The TSA - back in bounds?

AOPA Online: TSA lessens security restrictions on transient pilots:

"According to the new directive, transient pilots who fly into commercial-service airports no longer need to get an airport badge or background check. However, they must remain close to their aircraft, leaving it only to walk to and from the fixed-base operator, service provider, or airport exit. The TSA also has said that it will make provisions for self-fueling operations and grant allowances for emergency situations."

Score one for AOPA.

...Mentally awake...

Brain Power - At Card Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age - Series - NYTimes.com:

"Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn't surprise me if this is what it's all about."

Heck, I have a hard time just remembering names during introductions...

H1N1 Death totals

The CSV data from the rhizalabs site does seem to show more than 150 deaths worldwide from H1N1. I'm not sure why the number is higher than the totals quoted elsewhere, but the CSV data does point to an excellent source of summary data: the Mexican government's Health - Mexico website. (I'm not sure about the proper site name. The URL is http://portal.salud.gob.mx/.)

In my previous post I wondered about the distribution of ages in fatal cases. The PDF reports from the Mexican health site present exactly that information (albeit for Mexico only), very clearly. See for example page 4 of http://portal.salud.gob.mx/descargas/pdf/influenza/situacion_actual_epidemia_190509.pdf

U.S. Says Older People Appear Safer From New Flu Strain - NYTimes.com

U.S. Says Older People Appear Safer From New Flu Strain - NYTimes.com:

"...federal health officials said on Wednesday that people born before 1957 appear to have some immunity to the swine flu virus now circulating.

Tests on blood serum from older people showed that they had antibodies that attacked the new virus, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, chief flu epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a telephone news conference."

It would be interesting to see the distribution of ages in all confirmed incidents. Who aggregates that data?


Self-Serving Status Update

I've continued working on the Mesa H1N1 interactive timeline site. It now includes a graph of cumulative incidents (confirmed, suspected, fatal) over time. The number of new incidents worldwide has grown enough that I'm going to need to refactor the code, to better limit (through aggregation) the number of incident markers which must be placed on the map.

I'm still having trouble with a discrepancy in the time-series graph. The development server yields 86 deaths worldwide as of 20 May 2009, whereas the production server shows 154 deaths. Both are supposed to be using the same code, and the same database. I'm reloading the production database now.

It appears that http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com is still the best source of incident data, although there are a few discrepancies in its records. If anyone knows of an authoritative source of detailed incident data, please let me know via the comments.

More about masks and flu transmission

I really need to learn to read...

How can masks be effective in preventing spread of viral infections, when viral particles are so small and when experiments with guinea pigs show that coughing and sneezing aren't required for transmission?

From the PNAS journal article:

"Our results indicate that droplet transmission of influenza virus occurs between guinea pigs..."

Granted, I haven't dug into the article for information on the droplets' sizes, but this suggests all kinds of variables to examine: mask porosity, how vapor/droplets condense onto masks, etc.

More anecdotal evidence on the effectiveness of masks in preventing secondary pneumonia, at least, comes from "The Great Influenza". From page 211:

"Capps did write the JAMA article. He reported finding the masks [used by patients with respiratory disease at Camp Grant near Rockford, IL] so successful that after less than three weeks of experimenting he had abandoned testing and simply started using them 'as a routine measure'."

They didn't always work. Page 215, describing the September 1918 wave of infection:

"Despite all precautions, despite wearing surgical masks and gowns... 43 percent of the staff... required hospitalization. Ten nurses at this single hospital died."