy pigs. Everyone was very curious about these H3 viruses. Since 1918, normally it’s only H1N1 in swine. Then all of a sudden there’s H3N2 in swine in the Midwestern U.S. When people analyzed what was inside those viruses, they realized there were three different things.

The PB1 gene, that was human. H3 and N2 also were human. The PA and PB2, the two polymerase genes, were of avian flu. The rest were typical North American swine viruses. Those strains were the so-called triple reassortants.

Q: We always hear of the pig as a mixing vessel combining human, avian, and pig influenzas. Why didn’t you regularly see reassortants?

R.D.: Good questions. These questions have no answer. There is an explanation somewhere.

The reality is good molecular surveillance in the pigs started in the 1970s. So if there were strains that were not very dominant between the 1930s and the ’70s, we wouldn’t have detected them. This triple reassortant was very successful and took over and dominated the picture—to the point where the classical H1N1 was almost extinct.

Q: Why were the first triple reassortants more fit?

R.D.: They were H3s, and H3 is a different subtype, so there was no immunity in the pigs. It was probably that they had new polymerase genes, too.

Q: How does it tie to the current outbreak?

R.D.: Where does all this talk about avian and human genes come from? I was describing a fully swine virus. For [the] last 10 years, this has been a fully swine virus. Can you tell I have an accent? I’m a U.S. citizen but I have the roots in Argentina. It’s like me. I’ve been in the U.S. since 1980. I’m a U.S. citizen but I have an accent.

Q: It’s not as though human and avian just got there in this strain.

R.D.: It’s part of the swine virus.

Q: What’s the newest part of this strain?

R.D.: Neuraminidase and the matrix are the newest to be seen in North America. They were not part of the team—I talk about flu virus as teams of genes. There are eight players. They have these two new players from Asia.

Q: It suggests a mixing of pigs from North America and Asia.

R.D.: One little detail we haven’t discussed is [that] these Midwestern viruses were exported to Asia. Korea and many countries import from the U.S. Swine flu is economically not such a big deal that many countries don’t check for it.


Q: How do you get Europe in there?

R.D.: There are some parts of the puzzle I don’t have the answer to. The genetic lineages of Asia and Europe mix quite a bit.

Q: How does the pig get back here?

R.D.: Who said it was a pig that came from Asia? Did I say that? It could be a person.

Q: So the origin might trace back to Europe or Asia.

R.D.: I didn’t say that. I don’t want to point the finger at anyone.

Q: It does suggest that mixing didn’t happen in Mexico.

R.D.: Probably not. The amazing thing is the hemagglutinins we are seeing in this strain are a lonely branch that have been evolving somewhere and we didn’t know about it.


Q. Can you look at sequence to see what makes it transmit human-to-human?

R.D.: If I could, I would be the chief of the CDC or NIH [National Institutes of Health].

Q: You don’t want either of those jobs.

R.D.: [Laughter.] I don’t think we can do it in silico.

Q: Do you know the percent difference of the entire sequence to the older triple reassortant that dominated?

R.D.: We have [a] 6% or higher percentage difference in neuraminidases. You have multiple amino acids that differ. And single amino acid changes can change receptor specificity. When you have so many changes, you don’t know which ones are responsible.

Q: How about pathogenesis? Can you tease that out in vitro?

R.D.: One traditional approach is to take advantage of viral modules that allow you to assemble different teams, to make reassortants that take a virus say from North America that doesn’t transmit, and you swap one gene from the virus that does transmit. If the hypothesis is that hemagglutinin is responsible, you put in the background of the genes from the old virus. You need an animal model, usually the ferret.

Q: Have you been able to compare isolates from Mexico and the United States?

R.D.: Yes, they are very, very similar. Many genes are identical. In the eight or nine viruses we’ve sequenced, there is nothing different.

Q: Have you compared someone who died with someone who had a mild case?

R.D.: Those data are still slippery. We don’t have good case data. You get age and sex—very limited information. That’s a problem. In the set of samples we know one case was fatal, but we don’t know which one it is.

Q: Have you been to Mexico yet to study this outbreak?

R.D.: No. CDC sent a group of scientist and epidemiologists, laboratory folks that went over there to set up diagnostic labs. One is in Yucatán; one in is in D.F. [Distrito Federal, which includes Mexico City].


Q: What do you think about the pig farm in Veracruz?

R.D.: I don’t know the details. They said they had a huge operation and the workers were not getting sick; that’s what the company claims. The only suspicious thing in that story is this is the largest farm in Mexico. The fact that the index case also is from the area makes it interesting.


Q: Do large farms have more swine flu?

R.D.: Not really. Even folks who have 50 pigs have to buy feed and supply from vendors that go from farm to farm, and they don’t wash their boots or whatever. Usually the virus is transmitted very effectively.

Q: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?

R.D.: We all pray this remains sensitive to antivirals. We all hope that vaccines will be developed. The virus doesn’t grow very well in eggs. We hope the virus will improve [the] ability to grow in eggs so we can produce [a] vaccine very quickly so these secondary and tertiary cases can be controlled. In some countries there’s good surveillance, but in others, who knows.

Q: What do you think of this outbreak?

R.D.: This is the first one I’ve seen firsthand as a virologist. The avian influenza outbreak is not comparable because this is unfolding so quickly. This reminds me of SARS. With avian there’s very little transmission. And even with SARS, transmission was far less.

Q: Does this one scare you?

R.D.: I saw figures that do scare you. We’ve received 300 samples from Mexico, and these cover the span of February, March, and April. And you look at flu A, traditionally it’s A/H1 or A/H3 or it's B up until the end of March. There are two or three cases up to [the] last days of March that are swine. Then in April they skyrocket. So all the cases in the D.F. areas, where most samples came from, it really transmits very efficiently.

Q: What is the date of first sample?

R.D.: I think it’s the end of March, the first positive specimen.

Q: Did Mexico react quickly enough?

R.D.: They didn’t know. They probably thought it was regular flu.

Q: Flu is a seasonal disease that peaks in winter. Maybe this will end in the United States with the end of the flu season.

R.D.: We’re in a good position. The folks in Buenos Aires are in trouble. They’re entering winter now.

World Turned Upside Down

The reaction to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor's for the Supreme Court by a certain class of white men, led by Limbaugh, Buchanan, Gingrich, and Beck is bordering on the insane. The basic notion is this: if you nominate an Hispanic Woman, it has to be a racist affirmative action pick, but if you have a Supreme Court made of all white men, it is the natural order. The bitter, pathetic, whining of the older white Republican men is a sad, but ultimately positive development. The defection of young people, and Hispanic people away from the Republican Party is an indisputable trend. This howling about Sotomayor is only going to speed it. The idea that playing to a shrinking base, rural white men, is the way to re-build a party is not a sound strategy. The explanation may be: Limbaugh only needs this demographic to get great ratings; twenty percent of the population is a huge audience for a talk show host. Gingrich wants to be in the spotlight, and he could be a major presidential hopeful if he can win over the Republican base. Buchanan is a white supremacist, plain and simple and always has been. Beck is a clown. But they do have an audience. Barack Obama appointed a qualified, dignified, judge to the Supreme Court, and these white men are quaking and shaking, their world turned upside down.

Mark To Market - It's Alive!!!! (Or - Ooops, I did it again).

This is sort of the flip side of Mark to Market. I knew we could count on the banks to continue their ingenious alchemical magic - its what they do. Presto Chango - wanna see me turn really bad loans into $29 billion of income? (The game here is to write down assets on the balance sheet (on a giant balance sheet its not so big a deal) and then write up the same "loss" as income on the income statement - you now have more income on a smaller balance sheet which increases your return on equity. If it wasn't legal it would be a crime.

JPMorgan’s WaMu Windfall Turns Bad Loans Into Income (Update2)
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By Ari Levy and Elizabeth Hester


May 26 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. stands to reap a $29 billion windfall thanks to an accounting rule that lets the second-biggest U.S. bank transform bad loans it purchased from Washington Mutual Inc. into income.

Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp. and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. are also poised to benefit from taking over home lenders Wachovia Corp., Countrywide Financial Corp. and National City Corp., regulatory filings show. The deals provide a combined $56 billion in so-called accretable yield, the difference between the value of the loans on the banks’ balance sheets and the cash flow they’re expected to produce.

Faced with the highest U.S. unemployment in 25 years and a surging foreclosure rate, the lenders are seizing on a four- year-old rule aimed at standardizing how they book acquired loans that have deteriorated in credit quality. By applying the measure to mortgages and commercial loans that lost value during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the banks will wring revenue from the wreckage, said Robert Willens, a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executive who runs a tax and accounting consulting firm in New York.

“It will benefit these guys dramatically,” Willens said. “There’s a great chance they’ll be able to record very substantial gains going forward.”

JPMorgan rose $2.13, or 6.2 percent, to $36.54 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Wells Fargo gained 1.3 percent to $25.65 and PNC Financial climbed 5 percent to $43.25. Bank of America fell 9 cents to $10.98.

Purchase Accounting

When JPMorgan bought WaMu out of receivership last September for $1.9 billion, the New York-based bank used purchase accounting, which allows it to record impaired loans at fair value, marking down $118.2 billion of assets by 25 percent. Now, as borrowers pay their debts, the bank says it may gain $29.1 billion over the life of the loans in income before taxes and expenses.

The purchase-accounting rule, known as Statement of Position 03-3, provides banks with an incentive to mark down loans they acquire as aggressively as possible, said Gerard Cassidy, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in Portland, Maine.

“One of the beauties of purchase accounting is after you mark down your assets, you accrete them back in,” Cassidy said. “Those transactions should be favorable over the long run.”

JPMorgan bought WaMu’s deposits and loans after regulators seized the Seattle-based thrift in the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. JPMorgan took a $29.4 billion writedown on WaMu’s holdings, mostly for option adjustable-rate mortgages and home- equity loans.

‘Price Judgment’

“We marked the portfolio based on a number of factors, including housing-price judgment at the time,” said JPMorgan spokesman Thomas Kelly. “The accretion is driven by prevailing interest rates.”

JPMorgan said first-quarter gains from the WaMu loans resulted in $1.26 billion in interest income and left the bank with an accretable-yield balance that could result in additional income of $29.1 billion.

The difference in accretable yield from bank to bank is due to the amount of impaired loans, the credit quality of the acquired assets and the state of the economy when the deals were completed. Rising and falling interest rates also affect accretable yield for portfolios with adjustable-rate loans.

It’s difficult to gauge how much the yield will add to total revenue because banks don’t disclose the expenses that chisel away at the figure. The income is also booked over the life of the loans, rather than in a lump sum, and banks don’t spell out how long that is, Willens said.

Wachovia ARMs

Wells Fargo arranged the $12.7 billion purchase of Wachovia in October, as the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank was sinking from $122 billion in option ARMs. As of March 31, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo had marked down $93 billion of impaired Wachovia loans by 37 percent. The expected cash flow was $70.3 billion.

The Wachovia loans added $561 million to the bank’s first- quarter interest income, leaving Wells Fargo with a remaining accretable yield of almost $10 billion.

Government efforts to reduce mortgage rates and stabilize the housing market may make it easier for borrowers to repay loans and for banks to realize the accretable yield on their books. With mortgage rates below 5 percent, originations surged 71 percent in the first quarter from the fourth, a pace that may accelerate during 2009, said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance in Bethesda, Maryland.

Recapturing Writedowns

Wells Fargo, the biggest U.S. mortgage originator, doubled home loans in the first quarter from the previous three months, in part through refinancing Wachovia loans.

“To the extent that the customers’ experience is better or we can modify the loans, and the loans become more current, that could help recapture some of the writedown,” Wells Fargo Chief Financial Officer Howard Atkins said in an April 22 interview.

Banks still face the risk that defaults may exceed expectations and lead to further writedowns on their purchased loans. Foreclosure filings in the U.S. rose to a record for the second straight month in April, climbing 32 percent from a year earlier to more than 342,000, data compiled by Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. show.

The companies bought by Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, PNC and Bank of America were among the biggest lenders in states with the highest foreclosure rates, including California, Florida and Ohio. Housing prices tumbled the most on record in the first quarter, leaving an increasing number of borrowers owing more in mortgage payments than their homes are worth, according to Zillow.com, an online property data company.

Accretable Yield

“We’ve still got a lot of downside to work through this year and probably through at least part of next,” said William Schwartz, a credit analyst at DBRS Inc. in New York. “If I were them, I wouldn’t be claiming any victory yet.”

PNC closed its $3.9 billion acquisition of National City on Dec. 31, after the Cleveland-based bank racked up more than $4 billion in losses tied to subprime loans. PNC, based in Pittsburgh, marked down $19.3 billion of impaired loans by 38 percent, or $7.4 billion, and said it expected to recoup half of the writedown. After gaining $213 million in interest income in the first quarter and making some adjustments, the company has an accretable-yield balance of $2.9 billion.

“We’re just being prudent,” PNC Chief Financial Officer Richard Johnson said in a May 19 interview.

‘Huge Cushion’

Johnson said he expects the entire accretable yield to result in earnings. The company has taken into “consideration everything that can go wrong with the economy,” he said.

Bank of America, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, has potential purchase-accounting income of $14.1 billion, including $627 million of gains from Merrill Lynch & Co. and the rest from Countrywide. Bank of America bought subprime lender Countrywide in July, two months before the financial crisis forced Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy and WaMu into receivership.

As market losses deepened, Bank of America had to reduce the returns it expected the impaired loans to produce from an original estimate of $19.6 billion.

“The Countrywide marks in hindsight weren’t nearly as aggressive,” said Jason Goldberg, an analyst at Barclays Capital in New York, who has “equal weight” investment ratings on Bank of America and PNC and “overweight” recommendations for Wells Fargo and JPMorgan.

Bank of America spokesman Jerry Dubrowski declined to comment.

The discounted assets purchased by JPMorgan and Wells Fargo make the stocks more attractive because they will spur an acceleration in profit growth, said Chris Armbruster, an analyst at Al Frank Asset Management Inc. in Laguna Beach, California.

“There’s definitely going to be some marks that were taken that were too extreme,” said Armbruster, whose firm oversees about $375 million. “It gives them a huge cushion or buffer to smooth out earnings.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net; Elizabeth Hester in New York at ehester@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 26, 2009 16:21 EDT

safe for seven years

We Kept You Safe For Seven Years

Dick Cheney, and his toadies, Hannity, Limbaugh, Gingrich, have taken short memory to a new level. Dick Cheney was the sitting vice-president when the United States was brutally and successfully attacked on September 11, 2001. There is ample evidence that the Bush Administration, in its arrogance and incompetence looked away from clear and explicit warnings that Osama Bin Laden was an imminent threat, determined to attack in the United States. Somehow, they have successfully laid the blame on Clinton, Bush senior, even their savior, Ronald Reagan. But now Cheney is creating a narrative that will say, if we are attacked in the Obama Administration, it is because we are not torturing, a policy his own administration renounced, and the Supreme Court declared illegal. What a brilliant play. Take no responsibility for the worst attack on our soil in history, on your watch, blame the previous administration for creating those conditions, but make sure that if we are attacked again, you can say, “I told you so”. How about someone asking him, if you are going to take credit for the seven “safe” years, do you take responsibility for the eighth?

Not to mention that he kept us “safe” by invading a country that had no weapons of mass destruction, had no connection to the attack, and sacrificed over 4000 American lives, as well as untold Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars in the bargain. We have not seen the likes of a Cheney in power in our lifetime. Nixon looks like a progressive statesman compared to him. And he just gets a free ride, a hero’s welcome on TV. He left us in economic ruin, an endless war in Iraq, a failed policy in Afghanistan, a stronger and more nuclear Iran, no progress in the Israel-Palestine conflict, a nuclear armed North Korea, and he struts around like a conquering hero.

Why We Believe Big Lies (Iraq & Torture)

"Here is one compelling rationale for Dick Cheney's long record of big lies, ranging from lying us into war, to justifying torture, his latest dubious claim being that "hundreds of thousands" of lives were saved by his policy of "enhanced interrogation."

"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility, because broad masses of a nation are more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in the little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large- scale falsehoods."

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

(hat tip to Ron Rubin)

40 years ago in Spanish and English

21 Mayo 2009

Estimados socios del Rotary club de Marcos Paz, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina:

Es un placer especial para poder escribirles para felicitarle en el aniversario 50. Fue exactamente hace 40 años - 28 de julio, 1969 que recibí una carta dirigida a Steven Germain, 63 Aster Street, Massapequa Park , Nueva York EEUU del Roatary Club de Marcos Paz. La carta empezaba diciendo, "Estimado Stevens, y pasó a preguntarme lo que fecha llegaba en el aeropuerto de Ezeiza para que poder ir a buscarme y me dijeron que yo ya estaba registrado en el Colegio Secundario. La carta fue firmada por Andres Cahue, Secretario, por Roberto Savall, Presidente, y por Adolfo Aquilar, Pte. Comite Intercambio. Cuándo yo sali de EEUU el 16 de agosto el Rotary club de Nueva York tomó una fotografía del grupo de estudiantes de intercambio que viajaban para la Argentina esa noche. Hoy esta foto está en mi escritorio de mi officina.

En los 40 años desde que yo llege en Marcos Paz volvi muchos veces a mi residencia secundaria. Estuve cuando mi hermana, Pupe Bonati, regresso de su ano en Filadelfia; viajé a Salta en 1973 con mis amigos, Carlos Garcia, Ruebn Donis y Marcial Hourquebie; estuve en la boda de mi hermano, Luis Bonati en 1988; visite con mi hijo y luego con mi hija y el ano pasado mi hija viajo a Vila Gessel con sus amigas Argentinos, Eugenia Garcia y Alejandra Horquebie. El año pasado estuve de nuevo para las cumpleaños 80 de Mamá y en casi un mes mi Papá me estará visitando aquí en Nueva York unos pocos dia depues de su cumpleanso de los 81 (Nosotros le llamamos "Papa Immortal").

En el esquema de acontecimientos de mundo, yo supongo que la historia de un joven de EEUU que pasa un año en la Argentina es un asunto insignificante. Pero en las vidas de dos familias y sus amigos lo no es poca cosa. Es verdad y es importante.

Y así que les estoy muy agredcidos a todos Ustedes - al Rotary Club de Marcos Paz por todo lo que ustedes han hecho para mí. Yo ahora soy mayor - tengo 56 años de edad ya no soy el joven idealista que era cuando baje de ese avión en Ezeiza. Pero en mi corazón - soy todavía ese mismo joven. Un joven bendecido para haber tenido tuvo la oportunidad que el Rotary Club me dio.

Con mis mejores deseos acceptan las felicitaciones de su amigo, su hijo, su hermano y ciudadano honorario de Marcos Paz, Pcia Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Un carinoso abrazo fuerte a todos.

Steven

****************************************************************

May 21, 2009

Dear members of the Rotary Club of Marcos Paz, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina:

It is a special pleasure to be able to write to congratulate you on the 50th anniversary of the Rotary Club of Marcos Paz. It was exactly 40 years ago - 28 of July, 1969 that I received a letter addressed to Steven Germain, 63 Aster Street, Massapequa Park, New York, US from the Rotary Club. The letter began, "Dear Stevens", and asked me what date I would be arriving at Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires so that I could be welcomed and went on to say that I was already registered in the Secondary School. The letter was signed by Andres Cahue, Secretary, by Roberto Savall, President, and by Adolfo Alquilar, Pres. Exchange Student Committee. When I left NY on the 16th of August, the Rotary Club of New York took a photograph of the group of exchange students going to Argentina that night. Today that photo is in my desk at home.

In the 40 years since I fist arrived in Marcos Paz, I have returned many times to my second home. I was there when my sister, Stella Bonati, returned from her year abroad in Philadelphia; I travelled to Salta in 1973 with my friends, Carlos Garcia, Ruben Donis and Marcial Hourquebie; I was at the wedding of my brother, Luis Bonati in 1988; I visited with my son and then with my daughter and then my daughter travelled to Villa Gessel with her Argentine friends, Eugenia Garcia and Alejandra Horquebie. Last year I was there again for the 80th birthday of Mama and in almost a month my Papa will be visiting me here in New York a few days after his 81st birthday (We call him "Papa Immortal").

In the grand scheme of world events, I suppose that the history of an American 16 year old who spends a year in Argentina is an insignificant matter. But in the lives of two families and their friends it is not little thing. Is true and is important.

And so I am very grateful to all you - to the Rotary Club for everything that you have done for me. I now am older - I am 56 years old, no longer the idealistic youth that I was when I stepped off that pane at Ezeiza airport. But in my heart - I am still that same young man - blessed to have had the opportunity that the Rotary Club gave me.

With my best wishes, please accept my congratulations. Your friend, son, brother and honorary citizen of Marcos Paz, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A carinoso strong hug to all.

Steven

Re reading Geza Roheim

As I have despaired over the political culture, the business culture, the artistic culture we find ourselves wallowing in, I looked back to Roheim for insight. For him, there is a root cause for the difficult, near impossible task of making civilizations:

"Civilization originates in delayed infancy and its function is security. It is a huge network of more or less successful attempts to protect mankind against the danger of object-loss, the colossal efforts made by a baby who is afraid of being left alone in the dark."

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - Dave Midgette

David Midgette has been installing, painting and repairing residential, commercial and government flagpoles throughout the northeast for 50 years. He is 72 years old and these pictures were taken of him at work two weeks ago.

An Important Correction...

The other day I posted here an apology for honking at the person in front me on who refused to turn right on red. I apologized because I took a defensive driving class (cost $50 and insurance reduction over 3 years = $400 - that is a Warren Buffet return on investment) and Arthur, the instructor (think Lawrence Fishbourne), said in class that right on red is discretionary which kind of jogged my inaccurate memory of this event and I thought, "Wow I was in the wrong - that person did not have to turn right and I can't really apologize but its good to admit mistakes so post an apology on line as a sign of we all can learn from our mistakes and be more tolerant of people and remember we may be wrong so do not get mean and grouchy and don't be honking horns - be happy instead or, as my T shirt says, "wag more - bark less". Well today I drove by the same intersection and guess what - it is not a red light but rather a green arrow. In other words, it's a red light at which people stop BUT (and this is the DILIO) the red light then turns to a fucking green arrow. So when I was honking I did so because the stupid-rat-bastard-unconscious-asshole in front of me was essentially not moving at a green light which is ridiculous, dangerous, stupid, pathetic, insulting to good drivers and deserving of not only honking but extreme honking you stupid son of a bitch! (Never mind that after my honking episode the person rolled down their window and yelled at me "Leave earlier if you are in such a rush." To which I responded, yelling over my wife who was in the passenger seat, "It was a green arrow". To which the offending-non moving-at-a-green-arrow-unconscious-grease-sucking-weasel gave me the finger and told me to "Go fuck yourself, asshole". And to think I apologised yesterday because I thought I was in the wrong. There is something terribly wrong with me.

Two Minor Observations...

1) I learned today that "right on red" does not mean that the driver must turn right - it means that right is permitted but discretionary (makes sense). Accordingly I apologize for honking my horn the other day when the person in front of me at the corner of my town's main street and the highway did not turn right.

2) I learned today that a few months ago Obama raised the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $0.62 per pack and that smoking is down since that tax was imposed. I (deeply) wish he had raised that tax by $6.20 per pack and can see no reason not to have done so.

Renewal at the DMV...

I renewed my driver's license today at the DMV. I checked the box to donate $1.00 for organ transplant research because I think it's a worthy cause and because I like the mass giving model. If every driver gave just $1.00 a lot of money would be raised but the only way that works is if people do it and since I think it makes sense and is a good idea it seemed impossible for me not to check the box. When I got to the counter (I was number B270 and my wait was about 35 minutes which was really fine but a little numbing because the DMV office has a not loud but very strong drone to it caused by the whirring sound of the old fashioned really large standing fans that are inventoried in DMV warehouses somewhere. I am very sensitive to three triggers that cause in me moderate to strong head fog; waiting at the DMV, shopping malls and allergy pills.) the clerk said to me, "you checked the box to give one dollar, do you want to do that?" I said yes, why do you ask? And she said, "just checking, no one ever does".

I then told her I was thinking about also checking the organ donor box which basically lets the state harvest your organs if you die in an auto accident. That also makes total sense to me. So I asked her for a pen. She said to me, "I could never do that" I asked "why not". Se said, "Because as far as I am concerned, I am never going to die". I replied, "So you think you are immortal?" She said, "Yes, but I really should do it because my fiance is on the list to get a kidney". (He has been on dialysis for 4 years (4 X per week) and is 39 years old). I said, "Well that convinces me, can I have your pen?" She hands me her pen and I go to sign my name and the pen doesn't work. I said, "Yeessh that's kind of weird, like a sign or something - kind of like not getting on the doomed plane, maybe I am not supposed to sign this because maybe if I do God will kind of evaluate me versus some wonderful person's need for an organ and I suspect I might come up with the short straw on that one." (maybe that is not exactly what I said because it sounds like more words than I normally use when speaking but it was definitely what I was thinking and pretty much what I said). So I handed her back her pen and said, "You try it - I bet it works for you." She scribbled on a piece of paper and it worked perfectly so I said to her, "Wait a minute give me that back." Then I tried it and it worked so I signed the line to become an organ donor if I die in car accident. My driver's license will now say "Organ Donor" on it (in green). As I handed her back her pen I said something about me being cremated anyway so its not like a bunch of ashes will be any less because one measly organ wasn't included and I added that I have seen human ashes and they are not really very impressive looking - same as ashes from a fireplace basically. The clerk said that she found my ability to accept things "very nice". I asked her if she likes her job and she said she loves it and she kind of used her hand in a gesture of pointing to her and then pointing to me and she smiled.

Having concluded the renewal process I folded my temporary license up (my permanent one will arrive in the mail in about 10 days) put it in my wallet and walked out the exit. About three paces outside of the building I passed a guy going in (maybe I was lost in thought or whatever) and he said to me : "You look like they got the best of you in there."

I don't get it...

Dear College, thanks for the invite to the alumni event and your kind offer to take me to lunch to talk about the College at which the subject of my contributing to the alumni fund will doubtless be discussed.

Here's the thing - I totally get your need for money and I have absolutely every confidence that you are still a good place for nice kids with nice ideas who maybe are a little off beat but very smart and I believe the world would be a better place if it saw education in ways that I think you do. That said, private colleges can (I think) without stretching, be described as related to, or even directly themselves, elite. That is, despite the financial aid and other assistance they provide, private college "customers" are (economically) in the top one tenth of one percent of the world's population (even the poorest students). Even if that were not reason enough not to give money - why give it to private colleges? How about to new and interesting charter schools in low income urban areas? How about to promote the growth of community colleges? How about to support early childhood education because if you cannot read by the third grade - you are probably lost in this world. In the hierarchy of education need around the world, fancy pants colleges do not seem to rank as needy or even worthy of "charity". This does not make them unworthy- just unworthy of charity.

By the time kids walk through your doors they are basically already fully baked (in terms of who they are as humans). I know some kids who went to college and are new grads - same great kids they were before they went to college. They have some new friends and they had a lot of fun and they learned stuff - yup - that's life - it goes on, here or there or this way or that, elite and privileged by world and other standards or not - life goes on.

And you should be given more money why exactly? I know your standard answer - financial aid - I do not believe that argument - I think its a ginned up rationale for growing your endowment and keeping you on par with your competition. Colleges should all give their endowments to a centralized fund that makes low interest loans and grants to students of need regardless of which school they go to. Colleges should live on tuition (paid by students of means and by the central fund) and manage your costs. This competition thing over money among colleges is total bullshit and its driving people nuts and is idiotic and makes no sense and you know it. Oh and by the way - the education colleges provide is OK at best - not really very good or original - ask anyone who has gone to Harvard - if they are honest.

And here's another thing. I know not all colleges have the biggest endowments on the block but the notion of giving college endowments more money to invest in private equity and hedge funds is nuts to me. I am always amazed when rich people give money to other rich people. Yet people do it - that leads me to wonder why? They have fond memories? They liked the school? What is that all about? First of all - my parents paid tuition, the college charged a fee for service and they paid it. I mean I like my plumber, Rich C, a lot but all I do is pay what he charges. I do not give him more money to support his "mission". And speaking of tuition - the amount that colleges charge in tuition is nuts and the out distancing of the CPI that tuition has risen borders on scandalous.

I hope this does not offend you, I get all the reasons why some people would feel differently than I do and think its a worthy cause to support . But believe me my not agreeing does not at all reflect any lack of respect for you and what you do or for the college and what it does or for the faculty and staff and students there. All really nice people doing good stuff. I wish the college all the best. - Your former student and graduate.

Dostoevsky Question (on being a good person and faith)...

OK - - Dostoevsky is a downer (and a pretzel) so this will be the last in the series but its going to be twofer - here goes...

"What exactly does "faith" mean? As in "religious faith," "faith in God. etc." Isn't it basically crazy to believe in somethng that there's no proof of? Is there really any difference between what we call faith and some primitive tribe's sacrificing virgins to volcanoes because they believe it'll produce good weather? How can somebody have faith before he's presented with sufficient reason to have faith? Or is somehow needing to have faith a sufficient reason for having faith? But then what kind of need are we talking about?"

"Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I am bullshitting myself, morally speaking?"

-- David Foster Wallace

So... FD should have seen the made for HBO movie by ONE (Bono's charity org.) "The Girl In the Cafe". Here's the ridiculous plot: Very lonely middle aged man picks up young woman in cafe. Turns out he is a muckety muck in the British gov't. She is just - a girl in a cafe. He invites her to attend the G-20 meeting in Rekyievch, Iceland. She accepts. He is a really inhibited, uptight, shy, wonderful guy (played by Bill Nighe). And she finds him wonderfully appealing because he is so shy and so uptight yet so authentic and true. And she goes to the big dinner of all the honchos of the planet and during bullshit speeches about saving the planet while eating caviar and lobster she gets up and says "Every 3 seconds a baby dies of starvation who needn't die" and she snaps her fingers three times... and then again... needless to say everyone is appalled at her lack of politeness but somehow the G-20 guys get it and the next day they pass major resolutions to eradicate starvation on the planet.

The girl is played be somebody (Nellie?) (Macnormand?) who is now appearing in "the Merry Gentleman" with (and directed by) Micheal Keaton about two really sad and lonley people who meet and accept loneliness, tragedy and sorrow.

Totally Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky Question (on love)...

"Is it possible to really love other people? If I'm lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief -- I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn't a big part of love caring more about the other person's needs? How am I supposed to to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else's need that I cannot even feel directly? And yet if I can't do this, I'm damned to loneliness, which I definitely don't want...so I'm back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons. Is there any way out of this bind?"

-- David Foster Wallace from his essay, "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky".

PS. Forget the PS. I can't add anything to this. He nailed it.

Dostoevsky Question (on selfishness)...

"If I decide there's a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won't the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?"

-- David Foster Wallace from his essay, "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky".

PS: You can see how FD's art and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason overlap. Like FD, IK tried to resolve the inherent contradictions in the very way we perceive reality - (i.e., if we are necessarily selfish is it morally superior to steer towards unselfishness if you are doing so for selfish reasons?). While FD concluded that a "life lived without moral/spiritual values was not just incomplete but depraved", IK concluded that only in the realm of Pure Reason can pure morality be discovered.

CDC and Swine Flu- Man of The Hour

Below a very interesting interview dated April 29, 2009 with Dr. Ruben Omar Donis, (a/k/a "Manzana"), chief of molecular virology and vaccines at the CDC, taken from ScienceInsider:

On the Precipice of Pandemic

APRIL 29, 2009

Exclusive Interview: CDC Head Virus Sleuth

Virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke with ScienceInsider at length last night about the swine flu virus causing the current outbreak. CDC’s early analyses raise several provocative possibilities. The stage appears to have been set for this human outbreak by an outbreak over the past decade of flu viruses in swine that combine strains from several species. The first infected human may not even have been in North America, let alone Mexico. Patient samples from Mexico taken over the past several months reveal that this swine flu clearly exploded in late March, suggesting that it was not rapidly spreading in that country, undetected, for very long.

Donis discussed the genetics of the virus—the clues in this mystery—in detail. These include several of its eight genes, which code for surface proteins hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N), the matrix that surrounds the nucleus, the nucleoprotein itself, and three polymerase enzymes called PA, PB1, and PB2.

—Jon Cohen

Q: What do you know about this swine flu virus?

R.D.: We know it’s quite similar to viruses that were circulating in the United States and are still circulating in the United States and that are self-limiting, and they usually only are found in Midwestern states where there is swine farming. There’s only one well-documented case where the infection spread from one human to another. What we know is that it is not common that there is sustained transmission in people.


Q: Christopher Olsen published a paper that looked at the literature back to 1958 and only found 50 cases of humans infected with a swine influenza.

R.D.: If we have two documented cases a year, maybe that’s just the tip of iceberg. Maybe there are 10 times more or 50 times more. But still, it’s only swine to human, and it stops there.


Q: Have you completely sequenced this virus?

R.D.: Yes, 2 weeks ago. Very soon after we received specimens from California and Texas. Hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, and matrix, the three genes that have the most public health interest, were sequenced, and then the whole genome was completed.

Q: How large is the genome?

R.D.: It’s 14 kilobases.

Q: It’s only a little larger than HIV. You could sequence it in hours.

R.D.: Yes. It’s tiny.

Q: How close is it to the closest strain you know of?

R.D.: Depends which genes. You have similarities of about 94% in the hemaggluttinin [H] to the nearest strain we know.

Q: Is it of swine origin?

R.D.: Definitely. It’s almost equidistant to swine viruses from the United States and Eurasia. And it’s a lonely branch there. It doesn’t have any close relatives.

Q: How about the neuraminidase gene?

R.D.: It has close relatives in Asia. It’s also swine.

Q: The matrix gene?

R.D.: The same as neuraminidase.

Q: So where are avian and human sequences?

R.D.: We have to step back [to] 10 years ago. In 1998, actually, Chris Olsen is one of the first that saw it, and we saw the same in a virus from Nebraska and Richard Webby and Robert Webster in Memphis saw it, too. There were unprecedented outbreaks of influenza in the swine population. It was an H3.

Q: They were dying from it?

R.D.: No. It was not very severe in healthy pigs. Everyone was very curious about these H3 viruses. Since 1918, normally it’s only H1N1 in swine. Then all of a sudden there’s H3N2 in swine in the Midwestern U.S. When people analyzed what was inside those viruses, they realized there were three different things.

The PB1 gene, that was human. H3 and N2 also were human. The PA and PB2, the two polymerase genes, were of avian flu. The rest were typical North American swine viruses. Those strains were the so-called triple reassortants.

Q: We always hear of the pig as a mixing vessel combining human, avian, and pig influenzas. Why didn’t you regularly see reassortants?

R.D.: Good questions. These questions have no answer. There is an explanation somewhere.

The reality is good molecular surveillance in the pigs started in the 1970s. So if there were strains that were not very dominant between the 1930s and the ’70s, we wouldn’t have detected them. This triple reassortant was very successful and took over and dominated the picture—to the point where the classical H1N1 was almost extinct.

Q: Why were the first triple reassortants more fit?

R.D.: They were H3s, and H3 is a different subtype, so there was no immunity in the pigs. It was probably that they had new polymerase genes, too.

Q: How does it tie to the current outbreak?

R.D.: Where does all this talk about avian and human genes come from? I was describing a fully swine virus. For [the] last 10 years, this has been a fully swine virus. Can you tell I have an accent? I’m a U.S. citizen but I have the roots in Argentina. It’s like me. I’ve been in the U.S. since 1980. I’m a U.S. citizen but I have an accent.

Q: It’s not as though human and avian just got there in this strain.

R.D.: It’s part of the swine virus.

Q: What’s the newest part of this strain?

R.D.: Neuraminidase and the matrix are the newest to be seen in North America. They were not part of the team—I talk about flu virus as teams of genes. There are eight players. They have these two new players from Asia.

Q: It suggests a mixing of pigs from North America and Asia.

R.D.: One little detail we haven’t discussed is [that] these Midwestern viruses were exported to Asia. Korea and many countries import from the U.S. Swine flu is economically not such a big deal that many countries don’t check for it.


Q: How do you get Europe in there?

R.D.: There are some parts of the puzzle I don’t have the answer to. The genetic lineages of Asia and Europe mix quite a bit.

Q: How does the pig get back here?

R.D.: Who said it was a pig that came from Asia? Did I say that? It could be a person.

Q: So the origin might trace back to Europe or Asia.

R.D.: I didn’t say that. I don’t want to point the finger at anyone.

Q: It does suggest that mixing didn’t happen in Mexico.

R.D.: Probably not. The amazing thing is the hemagglutinins we are seeing in this strain are a lonely branch that have been evolving somewhere and we didn’t know about it.


Q. Can you look at sequence to see what makes it transmit human-to-human?

R.D.: If I could, I would be the chief of the CDC or NIH [National Institutes of Health].

Q: You don’t want either of those jobs.

R.D.: [Laughter.] I don’t think we can do it in silico.

Q: Do you know the percent difference of the entire sequence to the older triple reassortant that dominated?

R.D.: We have [a] 6% or higher percentage difference in neuraminidases. You have multiple amino acids that differ. And single amino acid changes can change receptor specificity. When you have so many changes, you don’t know which ones are responsible.

Q: How about pathogenesis? Can you tease that out in vitro?

R.D.: One traditional approach is to take advantage of viral modules that allow you to assemble different teams, to make reassortants that take a virus say from North America that doesn’t transmit, and you swap one gene from the virus that does transmit. If the hypothesis is that hemagglutinin is responsible, you put in the background of the genes from the old virus. You need an animal model, usually the ferret.

Q: Have you been able to compare isolates from Mexico and the United States?

R.D.: Yes, they are very, very similar. Many genes are identical. In the eight or nine viruses we’ve sequenced, there is nothing different.

Q: Have you compared someone who died with someone who had a mild case?

R.D.: Those data are still slippery. We don’t have good case data. You get age and sex—very limited information. That’s a problem. In the set of samples we know one case was fatal, but we don’t know which one it is.

Q: Have you been to Mexico yet to study this outbreak?

R.D.: No. CDC sent a group of scientist and epidemiologists, laboratory folks that went over there to set up diagnostic labs. One is in Yucatán; one in is in D.F. [Distrito Federal, which includes Mexico City].


Q: What do you think about the pig farm in Veracruz?

R.D.: I don’t know the details. They said they had a huge operation and the workers were not getting sick; that’s what the company claims. The only suspicious thing in that story is this is the largest farm in Mexico. The fact that the index case also is from the area makes it interesting.


Q: Do large farms have more swine flu?

R.D.: Not really. Even folks who have 50 pigs have to buy feed and supply from vendors that go from farm to farm, and they don’t wash their boots or whatever. Usually the virus is transmitted very effectively.

Q: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?

R.D.: We all pray this remains sensitive to antivirals. We all hope that vaccines will be developed. The virus doesn’t grow very well in eggs. We hope the virus will improve [the] ability to grow in eggs so we can produce [a] vaccine very quickly so these secondary and tertiary cases can be controlled. In some countries there’s good surveillance, but in others, who knows.

Q: What do you think of this outbreak?

R.D.: This is the first one I’ve seen firsthand as a virologist. The avian influenza outbreak is not comparable because this is unfolding so quickly. This reminds me of SARS. With avian there’s very little transmission. And even with SARS, transmission was far less.

Q: Does this one scare you?

R.D.: I saw figures that do scare you. We’ve received 300 samples from Mexico, and these cover the span of February, March, and April. And you look at flu A, traditionally it’s A/H1 or A/H3 or it's B up until the end of March. There are two or three cases up to [the] last days of March that are swine. Then in April they skyrocket. So all the cases in the D.F. areas, where most samples came from, it really transmits very efficiently.

Q: What is the date of first sample?

R.D.: I think it’s the end of March, the first positive specimen.

Q: Did Mexico react quickly enough?

R.D.: They didn’t know. They probably thought it was regular flu.

Q: Flu is a seasonal disease that peaks in winter. Maybe this will end in the United States with the end of the flu season.

R.D.: We’re in a good position. The folks in Buenos Aires are in trouble. They’re entering winter now.