From Xico

Flu in Mexico: In Veracruz

From today's Diario de Xalapa (my translation..not whole article)

The State Civil Protection Council determined, following the presidential decree, to coordinate with federal and state health authorities to establish a sanitary "fence" in airports and truck terminals in the State of Veracruz.

Based on the Constitution of the United Mexican States at the aforementioned sites, medical autorities will establish monitoing posts to undertake medical checks of those entering the state.

It's asked, in additon, that those who present symptoms  go to nearby  medical authorities or hospitals nearby for a more exhaustive examination.

Ceracruz will not equist entry into its territory, but as a preventive effort they will establish  control points to avoid risks.

The government of the state supports completely the measures implemented by the federal government and will join  it in actions to control and mitigate the spread [of the flu] such as by detecting cases through the State Laboratory of Public Health.

The Secretary of Civil Protection repeated that the stae is on alert status, not alarm status, the preventive measures established by the State Council of Civil Protection are to prevent possible outbreaks, and for this reason the State Laboratory of Public Health is analyzing every case which presents a picture of flu-like symptoms.

In support of national actions, such as the decry of April 25th by the presient, established prevntiv measures will be maintained in order to strengthen epidemiological and health-care measures to avoid the transmission of seasonal flue arriving.

State officials urge people not to panic, but to be alert for information from various media and communication sources on the situation that persists in DF, Estado de Mexico and other parts of the country and the world, being sure to follow the instructions of local authorities.

Below are numbers to call.

Tanto el Centro Estatal de Comunicaciones (Cecom) y el centro de llamadas con los números 01-800-716-34-10, 01-800-716-34-11 y 01-800-007-99-99, continúan dando orientación y apoyo telefónico a las familias veracruzanas; a este servicio se agrega el Centro Estatal de Información en Salud con el número 01-800-017-37-83 y el correo electrónico [email protected]

Information is also available in Spanish at www.veracruz.gob.mx

Municipal departments of civil protection remain active and are coordinating their actions among the three levels of government.

The stae government has sufficient resources to attend to affected people and to do necessary chemical analyses.

The Secretary of Civil Protection repeated the following preventive measures.

• Clases are not suspended in the sate.  In case a student, teacher or employee presents with symptoms of flu or grip, he will be seen and sent home.
• All of the municipal offices of Civil Protection and Security will be maintained in an alert status.
• All hospitals in the state, IMSS, Issste, Navy, Defense and Pemex will be available to all citizens with or without insurance.
• Specialized areas to attend to cases which may present thesmesleves have been established in Rio Blanco, Coatzacoalcos, Centro de Especialidades RAfael Lucio de Xalapa, Hospital General e Veracruz, Hospital Nachón de Xalapa, as well as in Posa Rica and in the other medical centers of IMSS, Issste, Navy and National Defence
• All government entities remain on alert.
• Vaccines will be distributed where required with the suport of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
• Remember that the population in general will not be vaccinated, although campaigns of vaccination and fumigation will be enforced.
• People are very strongly urged not to buy self-medicating antivirral.
• The success of the operataions of the State System of Civil Protection lies in prevention through the collaboration of the families of Veracruz.

Flu in Mexico: On the pig-human connection

Once again from The Mex Files.

More from Grist, a reliable source of such information.

Not to mention that this industrial production of pork has of course done away with the livelihoods of yet more Mexican farmers, and not to mention that the hogs raised in this fashion are treated as industrial products, not living creatures.  Anyone who's been around hogs know that they are intelligent and sensitive animals who have to suffer in such a system.

Flu in Mexico: What Will We Do for Entertainment?

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/04/26/index.php?section=espectaculos&article=a08n1esp
The headlines this afternoon in La Jornada read:

NOTE:  The reason this is being taken so seriously is that it is a strain of flu not seen before and for this reason, people have little or no resistance to it. It affects young adults from 20 to 50 years of age disproportionately.

Secretary of Health announces suspension of all events in both open and closed spaces.

BRING DOWN THE CURTAIN: NO THEATER, NO MOVIES, NO DISCOTHEQUES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

From La Jornada today (my translation):

The secretary of Health, José  Ángel Córdova Villalobos announced the suspension of all events in all spaces, open or closed, of whatever type, such as religious centers, stadiums, theaters, bars, movie theaters and discotheques, wherever there are gatherings of people.

Movie theaters, one of the few public cultural spaces which remaianed open after the epidemiological alerts, must now close their doors until further notice.

At te same time, the government of the stae of San Luis Potosí announced that, in order to protect the health of all Potosinos facing the outbreak of flu and pneumonia, all cultral activities would be suspended from the 24th of April through the 26th of April, during the ninth Festival of san Luis.  Tickets can be returned for a refund on Tuesday next week.

Even before the cancellation of events, attendance had fallen sharply in Mexico City's cinemas....In one multiplex Friday, attendance fell from a norm of 700 people to 200.  Reasons given by those who did attend in spite of warnings included,
"The prohibition only applies to people who show symptoms."
"People who shouldn't go out are those who are sick." 
"I think people are being alarmists.  I don't think it is so serious."
"You can't stay shut up in your house for your whole life."
"We wanted to go out and we didn't want to be shut up for ever."

On the other hand, the rental of movies has increased.  A survey taken by La Jornada, revealed an unacustommed increase of movie sales and rentals....One employee reported an increase of fifty percent.....

Secretary Chu, Representative Barton and Alaska Oil and Climate Change

My ever-provocative husband caught me out not quite knowing why Joe Barton's questions made him, not Chu the fool.  Jim had thought through the exchange in his calm, analytical way and came up with this theory:

Joe Barton knew that Alaska, indeed the whole Arctic area was much warmer in the past than it is today. By leading to the idea that for oil to have formed in Alaska, there must have been an abundance of plants from which to form it, thus, there must have been a warmer climate long before humans could interfere in it, Barton was trying to get Chu to the point of admitting that indeed climate change occurs naturally. He ran out of time.  He should be grateful.

Although Barton is right about it being warm in the Arctic a long time ago.  About 55 million years ago, CO2 and methane apparently covered the planet and caused a really warm bunch of seasons up north.  The cause of this "burp" of CO2 is not known.  I think that this is the only example of such extreme, enduring global warming we have.  Chu may not have understood where Barton was coming from but his answers, whatever he thought of Barton's questions, were accurate.  The process of petroleum formation lasts millions of years, oil can move around as it is formed and plate tectonics were involved in Alaska.*

Barton is still the fool.  He is trying to convince his followers that because the planet warmed seemingly rather suddenly and inexplicably when no humans around, global warming today has no human cause.  At an earlier hearing, he said,

BARTON: I believe that Earth’s climate is changing, but I think it’s changing for natural variation reasons. And I think man-kind has been adopting, or adapting, to climate as long as man has walked the Earth. When it rains we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay. Adaptation is the practical, affordable, utterly natural reflex response to nature when the planet is heating or cooling, as it always is. Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people adjust to nature.  Adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult.

He's not just a fool, he´s greedy.  It's reported that he is the beneficiary of over $1,300,000 from the oil industry in Texas and a reliable supporter of Texas business interests.

So if you are on the fence about global warming, how do you decide what/who to believe? How do you avoid groupthink? The actual science of climate change is not really comprehensible to most of us. 

To try to come to some kind of sensible point of view, I'd look at

• The evidence  I can understand that climate change supporters and naysayers offer: Supporters might point to changing sea levels, melting ice-caps, rapid migration of plant and animal life, desertification, for instance. Naysayers might say this is just normal change.  How could you decide as a non-scientist?
• What are the motives of the supporters and the naysayers in saying what they say?
• Have they faced and overcome challenges to their own conclusions?
• How independent are their conclusions?  Have members of either supporters or naysayers become victims of groupthink? Do their conclusions simply mirror those of their funders or their superiors or other supporters?
• Can you figure out how good their sources are?  How independent?  How valid?
• How reliable are the supporters and the naysayers?  What scientific credentials do they have? Are they active in their fields? Respected by, forgive me, respectable people in their fields? Again, has their funding been independent of people with a vested interest in the outcome of their research? Have they any really prestigious awards like a Nobel Prize that indicate wide acceptance by a variety of people?
• Have the naysayers come up with any contingency plans for addressing global warming in case they are wrong? Do the supporters of climate change depend in any financial or other way on it happening?

*Here is a link to an explanation for non-scientists.

Flu in Mexico: Government Coverage of Latest News

According to El Universal today, the Federal Government will use Channel 11 and several radio stations  "to broadcast timely, precise and pertinent information" on the swine flu outbreak.  In this way, they hope to calm fears that arise when people have swine flu or know people who do.  In their broadcasts," the government will present medical specialists in infectious diseases and epidemiology who will give precise and accurate information about what to do, who to go to and what steps one should follow.  Also, the specialists will respond to citizens' doubts and questions about preventive measures they should take to avoid contagion.

schedules, frequencies and channels:
April 26 (Sunday)
17:00-19:00 horas on 105 FM,

19:00-21:00 hours on Channel 11
Starting 27 April and continuing as long as necessary:
Television Channel 11: 7:00 to 9:00 hours, 13:00 to 15:00 hours, 19:00 to 21 hours.
Radio: IMER frequencies 105 FM and 107.9 Fm from 10:00 to 12:00 and 17:00 to 1900 hours.

On the internet: oncetv.ipn.mx you'll find a blog which will be permanently available.  Email at [email protected]

There ae also  telephone numbers available.  The ones for people outside of DF aare 01 800 22 62 511 and 01 800 500 46 37.

Flu in Mexico: Common Sense to the Rescue

Mexico seems well-prepared to face the outbreak of swine flu,though, as is normal, there are good questions on the part of the public. People are concerned especially about enforced confinement to homes.

Below, stolen from today's La Jornada, a picture of tourists in Mexico City

i 

Below, my translation of part of an article in La Jornada.

By Claudia Herrera Beltrán in La Jornada

Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, April 25. President Felipe Calderón said that the measures taken against swine flu -- among them the isolation of the infected and the confinement of them to their homes--are measures that the Constitution provides in cases of emergency.

In his fifth tour through the area, Calder'on argued that confinement is necessary to impede the transmission of the flu at any cost.

He asked also that Mexicans stay calm, since the government has medicine to treat the flu, but that at this moment there is no vaccine effective against the new flu.

....

Calderón referred to the present moment as a serious one because it is living through a flu epidemic....he declared that the strategy has two arms: detection and immediate attention to cases that arise and efforts to prevent it from turning into a pandemic.

Becasue of this, he recommended that people scrupulously follow preventive measures, such as not greeting people with a kiss or handshake, covering the mouth with a kleenesx or with the inside of the elbow at coughing or sneezing, washing hands and avoiding crowded places.

He emphasized that officials are serving as examples and are not greeting each other with kisses and handshakes.  He was confident that Mexicans would emerge from this situation, and at the same time he congratulated the inhabitants of the valley of Mexico [where flu cases have occurred] for the maturity and responsibility with which they have responded to measures adopted.

In the same manner he highlighted the will of state authorities, especially of DF and the state of MExico for having added their efforts to that of the nation, the World Health Organization and the principle institutions of disease control at an international level.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/04/26/index.php?section=politica&article=004n2pol

Below is a translation on

Obama Needs to Think about Groupthink

Obama is a great teacher.  Great teachers aren't the same as great showmen.  Great teachers make us stop and listen and THINK about what they are saying.  They set us on new paths of exploration.  They make us reconsider and reorient. This skill as a teacher is what Obama should be using these days as we face grave problems.  He shouldn't be trying to forge consensus with right-wing (or left-wing, for that matter)leaders who don't have the country's interests at heart, nor the brains and the intelligence to understand the problems it is facing: people like the Republican House leadership, all but maybe three senators (more senators know more but don't want to be caught knowing it), Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Ed Whelan, Sarah Palin, et. al.

The US seems particularly fertile ground for the development of groups that threaten the well-being of the country's citizens and that interfere with the US's efforts to be a humane, enlightened society living in a complicated global community. I don't know why so many groups like this thrive here.  Perhaps there is a deficit in the country of groups that stand for principles and also meet our social needs. Perhaps too many groups are single issue groups.  Maybe we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater  by incorporating the soullessness of social science into our social and professional lives. Certainly groups that we depend on have broken trust, notably in the health professions. We have to remember that we need to belong.  We're pack animals.  Our survival depends on being in cooperative groups.  Groups give our lives meaning, cohesion, acceptance, status, warmth, affection, and safety no matter where we are on the social or political spectrum.

But today the groups we pay most attention to, the most readily identifiable groups, the noisiest ones, the ones that insist on and get too much uncritical attention are dangerous. These groups have ensnared their members in groupthink.*

Groupthink is a not-very-new social psychology concept that gives coherence to ideas about what turns groups dangerous. By dangerous, I don't mean simply violent, but also dangerous because they isolate people and keep them from paying realistic, practical attention to the problems and conflicts we face, and because they breed fear and hatred where there should be none. Ordinary Germans, not whackos, were victims of groupthink during the Nazi era. This is why it is so dangerous, especially as elements of US society are arming themselves.

Irving Janis was a scholar of groupthink and defined it in the following manner:

A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

He said that one of the two following conditions needs to be present for groupthink to develop:

• Structural faults in the organization: insulation of the group, lack of tradition of impartial leadership, lack of norms requiring methodological procedures, homogeneity of members' social background and ideology.
• Provocative situational context: high stress from external threats, recent failures, excessive difficulties on the decision-making task, moral dilemmas.

Clark McCauley added the following conditions:

• Directive leadership.
• Homogeneity of members' social background and ideology.
• Isolation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis.

Here are Janis's eight symptoms of groupthink:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting informatio

I think you can see how this relates to members of right-wing groups.  Group identity becomes the most important part of a person's sense of self.  Thus, members make decisions with the prime goal being NOT to threaten their acceptance by the group.

Their decision making is marred by the following characteristics:

1. Incomplete survey of alternatives
2. Incomplete survey of objectives
3. Failure to examine risks of prefered choice
4. Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives
5. Poor information search
6. Selection bias in collecting information
7. Failure to work out contingency plans.

We have to understand that people caught in groups that seem so irrational, groups that don't accept what seems obvious to people who consider themselves more thoughtful, are caught in a psychological process which subverts their ability to think clearly. 

Leaders of these groups are where they are not only because their beliefs are looney  but because they are enamored of power.  They are not going to give up the beliefs if they are integral to the power. So  Obama needs not to court the leaders, but to carefully discredit them. Sometimes, in fact, they do it on their own, as for instance when, incredibly, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas (why oh why did he have to be someone from Texas...)asked Energy Secretary Chu where oil comes from.  See it here. The Administration and its friends need to draw attention to gaffes like this and to much graver problems such as the horrific lies and acts of the previous Administration.  In this case, Obama's wish to move away from the past and look to the future will do him no good at all.

What I do think Obama does absolutely brilliantly is to act in an unfailingly courteous manner. If he steps fully into the great teacher mold, he will continue to do this, not insulting the leaders or their followers personally but carefully picking apart the messages, showing that the emperors not only have no clothes and are dangerously ignorant but have committed crimes. He can welcome their followers into an embracing new version of America in which belonging and knowledge and morality are joined.

*The insets on groupthink come from this quite good Wikipedia article.  There is a ton on groupthink on the web.

Flu in Mexico: Common Sense to the Rescue

On the flu outbreak from the blog Mex File.

Mexico really does have an ability to respond quickly and sensibly to public health concerns.

Not about Violence in Mexico

This disturbing opinion piece by Bob Herbert in todays NY Times.

Botero, Abu Ghraib; Art, Photography and Impact (warning: grim)

At the moment the US government is releasing documents and transcripts from hearings addressing US torture. The artist Fernando Botero made a series of paintings portraying the victims of torture at the prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq after he did the paintings of victims of narcotráfico in Colombia.  They are worth considering now. Botero said, when asked why he decided to paint the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, "Because of the anger I felt and the whole wold felt over this crime committed by the country which presents itself as a model of compassion, of justice and of civilization."

He said, "In art one has to always reevaluate ideas, call all into question.  I always believed and predicted that great art was always about kinder themes, with very few exceptions.  And it's true.  For instance, there are thousands of works by impressionists, and I've yet to see one which has a dramatic theme.  However, situations so wounding as the violence in Colombia and now the torture at Abu Ghraib make me think differently."

He doesn't think Abu Ghraib and Colombia are similar.  "The violence in Colombia is always the pduct of ignorance, lack of education and social injustice.  That of Abu Ghraib is a crime committed by the greatest armed forces in the world who forgot what the Geneva Convention dictates about the treatment of prisoners."

He was asked if he thought his series of paintings would have a political effect.  "No," he said.  "Art never has had this power.  The artist leaves a testimonial which acquires importance over the long haul if it is artistically valid."

Below I have put a series of Abu Ghraib photos interspersed with Botero's paintings.  I am trying to figure out what each might say that the other doesn't; what different effects on the viewer photos vs. paintings have.  It is worth remembering that the paintings are quite large.  You can see this in the photo of Botero standing with some of them.

Below are two paintings of prisoners piled on each other are photos of the and photos of the same subject.

 

 

 

Photos and paintings of individual prisoners being restrained in ways that look like torture to me.

 

 

 

 

Below, paintings and photos of prisoners being threatened by dogs.

 

Photos, paintings of guards assaulting prisoners

And finally, a photo only, recently in the press, of a man who died in captivity.

 

Lest we forget.