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Today's Youth Advisory Board post comes from Bryan Spencer, one of our newest board members (look for more YAB updates next week!), Ypulse Insights intern and among the many unfortunate college students to find himself a victim of the H1N1 virus.... Read the rest of this post

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Swine Flu:
One death in Guam and 2 confirmed cases in Saipan. Like everywhere else in the US, swine flu makes headline news. Since I've been in Ohio this summer for vacation, visiting family, I've been hearing about swine flu here, too. Ohio also had its first death from swine flu this month.

Swine flu is a pandemic. More than half of the deaths have been in the U.S. It is NOT the most virulent form of flu the world has seen, but it is the current strain and it's causing plenty of harm. Symptoms being talked about here in Ohio are fever, sore throat, vomiting and diarrhea. Best to take precautions.

What's scary in Saipan, though, is how small the population is, how close contact may be unavoidable, and especially how weak our health system is, despite the protestations of CHC and the health department that everything is fine.


Tim Villagomez:
His lawyers are begging for leniency. His family and friends are flooding the court with letters begging for mercy. The newspapers publish only snippets of the requests, but some of them show that the community is also part of the problem.

The comment that gets first place imho in the "you're clueless" category goes to Diego Benevente for this:

“Villagomez has been and remains a respectful and modest public servant in spite of the predicament he found himself in.”

Excuse me? He didn't find himself in a predicament. He committed a crime. He is to blame for his own action. It's about personal responsibility.

I still haven't seen Tim Villagomez own up to his own responsibility in this matter. Yes, he quit his job as lieutenant governor. But that was not until after he was convicted of federal crimes.

I'm guessing he can't say a lot, because he's probably following the advice of counsel to remain silent. But that's a far cry from finding himself in a predicament.


Another comment winner for passing the buck goes to his wife, Margaret Keene Villagomez, who, as his wife, is understandably blinded by loyalty and love. But really, think before you write something like this:

“One of the biggest mistakes that he has ever made, in my opinion, was that he entered the uncertain world of politics where some of the people that he helped would one day be the cause of his demise.”

This just shows it's all about getting caught, in the thoughts of his family. Never mind that there was evidence that he scammed the public through fraudulent rydlime sales to CUC before he went into politics... And those people he helped! How dare they cause him trouble. (Surely she doesn't mean his sister and brother-in-law; it's the snitch who testified against him and those people in the public auditors office and who else?)


I'm not sure what the Bishop hoped to convey with his comment.

“They have strived to live up to the Christian ideals of living out the Gospel message in their day-to-day living. They recognize their mistakes and they are keen on making conscious efforts to correct them. Overall, I see the goodness in their hearts despite their shortcomings.”

I don't remember the Gospel saying anything good about cheating people by enriching your own pockets with a scam, under cover of high status and public power.

And then there are the heartfelt pleas for the sake of the children. I do feel for the children, who are innocent in this matter; who no doubt love their father; who no doubt need their father in their lives. But what are we teaching those children with comments like this?

“Please give them leniency on sentencing day. Please don’t take our families apart. It’s all in your hands.”

“I don’t know how any parent could find the strength to explain to their young children the logic of why their daddy will not be with them much longer, or that soon he may not be coming home at all."

Both of these comments (one from a nephew, one from the wife) again show that denial of the reason why Tim Villagomez is facing jail time. It is not the JUDGE breaking up the family. And what you tell your children is that daddy is a human being who made a big mistake and now must pay for it.

I understand loyalty and wanting someone you love to be given a second chance; be shown mercy. I think Kay Delafield's comments, as reported in the newspaper, help protray that best.

According to the Tribune, "She said Villagomez has no past record of bad acts and he has young children, a wife, a mother and a family who need him in their lives." Okay. Facts. This is an effective plea; simple, direct, not too emotional.

And Sasamoto's comment:

“He has lost credibility in the public eye and I believe that he is truly despondent regarding what he has put his family through.”

Okay, fact and opinion stated as an opinion. Effective.

Lots of people convicted of crimes have wives and children. The judge can't seriously even consider that when sentencing someone convicted of crimes. Many people get despondent when they are caught.

And let's be honest, Tim did some serious harm, despite the denials of his family.

I think Rob Torres' comment sums up the "support:"

Villagomez's counsel, Robert Torres, said his client is no different than other offenders in public corruption cases who have denied their gifts and talents in pursuit of brazen, if not blind, ambition.

“But Tim remains to me someone whom I care for and whom I support unequivocably and without hesitation. I stake my name and reputation as an officer of this court in writing this letter,” he said.

Tim screwed up but we love him anyway. Okay. Now let's get back to logical considerations for sentencing.


Judiciary debt to the Retirement Fund:
This one is good: the CNMI judiciary owes a heck of a lot of money to the NMIRF.

Let's order them to go get second jobs to pay this off, okay? Sic Mike White on them? Threaten them with jail for non-payment?

That's what they do every day to poor debtors without the education and opportunities they all have!

Oh, they want the public to pay from the general fund? That was part of the deal. Okay. They want to work this out. No problem.

Well, there is a problem as there is no easy solution. Oh-oh.

Really, I hope they consider how unreasonable debt happens to the best of us the next time a poor person can't pay in an ordinary debt collection case.

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Dororthy H. Crawford is Professor of Medical Microbiology and Assistant Principal for Public Understanding of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of several books and papers, most recently for OUP, Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped our History. In the post below she compares the current swine flu outbreak with previous flu pandemics, and asks why this one is apparently more serious in Mexico than elsewhere and how it might develop.

She has previously written for OUPblog on the UK Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in 2007.

Ironically, while all those trying to predict the next flu pandemic are monitoring the antics of bird flu in Asia and North Africa, swine flu escapes from a pig farm in Mexico and goes global. This unpredictability is typical of flu virus which is constantly mutating and recombining its genes, eventually producing a ‘new’ strain that can infect and spread in humans unrecognised by our immune system.

This unruly behaviour gives an average of three pandemics (defined as a spreading infection in more than one continent at once) per century. In the 20th century we had Hong Kong flu in 1968, Asian flu in 1957, and the post WW1 Spanish flu in 1918 that killed around 40M people.

Within days of Mexico reporting a flu epidemic, now with some 985 infections and 25 deaths, cases appeared in around 20 countries, including the UK, all directly seeded from Mexico thanks to our efficient trans-global airliners. Scientists at the Centre for Disease Control, Atlanta, US, quickly identified the virus as H1N1; a common subtype in humans. But the ‘Mexican’ pig virus, which has been traced to one that has been circulating in pigs since the 1930s, is very different from the human H1N1 strain. It has occasionally jumped to humans before but until now it has never succeeded in spreading between humans.

Flu viruses have RNA genomes with eight separate gene segments that mutate and recombine rapidly. The ‘Mexican’ virus has six genes derived from North American swine flu and two from Eurasian swine flu; a combination that has never been found infecting humans before. It is not clear how or why it jumped species, but given that it is now spreading between humans, and most of us are likely to be non-immune, this is a recipe for a pandemic.

At present events are moving so fast that whatever I write will not only be out of date, but may even be proved wrong, by tomorrow, so I will restrict myself to speculating on the following: why is ‘Mexican’ flu apparently more serious in Mexico than elsewhere’? and: ‘how might the pandemic develop’?

Traditionally, respiratory infections like flu are a threat to the very young, the very old and those with chronic diseases, causing thousands of deaths in these groups in the UK every year. Generally the death rate from flu is less than 1%, so the rate of around 2.5% reported from Mexico (985 cases of flu and 25 deaths) is high. But outside Mexico cases seem to be mild, with the only death reported being a child in the US where over 160 cases have been diagnosed. So what is the explanation?

In all flu outbreaks those who seek help represent the tip of the iceberg, with many more infections being too mild to require medical attention. It is likely that the Mexican figures represent only those sufferers who consulted a doctor and are therefore distorted towards the severe end of the spectrum. More research is needed to uncover the actual prevalence of the disease in the community before a reliable death rate can be calculated.

Reports of deaths among young adults in Mexico are worrying as this is reminiscent of the 1918 H1N1 virus with its high death rate in the young. The explanation may be that the older generation are partially protected by having met a similar strain of H1N1 in the past, but again we need more details from Mexico before specific risks can be assessed.

In the Northern hemisphere flu epidemics usually strike in the winter when the virus transmits more easily between people who are huddled inside trying to keep warm. But in the UK the 1918 pandemic began with a small outbreak in the Spring which receded in the Summer only to take off again in the Autumn, causing thousands of infections and deaths. Given the present pattern, we may now be witnessing the equivalent of the 1918 Spring outbreak, heralding a full pandemic in the Autumn. If so this could be good news as it gives us a 6 month breathing space – time enough to prepare a vaccine to protect our vulnerable groups.

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Leslie Francis is Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Law, and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of Utah.  Together with Margaret P. Battin, Jay A. Jacobson and Charles B. Smith, she wrote The Patient as Victim and Vector: Ethics and Infectious Disease which explores how traditional and new issues in clinical medicine, research, public health, and health policy might look different if infectious disease were treated as central. The authors argue that both practice and policy must recognize that a patient with a communicable infectious disease is not only a victim of that disease, but also a potential vector- someone who may transmit an illness that will sicken or kill others.  In the post below Francis looks specifically at the H1N1 outbreak.

The recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza in Mexico has been greeted with great concern to prevent spread. Trips have been cancelled, travelers have been quarantined, schools have been closed, and sporting events will go uncontested. Preventing spread is important, to be sure, especially of a novel agent with unknown infectivity and lethality. But there is a down side to all the worry about spread: it encourages us to think of each other as vectors, sources of disease to be feared.

We are all vectors or potential; that’s a biological fact. But it’s only one side of our biology. We’re “way-station” selves, breeding grounds and launching pads for literally trillions of microorganisms, all the time—but we’re also recipients of them too. In short: we’re all victims,
just as we are vectors. We live in a state of perpetual uncertainty about whether we’re victims, vectors, or both, at any given time.

As we are caught up in the fear of pandemic spread, we need to remember our victim-side, too. There’s been some discussion of this in the press reports: stories of empty hotels, the cancelled U-17 Concacaf tournament, travelers quarantined in airports, workers without
childcare, or pigs slaughtered unnecessarily in Egypt. But there have been no comprehensive reminders that people stricken with the flu or suspected as vectors are victims as well and in need of support: medical care if they are ill, economic consideration if their livelihoods are
lost, and just plain concern when events that are important to them must be cancelled to enforce the social distancing that is hoped to prevent spread.

In pandemic planning, much effort has been devoted to preventing disease spread. We are seeing the importance of these measures in the current situation. As fears wane, or refocus on later, perhaps more virulent phases of an epidemic or on future emergences of new infectious diseases, however, it is equally important for us to plan for victims and to ask what we owe them. Such planning efforts may be particularly important to encourage the sharing of epidemiological data in the future, if the economic impacts on Mexico are dire and left unattended, where data sharing and international cooperation is crucial in disease control. That’s a prudential imperative, but it’s an ethical one, too. After all, we’re all in this together,working together not only to prevent the spread of infectious disease but also to mitigate the impact of disease where it strikes.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at “swine flue”. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

“Swine flu” or a strand of influenza A subtype “H1N1?” Try as federal officials might, the media continues to resist their call to term the “swine flu” the new strain of “H1N1″ virus.

At a press conference last Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was at pains to say, “This really isn’t swine [flu], it’s H1N1 virus.” He also explained why: “and it is significant because there are a lot of hard-working families whose livelihood depends on us conveying this message.” (At least ten countries have placed bans on the import of pork even though the World Health Organization has attested that H1N1 is an air-borne and not a food-borne virus.)

The hegemony of “swine flu” over “H1N1″ is even more peculiar given that the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reports that the particular strand of H1N1 virus (which typically infect pigs) that is causing the current epidemic has not previously been reported in pigs and actually contains avian and human components. It was only on May 2, long after “swine flu” had gained rhetorical currency that the strain was found in pigs at a farm in Alberta, Canada. Even there the story has a twist - the pigs had gotten infected because of their contact with a farm worker who had recently returned from Mexico, and not the other way around - prompting some to suggest that the proper nomenclature ought to be “human flu” or “Mexican flu.”

But the media’s job is to transmit the news in the best way that rolls of one’s tongue, not deal with the fallout of their infelicitous use of words. To be fair, administration officials were slow to catch on. As late as April 26, two days before Vilsack’s press conference, the White House and Richard Besser of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) were still referring to the “swine flu.” Clearly, the pork lobbyists aren’t going to win this battle and the malapropistic epidemic will continue. Administration officials should know that if they really wanted a working alternative to “swine flu,” they would have to do a lot better than a robotic scientific abbreviation.

Our current malapropism has an ancient pedigree. The 1918-1920 H1N1 pandemic called the “Spanish Flu” didn’t start in Spain (and probably started in Kansas). This is ironic, because the “Spanish Flu” acquired its name only because Spain was a neutral country in WW1 and with no state censorship of news of the disease, was offering the most reliable information about it. This ended up generating the impression that the disease originated and was particularly widespread in Spain. Even when the media is not trying, it defines and shapes our reality.

Why does any of this matter? Because words characterize an issue in such a way as to insinuate a cause and to frame our reactions. Sometimes, words can even drive mass hysteria. Consider the “swine flu” outbreak in 1976, which claimed a single life at Fort Dix, NJ. Because this particular strain of virus looked a lot like the one that caused the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-1920 (also misleadingly named), public health officials convinced President Gerald Ford to commence a mass immunization program for all Americans. The use of a sledgehammer to crack a nut was not without consequences. Of the 40 million Americans immunized, about 500 developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralyzing neuromuscular disorder.

So let us pick our words carefully, lest our slovenly words presage our slovenly deeds.

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