Sore Throat Remedy

A sore throat is one of the most irritating conditions simply because it prevents sleep, reduces the enjoyment of food and even of breathing or talking. It is one of those things that relentlessly bugs you.

Fortunately I've learnt that there is one remedial treatment that always works — the old-fashioned salt-water gargle. Put one teaspoon of salt in a large mug of warm water kept by the sink. Whenever your throat bugs you, gargle with some of the mixture and then spit it all out. Make sure the throat gets bathed in it.

The throat will feel strangely soothed, and you will also feel less inclined to cough or otherwise make life more painful for yourself. Salt water is also an antiseptic of sorts. If you have mouth ulcers as well, it will help.

Pandemic (Redux)

Yes, yes, I know I have talked about disasters and pandemics and all that sort of thing way too much. From now on, if you haven't already been doing so, you can keep track of the 2009 influenza 'they said it would not be one' pandemic on your own at this reliable and frequently updated webpage.

Atlantis has about 600 casualties as of this hour. Someone should do a per capita analysis. I think, that as Jared Diamond has pointed out before, city living is a prime cause of the spread of contagion. Cities are reservoirs for this sort of thing, since people have little or no choice but to come into range of the diseased. If your entire country is a city-state, then you can expect to be pretty much doomed to suffer the complexities of pandemic management.

Meanwhile, the Southern Cross tribe has claimed that their own high figures are due to better detection of disease, and that if everyone else (especially the people of the Beautiful Land) were as honest as they, the figures would be much higher. Someone said that about a million of the Beautiful People have got it, although they say they only have about 25,000.

Currently, things aren't too bad. But way back in 1918, things got really bad. An estimated 3-6% of the world's population died then, from the 1918 H1N1 influenza virus. Almost a century later, could the bad old times be set to roll once more?

Meanwhile, the Indic Syndics have claimed that their billions of people have only suffered about 70 casualties and no deaths. Statistically interesting, I'd say. The 1918 bug killed 17 million of them.

Contagion

So there we were, last night. The funny thing was that we had a complete wyvern chess team present at the wake, with assorted others. One man had just got back from WHO Geneva, another had been making trips down to London to provide advice on the new influenza strain, the third was back from Harvard. Lawyers, doctors, and unusual others — including the headmistress of the Green Atlanteans. It was an interesting night.

They expect the worst to hit within the next few months, possibly. Winter in the Northern hemisphere tends to be the time of influenza explosions as people sneeze their little virus-carrying droplets all over the place. If mutations occur, those are more likely in the warm and fecund tropics.

Meanwhile, in Atlantis, for the sake of gold we shall pretend it isn't happening.

One Week

At this rate, everyone will get one extra week to contemplate their sins. The hierarchs have stumbled their way to a decision, and it is clear that the plague is sufficiently irritating as to constitute a reason for extra measures.

This is the way of the influence. It spreads its viral network and laughs; as you deal with one aspect of it, it reconfigures and chuckles quietly in the hidden corners of the world.

I guess everyone will stay at home and try to educate themselves through television and computer. If I were a thinking parent, I'd stock up on books.

Pandemic

It's interesting, this new world we live in. It's not particularly brave, because bravura will get you dead more often than not. Rather, we have limits on everything while pretending we have limits on nothing. We think of air travel as essential (which it is), forgetting that it is sometimes the only reason for certain problems. Air travel, for one, is probably the largest source of radiation exposure (besides regular hospital diagnostic radiology) that most people receive in their lifetimes.

But the interesting thing is the 2009 strain of Influenza A-H1N1, tha odd hybrid of 25% human, 25% avian and 50% porcine strains. It has hit almost 40,000 victims so far; in fact, it has certainly surpassed that number even as I type this. China has produced a vaccine (which many say they won't risk taking, considering the reputation for chemical and biological contamination that China's products have gained in recent months), the West is trying to produce one too.

But one of the warlords of Atlantis has decreed that the alert status of the air-conditioned isle will never be raised again. When he said it, it was like God saying the world would not perish by flood again. Then too, the symbol of covenant was a spectrum of colours.

I wonder what will happen as the infection spreads. Will Atlantis stand firm in its belief that its sorcerous strength and walls of invisible defiance will repel the viral horde? Or will schools be closed even as June comes to an end? I'm sure that particular warlord will find some way to get his work done without raising alert levels. In Atlantis, any sign of weakness is tantamount to gross disrespect for the institution of the State and its governing powers.

I think that this whole idea of mockery being unacceptable is the sign of a terrible disease. If no one will mock the powerful, then when will the powerful learn that they are doing silly things? The idea in this neo-neo-Confucian state that the State of Atlantis now finds itself in by declaration and default is that the powerful are superior and should not be mocked lest confidence in them is reduced and the value of the State's assets plunges.

It is so pandemic that if you were to say, "I think the legal system here includes a few judges with cognitive problems," then you would be considered a mocker. In fact, it could be construed (whether true or not) as an attempt to diminish confidence in the State, and lower the value of its assets. This would in turn be considered traitorous, and you could be detained without trial for it.

Ah well, as someone said to me, "This whole thing arose because we weren't monitoring the swine carefully enough." Yes, this should be a lesson to us all. Wherever you suspect swinish influence, look out, be on your guard, keep watch. Don't let the swine get to you.

Flu in a Time of Globalism

The shrinking of the world is not a good thing always. As the circle of our horizon seems to close in on us, as it takes less and less time to go from place to place, so also does the distance between threat and target, between danger and death.

Mutant H1N1 swine flu has now reached Canada, France, Hong Kong, Israel, New Zealand, and Spain.

I suspect everyone will be (if they're not already) at Yellow Alert by the end of today. To quote from CNN, "Keiji Fukuda, the assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, called the outbreak "serious" on Sunday. Researchers are still trying to determine how easily the virus is transmitted person to person and it's too early to predict whether there will be a mild or serious pandemic, said Fukuda."

Yeah, your choices are between a mild pandemic and a serious one. Way to go, mutant. You'll go far.

At the same time, what intrigues me is how long authorities take to decide this is bad. I'm waiting to see when Singapore Atlantis caves in. It's a sort of globalism benchmark, being an alpha world city and all that. The decision to declare an emergency status is a bit like a move in a game of chicken. If you chicken out too early, you might lose things like tourism revenues. If you chicken out too late, you might lose things like lives. Heh.

When Pigs Fly

I will always remember one of the rhymes of my childhood, picked up in what used to be a green and pleasant land (and still is, in parts):

Little birdie flying high
Dropped a message from the sky
Angry farmer wiping eye
Thanking God that cows don't fly

But cows jump over the moon; they don't fly. Rather, we often talk about 'when pigs fly', and we talk of cabbages and kings while thinking of whether pigs have wings. Unfortunately, as events of the last 48 hours have unfolded in all their diseased authority, it's not about whether pigs fly, but whither swine flu.

The basic facts can be found at the CDC website and the WHO website. Swine flu is an old disease; it has been known for almost a century. But the virus that has manifested in Mexico City, killed nearly a hundred people and migrated for parts unknown, ah, well... that H1N1 virus is a mutant which seems to have combined avian, pig and human flu viruses in one multipotent package that won't do humans, pigs, birds (or pigs with wings) any good.

Think of it this way: it is like the SARS virus of recent memory, with one difference. That difference is a significant one. SARS victims who were infectious could be detected by their high fevers. The new mutant makes you infectious possibly before anything can be detected. It also seems to spread just as quickly.

Even as I type this, I am conscious that confirmed cases have now spread from Mexico into their large and internationally-connected northern neighbour. The United States now has confirmed and suspected cases from California in the West, to Kansas in the Midwest, Texas in the South and New York in the East. Sea to shining sea, indeed.

The genie is out of the bottle while the disease centres of the world (like failing lymph nodes or flailing neurons) attempt to play catch-up. It is obvious that since the virus first emerged in March, nobody knew how bad it would be. And now, suddenly, it is bad, and it is everywhere.

Maybe we're wrong and it will peter out under our careful and widespread measures. But maybe not. Maybe the huge reserves of Tamiflu™ and suchlike will indeed conquer all. But maybe not.

What is probably true is that somewhere, the gnomes of this world are attempting to figure out what the impact of this latest blow will be on the world's economies. Or the world economy. It won't be good.

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Note: Some states have already gone to yellow emergency: screening at airports. The WHO has "agreed that the current situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern". Heh.

Mandoon

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire has got to be one of the funniest things around right now. It needs to be made into a DVD quick so that you can get all the juicy goodness in ONE package. For at the moment, it is YouTube which is hosting most of it. Probably illegally.

This show is all about a hero. And his kinky girlfriend. And his malfunctioning warlock other friend. And the big oafish Journey to the West kind of servant friend who hits the wrong people with his weapon. And so on. It is otherwise hard to describe, unless you like snorting food.

In other news, not so funny at all, there's been an outbreak of swine flu, this season's version of SARS. I remember writing this huge document on contagious disease protocols in a boarding school setting back in 2003. Somewhere out there, someone probably ought to be dusting it off and looking at it soon.

Illness

Ah, now I know why the existentialist introspective and consequent angst descended upon me in the last few days. Ha, I am down with the flu. Actually, I am quite certain that I am a totally different person when ill (which is itself a topic for philosophical debate). I sleep more. I dream more (or at least have more recall of my dreams). I think in monochrome with odd flashes of colour, and I hear odd sounds which I don't normally hear. I smell different. My senses alter in acuity, both positively and negatively. I forget to shave and I write longer sentences as well as shorter ones. I type in incredible bursts before coming to a stop appalled at what I have typed. Is this for good or for ill? And I am forced to conclude that good or not, it is from ill.

Kuru (Part 1)

There was this rare disease called kuru, formerly prevalent in a tribe in Papua New Guinea. It was also called the laughing disease because of insane bouts of laughter triggered by it; thankfully, it is now almost extinct, as it was caused primarily by eating other people's brains and thus being infected by evil prions.

I thought of it this morning, coming out of an exceptionally detailed dream-state in which the Archivalist and the Argonaut and I were wandering around in the rain, through a seedy complex of old shophouses and ramshackle tuition centres. In the middle of the maze, we bumped into former students who told us with a tinge of regret that this was what remained of the grand endeavour. Quite a shock to me, and part of a plot that could have been part of a great SF novel.

It also involved gyroscopes, a sports complex commandeered by students dressed in white (the boys) and white with green skirts (the girls), sharks and a hunting boat, two young men named Philip (and one named Ronald) who were involved in three-dimensional puzzles and four-dimensional computing, the quality control of chipboard walls, bad paint jobs, the difficulty of SUV parking in underground labyrinths, and for some strange reason, a cheap pair of blue and white slippers that kept turning up everywhere.

At the end of the dream, as I emerged from the narcosis, I heard a voice saying, "It's not the journey, but the departure, that matters. Go out into the world." It was a very odd dream.

Birthday Cake

Today I am supposed to buy a birthday cake for a little dinner party that a few of us are having. It's the gazelle's birthday treat too. For those of you who know about the infamous spreadsheet, I will be remembering the contents of that spreadsheet through most of tonight. It will be one of those nights.

I have just recovered from one of those remorseless fevers that brings the ague to the bones and makes the head to throb for at least 18 hours. Every joint clamoured for attention and every little pulse brought dramatic realignment of aches and pains. It has been a terrible 24 hours. I woke up this morning with the fever broken; I suspect that yesterday's excitement and concomitant stress had a lot to do with my state.

But I am reasonably good for now. I will survive. Tonight, strangely enough, will be a stress of a different kind. What cake shall I buy? I think it should be something with a small amount of thin dark chocolate in it, for elegance. It must have something creative about it, for style. It must be unusual. It must be flavourful. It must be a cake for the memories. Haha.

Influenza & Life

In my present state, I find myself somewhat unfortunately able to comment at first hand on both the topics in my title.

The influenza viri are subtle. They creep up on you by infiltration through the respiratory system. At a certain point, they overcome your defences and inflammation begins. This phase takes a lot out of you, as material resources you have established melt away under the onslaught and your reserves are committed to dealing with the invasion.

Bodies of enemy and ally alike fill the landscape with the hulks of bombed-out targets and the corpses of the slain. Eventually, at great cost, you will mobilise more resources than the invaders can bring to bear, even after they have taken over some of your stockpiles and factories. At this point, you win, sit back and prepare for the next event.

Or you cease to function physically, forever and ever, amen. Which is why influenza is like life. And also like IB exams.