Death Camps

It's come to my attention that this post may come across with a political charge. This is not intended, and the fear blog does not stand behind any party except science, including history. Please bear this in mind while reading. 

Genocide is not a new phenomenon to mankind. Records exist of genocides occurring well before World War I, including a German genocide of an African population with explicit orders to either shoot them all or drive the population into the desert to die. The definition has a little play because argument exists as to how direct an act must be to constitute a genocide; for example, some people argue that involuntary introduction of disease into a population while offering no medical assistance qualifies as a genocide. The definition also has play when it comes to quantity of people killed since there's no set number or percentage that must be reached first to qualify. Going with Wikipedia's list (take it for what you will), 39 separate genocides have been identified during and since WWI. Of those, few or none were completed in total secrecy, typically with some government policies that were known- sometimes even lauded- publicly.

In many cases, governments utilize propaganda against whatever people they intend to eradicate in order to maintain public support. A popular propaganda technique for these governments is a process known as pseudospeciation, commonly employed in military institutionalization, which teaches the subject population to believe that the targeted group is some other species, something less then human, or even outright animal. Pseudospeciation relies on exaggerating the differences in appearance, behavior, thought, language, diet, history, and culture of a given group to demonstrate to the public how different the target group is in order to scrub the public of any sympathy for that group on a human level. In other cases, the offending government preforms the genocide under the guise of re-locating a population or helping the public at large (such as segregating the Jews into the Ghettos, or the trail of tears to re-locate the American Cherokee population from the Southeast US to Oklahoma). Even in political genocides, there is a understanding that there is a real danger in speaking your mind, backed with real, publicized actions on the government's part, such as during the Stalinist purges that occurred in the 1930's USSR.

So, you can imagine my surprise when multiple people suggested that I cover the alleged FEMA death camps on the blog. Apparently, the source of the circulating 'knowledge' of the camps hails from YouTube- source of all things that are good and true in this world. People who share this information with me often speak of DHS strike teams that arrive at homes that have mailboxes marked with orange stickers to drag unwitting Americans off to FEMA internment camps where they are subsequently gassed en masse. Nevermind that local police can't have a SWAT operation without local media taking extreme interest, nevermind the simple solution of getting a PO Box (problem, government?), nevermind that I've yet to have a specific group consistently identified as being the targets of these internments (the answers range from Republicans to Veterans to gun owners to Christians to anybody at all). So, request accepted.

Honestly, I've wondered 'Why FEMA'? I think it's because they're an easy target for conspiracy theorists, since their popularity tanked in the face of the fiasco in post-Katrina New Orleans. I figure that if FEMA had handled that well, we would today be discussing USPS death camps. I'm not suspicious for an ongoing genocide of the US citizenship by its government for several reasons. First, some claims include witnessing shipments of something on the order of a half million coffins, but I notice a glaring deficit of people asking where their friends and family have suddenly vanished off to. Assuming the 500,000 wasn't a one-time event, I'm sure somebody would've noticed the entire population of Wyoming (or Fresno, CA) disappearing. I'm sure somebody would've seen the armored vehicles, gunfights, and people being forcibly taken out of their quiet suburban neighborhood. Second, when asking what the Department of Homeland Security needs with millions of rounds of ammunition, I would posit that the US Coast Guard is under the DHS, and crazy things tend to happen when departments of government have to use all of their budget or else get the excess cut next year. For those who point to alleged satellite photos of FEMA camps, I will point you to an excellent popular mechanics article on the matter that can be found here. The article points out that one of the alleged camps is legitimately a labor camp, but for North Korea, not the US. The irony should be striking for any Christians in the readership, since the North Korean government is legitimately persecuting its Christian population through incarceration.

Which leads me to what you should be scared of. Genocides happen, and they're still happening today. They've claimed millions of lives, and they're easily among the most heinous of human atrocities. Go look in a mirror. You, who carry and spread the rumors of death and devastation in our Homeland; you who are a capable, thinking, adult human being; you who are, in some cases, armed. If you honest to God believe that this is happening, there is no argument I could make to convince you that these FEMA camps are an outright hoax. It's too easy for you or the internet to say that I've been deceived, or I'm in the pocket of the government- it's too easy just to write me off as a naysayer. If you really believe this, though, why do you sit idly by and chat about it with the same dull tone as one might discuss last night's TV programming? How can you live with yourself, doing nothing while you honestly believe that there are people being killed en masse on your land? If you can accept these conspiracies as just another fact of life, all while in the same breath heralding the merits of the second amendment, you need to take some time for some serious soul searching. If you don't honestly believe it, then why are you spreading this crap? Of the millions dead by genocide, the burden of their death not only hangs from the necks of those who committed the atrocities, but also from the necks of those who knew better and still did nothing.

The simple truth is that while this bullshit entertains, it's simply a passing fancy that only serves to distract from real horrors that are really happening right now in other parts of the world. You don't have to make this stuff up, it's out there now, you just have to care enough to look. Right now, North Korea is intentionally starving its population, throwing people in prison camps indefinitely for saying one cross thing about their leader, or even for being Christian. So if you're really serious about wanting to do something about genocide and government atrocities, pay attention to the world beyond what you're bombarded with on a daily basis, learn something educate yourself, and share your knowledge instead of your youtube videos; support humanitarian organizations like the UN, US Military (believe it or not, a large contributor to humanitarian causes across the world) and the Red Cross; of course, support science and the men and women doing it that are helping to bring us closer every day to world where war and human suffering is no longer necessary.

As always, feel free to leave questions, comments, concerns, and suggestions here on the blog, or on our facebook page.

Deadly Bites

 

So this is probably what you're thinking, right? Maybe you're thinking something along the line of dogsbite.org's dramatic slogan "Some dogs don't let go". Perhaps you're thinking of lions, tigers, and bears. While all of those can do a lot of damage in a short period of time, and they all call out to a primal terror hidden in all of us, they're not at all the most likely to kill you from a bite.

 

In fact, last year there were only ten fatality shark attacks worldwide, out of seventy-two unprovoked attacks[1]. Unprovoked attacks are those situations where there shark was undisturbed in its natural habitat, and attacked an unsuspecting human. That's actually fewer than the number of people killed by jellyfish in the Philippines alone every year (roughly twenty to forty). [9]Nobody sees jellyfish as the horrible monsters they really are by comparison to sharks, but getting sent into heart failure and drowning feet from shore because you brushed a jellyfish seems almost as terrifying to me as getting tasted by a shark. At least trauma care in the US can do something about shark bites, but it's suspected that many Jelly poisonings are mistaken for heart attacks, and not treated as they should be. [9]

 

When it comes to data on dog bites, other than the CDC for raw injury data, dogsbite.org seems to be the go-to place to get information on the internet. They're the second google hit when you search 'dog bite statistics', coming in ahead of the CDC, and behind a lawyer's 'wanna sue somebody?' page. Their website heralds themselves as a public information site, but I feel that they're about as informative as the National Vaccine Information Center, or other fearmongering sites with a bias to preach. They mention Pit Bulls in specific nineteen times on their front page alone as of the time of this writing. Their site is smattered with distorted statistics (such as using a nine year period of dog bite records to be able to say that pit bulls killed 176 people), and relies heavily on anecdotal, not empirical, accounts to strike fear and sorrow into the reader's mind- a tactic that is frequently used by organizations that have no or weak evidence to support their stance. The studies they cite as being significant are frankly pretty limp (or have nothing to do with bite epidemiology), such as this one which only notes a 0.63 events per 100,000 people a year reduction as a result of breed specific legislation. Their article on pit bull owners, which can be viewed here is nothing short of offensive. The kicker is that they have a directory of dog bite lawyers on their site, for your legal convenience.

 The reality when it comes to dogs is that, on a yearly basis, we have 32 deaths from dog bites in the US (still more than sharks globally, and less than Jellyfish)[2], a total of 4.5 million reported bites, 885,000 of which are deemed to require medical attention. Of those, 27,000 require reconstructive surgery.[3] According to the American Humane Association, breed specific legislation is ineffective at reducing dog bite total incidents. [10]According to an American Veterinary Medical Association  report cited on the CDC's dog bite statistics page, it isn't useful to single out one or two breeds for control. The reason is multifaceted, but essentially boils down to dog bite statistics actually being pretty poor.

"Dog bite statistics are not really statistics, and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite. Invariably the numbers will show that dogs from popular large breeds are a problem. This should be expected because big dogs can physically do more damage if they do bite, and any popular breed has more individuals that could bite." [11, page 2/18]

 So how do we effectively reduce dog bites? The numbers don't lie, unaltered dogs bite more. In fact, 92% of fatal dog attacks involved male dogs, 94% of whom were unaltered. Supervise your kids around unfamiliar dogs, teach them that harassing any animal- especially a dog- is going to get them hurt. Don't approach any unfamiliar, chained up, or stressed out animals. It's that easy; Get your dogs altered, teach your kids, and practice a little common sense.

"But Curt!" You say. "This is the fearblog, and you have made me not afraid!" Well, if the very existence of dogsbite.org wasn't enough for you, I won't disappoint. Here's the bite you should really be afraid of:

The mosquito. In and of themselves, mosquito bites aren't deadly, everybody knows that. Mosquitoes, as ectoparasites, are themselves parasitized by smaller organisms that are deadly and disabling to us. Dengue virus infections cause around 22,000 deaths on an annual basis. [5] West Nile Virus caused 286 US deaths, and 5,674 cases in 2012. [6]Yellow fever was at 200,000 cases, and 30,000 deaths last year. [7]Elephantiasis, while causing few or no deaths, has left 40 million disabled and disfigured. [8] 623,357- that's the number of American lives claimed in both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror combined according to Wikipedia. Every single year, Malaria causes 627,000 deaths, and 207 million clinical episodes. [4]The most efficient method of knocking out these diseases is by knocking out the vector, since the mosquito is a necessary stage in all of these diseases' life cycles, but it's a messy, multi-faceted problem that is unlikely to be solved in the near future. Maybe if we spent as much time and effort and killing mosquitoes as we spend on hunting sharks and attacking pit bulls, there'd be a real glimmer of hope.

So what can you do? Well, you can donate to this cause, which aims to provide better malaria care by tackling the huge problem of counterfeit or watered-down anti-Malarials. Not only is it deadly to people, namely children, who need the medications, it's also contributing to anti-malarial resistance in the parasite population by attacking the parasites with subtherapeutic doses. You can also use an insect repellent of your choosing to protect yourself and your loved ones from mosquito bites. As always, you should support those who support science. Seek to grow your own knowledge, and share what you've learned here (on person, or on facebook, just saying). Please feel free to leave any questions, comments, or concerns here on the blog or on our new facebook page at www.facebook.com/thefearblog

Till next time, kiddies, stay spooky.



[1]http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/ISAF/2013Summary.html
[2]http://www.dogsbite.org/pdf/dog-attack-deaths-maimings-merritt-clifton-2013.pdf (questionable)
[3]http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Dog-Bites/index.html
[4]http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html
[5]http://www.cdc.gov/dengue/epidemiology/index.html
[6]http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/statsMaps/finalMapsData/data/2012WNVHumanInfectionsbyState.pdf
[7]http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs100/en/
[8]http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs102/en/
[9]http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/textonly/biology_sting.jsp
[10]http://www.americanhumane.org/animals/stop-animal-abuse/fact-sheets/dog-bites.html
[11]https://www.avma.org/public/Health/Documents/dogbite.pdf

MERS

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

 

MERS IS COMIING! BUST OUT YOUR DISASTER KITS, IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE, KIDDIES!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/15/health/mers-outbreak-netherlands/

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mers-mystery/second-mers-case-shows-hospitals-are-ground-zero-mers-n104601

 

Welcome back to the blog! As some of you may have heard, SARS' cousin, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has made landfall stateside. MERS-CoV has been the subject of much media speculation and, in some cases, fearmongering since its identification in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Most people don't know much about MERS, except that it's kinda maybe bad to get it, so I'm going to give you a brief rundown.

 

According to the CDC, MERS infection has a lethality rate of about 30% of cases. Since its discovery, we've noted a little over 500 cases, which is relatively few for a new infection. Human-to-human transmission has been observed, but only in limited numbers, usually from an isolated case to family or healthcare workers (that is, generally people who spend extended periods in close proximity to the patient). Typically, new infections of MERS fizzle out within one or two transmissions- not unlike H4N1 avian influenzas. It's unlikely that humans are a reservoir for MERS, since the infection is not persistent, and isolated cases are observed with no detectable chain of transmission. We have pretty good evidence suggesting that Dromedary Camels (those with one hump, as pictured) are the reservoir, but nothing completely solid. There is no antiviral or approved therapy for MERS as of the time of this post, but we do have a reliable test for it. [1]

 

The cases that made stateside were imported from overseas[1], and seem to be sticking to the pattern of little to no interpersonal transmission. Is it possible the virus could mutate to become stable in humans? Of course, MERS has an RNA genome, which means that it's going to have relatively high mutation rate, but I'll wager that the risk of the virus mutating to become stable for interpersonal transmission is minimal. I'm basing my logic off of a similar virus that some of you may remember panicking over at some point earlier in the millennium, the H4N1 Avian Influenza. Like bird flu, MERS is an RNA virus that causes respiratory symptoms, it has a high kill rate, and relatively poor interpersonal transmission (spreading only to those with close, extended contact with the patient). The exact route of transmission for MERS isn't known for sure, but I'd wager that, like Flu, it takes the respiratory route. Of course, there was always the remote possibility of H4N1 gaining the ability to have sustained chains of transmission in people, but it never happened. If it was going to happen, I'd say that with 500 cases spread out over several different countries, there should've been enough exposure to slightly variant strains that it would've happened by now.

 

So, what can you do? First, remain calm, which is different from complacency. That is to say, don't get scared, but be prepared. Wash your hands, limit your contact with people showing signs and symptoms of respiratory disease, wash your hands, stay home if you're sick, wash your hands, don't kiss any camels, WASH YOUR HANDS, keep some N95 masks in your home for you and yours in case it does begin to spread, and don't wait until you're too sick to walk to seek medical attention. Pay attention to news reports, mainly from the CDC at their outbreak reporting page here. Also, support science, and those who support science. Spread the knowledge you've gained here, and do your own research to learn more. Also, sharing the blog page (NEW AND IMPROVED!) won't hurt my feelings. Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or suggestions here, or on our new facebook page at www.facebook.com/thefearblog


ALSO! WE DID IT! The proposed legislation to block the NEIDL was shot down, thanks to all the signatures on that petition.




[1]http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/faq.html