Doctor Where?
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer is Doctor John Carnie.
So I’m wondering… Where is he?
I’m sure acting CHO Rosemary Lester is doing a fabbo job, but if the state has a WHO-recognised pandemic on its hands, shouldn’t the actual CHO turn up? Shouldn’t it be all hands on deck?
Some thoughts on swine flu
I’m not panicking about swine flu. From the cases in Australia so far, it appears to be reasonably easily treated, with minimal effects for those who catch it.
Quarantine? Well I don’t think I’d enjoy it much, but I guess I’d get a bunch of tidying and video-game-playing and DVD-watching done. I’d certainly try out online grocery shopping at last.
Now, I’m not an expert by any means, but it does appear to be spreading rapidly now, and at this rate, may be close to going expontential:
Source: Age and Herald Sun reports each morning noting confirmed cases.
One thing some are suggesting is closing all schools for a week or two. Certainly a lot of the spread so far seems to stem from school contacts. The authorities seem reluctant, citing the disruption it would cause.
But wait a minute. The next school holidays aren’t far away — they start on 29th of June. Why don’t we just move them forward by three weeks? Do it sooner, and nip swine flu distribution in the bud?
School holidays have been moved before. In 2006 they were moved to coincide with the Commonwealth Games. Admittedly if done now there’s much less advance notice, and it might catch some people on the hop.
But I wonder if the payoff — stopping swine flu before it gets entrenched — could be there?
Or is it too late?
PS. Interesting list of confirmed swine flu cases by local government area.
No more flavoured instant noodles
Us Bowens occasionally get an upset stomach, something we have dubbed Bowen Belly. Recently it’s been less frequent for me, thankfully.
But on Monday I was foolish.
I was passing through the supermarket and bought one of those instant noodle meals. I wanted a quick cheap easy meal. I must have temporarily forgotten about “tasty” and “nutritious”.
It might sound innocent enough, but in this one was a sachet of chicken-flavoured chemicals which seems to have done me no good at all.
Monday night was not pleasant. My stomach was groaning, gurgling, and painful. The nausea kept me up much of the night. Not nice.
Tuesday morning I was suffering from lack of sleep, and still feeling queasy, so decided to work from home, at least periodically, in between bouts of sleep. Happily most of it had gone by the afternoon, and I was able to venture out of the house.
Now I know why in old Britcoms they take the mickey out of pot noodles. For example, Red Dwarf’s Dave Lister saying he’d rather eat dog food. I note from the Wikipedia entry that one flavour, “Bacon Sizzler” was withdrawn after health concerns…
The lesson here: don’t eat crap. If I want a quick easy noodle meal (at a not unreasonable place) there’s a perfectly good noodle place near home which will do me a freshly cooked meal for about $9 — as well as several other options on the way home from the station.
Brief things
Computer: I like it when computers reach the point at which a good upgrade is cheap, quick and cheerful. In this case on my two-year-old box, tripling the RAM cost me $45, tripling the hard disk space cost $130. And as the new disk is faster than the old one, I’ll take the opportunity to re-install everything onto it, and clear out its sinuses in the process. … Would have helped if I’d bought the correct hard disk cable, of course.
Cluster headaches: They came back for autumn, but the medication has pretty much got them under control.
Solar hot water: It’s been a year since I got solar hot water installed. From a user point of view, there’s absolutely no difference. By the time it reaches you at the tap, it’s just hot water. I’d love to tell you it made a clear and noticeable difference to the gas bills, but looking through them, I’m not seeing it, in part because water, heating, and cooking is all tied up in there, and also apparently (at least according to some BOM figures I cast my untrained eye over), 2008 was slightly colder than 2007.
The toe: It’s healing. Most of the swelling has gone, but it’s still a little uncomfortable to walk in shoes.
Star Trek: Booked for Sunday in Gold Class. Looking forward to this.
Hard of hearing
I don’t know if you’ve ever had to deal with someone who is profoundly hard-of-hearing, and, for whatever reason, has no hearing aid.
It’s not their fault.
They didn’t want it that way.
But trying to hold a simple conversation, especially on the telephone, can be extremely frustrating, and can delve into the farcical.
I can’t help but think of something like this:
Speaking Clock for the Hard-of-hearing. (MP3, 19 seconds, 156 Kb)
My little toe
On Wednesday morning, after hopping out of the shower, I banged my foot on my bedroom doorway.
It made quite an impact, and has been hurting ever since. I saw the doctor yesterday, and he says there’s a probable fracture in my little toe which will take a couple of weeks at least to fully heal.
It’s certainly got a handsome bruise, and every time I try and walk on it, I get a painful reminder about how vital the little toe is to the foot. Thankfully I’ve been able to work from home for a couple of days.
Fortunately unlike Maisie, pictured here in 2005, it’s unlikely the toe will need to be amputated.
But the lesson here is that it really pays to look where you’re going.
You dirty swine
Just days ago I was watching an interview with a guy on The Daily Show, who, like most of their guests, was flogging a book. His was called “Dread: How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu“:
Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question—or the actual risks of contagion—but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.
I’m amazed at how timely it seems, given in the few days since, the swine flu has appeared.
So far in this part of the world, only the 10 NZ students have confirmed cases, with most of them already recovered. Their samples were processed at the Melbourne lab of the World Health Organisation, I wouldn’t be surprised if (for once) the media were staked out at a bio lab somewhere.
Let’s not panic unduly, people.
Oh, and can I point out that I’ve had this cough for weeks, and I’ve never been to Mexico.
- One Israeli health official called for the swine flu to be renamed Mexican flu (via Pratap)
Pyromania
There’s a cold going round the family. I hope I’m on the tail end of it now, but it’s rotten. I feel fine 85% of the time, but every hour or so there’s a period of almost uncontrollable coughing, caused by an itchy throat that can’t be soothed by man nor beast nor Strepsil. (Not even the rocket-powered menthol and eucalyptus ones.)
That’s enough to have kept me at home for the last two working days, as I’d rather not inflict the office with my hacking cough.
Going and helping with a burn-off up on the farm on Sunday probably didn’t help. But it was certainly interesting to a city boy like me.
It wasn’t fuel reduction, but apparently to prepare for the next season’s sowing. After getting a permit to burn, and warning all the neighbours, we headed out with a tractor pulling a chain with a plough thing loaded with burning straw, and a smallish bulldozer with a water tank and pump, ready to put the fire out if it got out of control.
It didn’t — the fire breaks had been prepared well, and there was just the right amount of breeze to keep it going but not let it go too far.
So while we were on standby for fire-fighting, in practice it just meant standing about chatting (me taking photos), and every so often climbing on the back of the trailer with the water tank to be towed off after the fire-lighting tractor, trying not to get in the way of too much of the water splashing around out of the top of the tank as we bumped along.
The smoke got everywhere, of course. We tried to stay out of it, but it went right through our clothes, which all needed washing.
After a couple of hours, a fair bit of ground had been burnt off, ready for the next stage of preparation for planting, and we headed back to the house for some well-earned afternoon tea.
