Category - General

EDIT: Note that this post dates from the original outbreak, not the one making news in late 2010.

The potential risks associated with any flu epidemic shouldn’t be taken lightly. People have already died in Mexico, of course, but so far I don’t think there have been any deaths elsewhere – and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

But the situation is obviously being taken very seriously by the authorities. Yesterday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that a “pandemic was imminent “. You can see a news report and read about it here.

In addition, UK television has a new advert – which I saw for the first time this morning – aimed at trying to contain any possible outbreak. You can’t help but wonder if a mere tissue and washing your hands is going to be enough if you generate as much snot when you sneeze as that guy in the clip.

Of course, The Sun is laying it on with a shovel as usual. In today’s paper copy it announces:

IT JUST GOT WORSE: Pandemic is ‘imminent’

It’s current online story is trying its hardest to sound dramatic. It says:

Yesterday a red alert was issued across the planet **” as the boss of the World Health Organisation warned chillingly: “The whole of humanity is under threat in a pandemic.**

Still no mention of the fact that every case so far in the UK has been as a direct result of travel to Mexico. No cases yet of human-to-human transfer. Oh, and unless it is a typo, notice that the WHO spokesman actually said “in a ” pandemic and not “of a ” pandemic. The Sun specialises in this kind of detail. Specifically: ignoring it. Mind you, the WHO is guilty of hyping this up big time.

The Sun also trumpets:

Britain now has EIGHT confirmed cases of the deadly virus.

It isn’t ‘deadly’. The WHO have pointed out that there have only been 8  deaths associated with it (not the 159 reported elsewhere) and all those have been in Mexico (7) and the US (1). This is also blogged by someone here – slightly older data. In the UK, those diagnosed a few days ago are apparently getting better. Bear in mind that in the US alone about 50,000 people die each year due to normal flu.

And on a lighter note, there is this new product available that might just offer the same level of protection.

Oinksip – For Swine Flu

For non-UK viewers, there is a product in the UK called LemSip (a lemon-flavoured drink containing basic painkillers and decongestants) which purports to get rid of colds and flu.

It remains to be seen how bad all this turns out to be. But at least the British can joke in times of trouble. My own opinion is that this is massive overkill by the media. Again. A couple of years ago we were all going to die from Bird Flu and we were only one step away from roasting anyone who’d been to Hong Kong over an open fire. And Bird Flu was actually deadly in 50% of cases. It’s also worth noting that the WHO at that time was saying a flu pandemic was long-overdue and that an outbreak of Bird Flu could lead to 2,000,000-50,000,000 deaths worldwide (that last figure is almost the entire population of the UK).

Of course, before that there was the Armageddon that was the Y2K bug (though that was largely avoided by a lot of work before it could do any harm). And Foot & Mouth Disease . And what about Salmonella in eggs? The media loves to imagine up doomsday scenarios.

I’ve heard that people are boycotting pork already. Idiots.

Parallels are already being drawn with Spanish Flu and the early 20th Century outbreak. No consideration of the fact that no drugs were available to treat illnesses then (many died as a result of pneumonia, and we have drugs to treat that) or that the general state of health was not the same as it is now.

Don’t worry! If it does turn out to be The End Of The World then there’s not a lot you can do. But for me? Well, I’ll be planning what I’m going to do for next year’s holidays, just like always.

The Sun (and the Daily Mail , for that matter) have been strangely coy about this story following their earlier excitement over it (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). I heard this on the radio a couple of days ago, and this is the story as reported in The Register.

…turbine manufacturer Enercon's interim report says bolts holding the blade to the hub failed, and it's now "carrying out further tests to establish what caused the bolts to come loose, focusing on the blade and hub components to which they were attached". Dale Vince, co-founder of site operator Ecotricity, elaborated: "The bolt failure was the effect not the cause of the problem. They have ruled out bolt fatigue and design problems, and we know that they were properly put on."

The full/original story can be found in The Telegraph. Interestingly, The Sun still isn't giving up. Its own version of the story says:

A WIND turbine destroyed as stunned eye-witnesses described seeing strange lights in the sky did NOT have a close encounter with a UFO, scientists insisted today.

It goes on to repeat all that guff about UFO hunters flocking to the site, and persists in saying the blade was sheared off instead of just saying it sheared off – implying something did it. The funniest thing about this is that The Sun was prepared to do its own highly (un)scientific investigation, but it won't accept a proper one by proper scientists. And Nick Pope was unavailable for comment. He believes himself to be on a diplomatic mission to Omicron Persei 8.

I hope you’re all sitting comfortably, because today we’re going to learn how to build a proper British snowman.

‘Snow’ in the UK has – for the last 20 years or so – amounted to a spot or two of cold rain that looks a bit grainy when it hits your windscreen (windshield for American viewers) as you’re driving along. Even with the relatively vast covering today it was still nothing compared to what we used to get – and what almost all of the rest of the world still gets on a regular basis.

This dearth of decent snow has given rise to a very British creation: the British Snowman.

To build one you will need the following:

• a thin layer of wet snow
• several dog turds
• some grass clippings
• oil from road
• mud or soil
• masonry removed from someone else’s property

Begin by having a snowball fight. Throw snowballs at moving traffic then, when bored, place snowball on the ground amongst the mud and grass exposed in the previous activity. Roll it around until it gets too big to move any more – by this time it will have acquired a non-white exterior consisting of mud, grass, oil, and any dog turds lying around. It will be roughly spherical depending on how soon you realised you couldn’t move it for much longer.

Repeat this process to make a smaller sphere (the typical snowman-builder will likely need two tries at this, since the first will result in a ball too heavy to lift). Place it on top of the first. Ideally, the primitive snowman will be located on a pavement or in the road – because that’s really funny.

The snowman now needs a face. The nose is usually created using a ‘carrot’ – the typical snowman architect will need to look this up on Wikipedia, not being familiar with vegetables in general, and especially not carrots in particular. The eyes and mouth will be carefully fashioned out of stones or small rocks taken from someone’s garden. The adventurous snowman builder will use clothes and possibly shoes to adorn his creation.

Since the majority of British Snowman builders are students, optional extras include genitalia and bosoms.

Suggested further activity: wait until dark, then go and demolish as many snowmen as possible – ideally by pushing them on to paths or into roads.

Still determined to prove that it was a UFO that hit that wind turbine last week, The Sun has now splashed the news across its front page that there is life on Mars.

ALIEN bugs are responsible for strong plumes of methane gas detected on Mars, it was claimed tonight.

The thing is, this story contains exactly the same information as this one and this one – separate stories from March and September 2004 . The gas was actually first detected in 2003 . Personally, I'm not really concerned about whether the methane is due to life or not. I'm more fascinated by these details:

• the way The Sun chooses to omit or gloss over any information which might lead to the conclusion that the methane isn't produced by living organisms
• the way The Sun deliberately pushes information that it likes down its readers' throats (reminds me of its pro-Thatcher bias in the 80s)
• the way The Sun leaps on this in the wake of the damage caused to that wind turbine last week by what it says was 'definitely' a UFO from outer space.

Even Colin Pilger – the guy who made Britain a laughing stock by crashing a probe, which had no chance of landing safely, into Mars – quoted from the Telegraph's version of this story says:

It's not proof, but it makes it worth a much closer look.

(The Sun makes the same quote, but obviously attributes much less importance to it). Of course, to The Sun's staff and readers, it is a very small step from primitive methanogens to aliens driving spaceships into wind turbines in Lincolnshire. I was talking with a pupil last night and she says that everybody at work accepts completely that it was a UFO that hit the Lincolnshire turbine! Frightening, isn't it? They'd laugh at anyone who confessed to believing in God, and yet they're happy to believe in spirits, new age crap (aromatherapy, crystallography, and so on – I even have some who kiss photos of famous film stars before they take their tests), and UFOs with far less evidence to support them…!

The Sun can't let this one go. In the printed version (again, I can't find it online) they had one of their reporters at the site of the wind turbine damaged by that UFO carrying out scientific experiments. The story is titled 'Farmageddon '. Apparently:

The shroud of secrecy thrown around the wind turbine wrecked by a UFO was lifted yesterday for The Sun's X-Files-style hunt for aliens.

Oh dear! But intrepid reporter Brian Flynn managed to keep his wits about him on the 'eerily silent' fen (well, it was cold, and the fens aren't exactly the best place to be after torrential rain) as:

…the faint hum of [his] metal detector broke the silence as [he] swept around the base of the 290ft-high turbine.

Now that's how to set the scene, isn't it? There's a well-posed photo of Mr Flynn pointing to the turbine lying beside him (it's about the size of a jet engine, so you could easily miss it if he didn't point). Oh, and wait. It needs to appeal to Sun readers here:

Decked out in boiler suit, hard hat and high-visibility vest, [he] scanned the site for clues of alien life forms.

Alien life forms? Where did that come from? Is someone suggesting an alien might have had the passenger door open, whacked the turbine by accident, then fallen out? A spacechav , maybe? Now the bit I liked most of all:

In the shadow of the looming structure lay the remains of the 65ft-long blade torn off in the encounter.

Hang on a minute! The multitude of stories we've had to put up with this last week all clearly implied that the blade was missing – presumably, being examined by alien scientists at the equivalent of The Sun HQ on Omicron Persei 8 , or wherever the mothership the blade was embedded in flew back to after it pranged the turbine.

Close examination suggested it had taken an almighty blow from a large solid object…

No, really? But unfortunately:

…our hour-long mission to the bitter cold uncovered no sign of alien life.

Damn. And I had money on it – what with all that technology (i.e. the metal detector). I promise you, this one is going to run and run. With or without Nick Pope .

…Nick Pope simply cannot consider any other possibility!

I wrote the other day about the UFO that had undoubtedly flown into a wind turbine in Lincolnshire. Nick Pope is the 'renowned' UFO expert who did not – even for a split second – consider any possibility other than it being a UFO from another world. The next day the story developed a little and it was being suggested that the collision might have involved a secret robotic stealth aircraft being tested by the military. Mr Pope was quick to dismiss this outright as an absurb idea – it was definitely an alien spacecraft which did it.

It does make you wonder what colour the sky is in Mr Pope's world.

And today, in The Sun newspaper again (paper version – I can't find it in the online version), Mr Pope is now saying that even if it was a stealth aircraft the technology it used was not of this world.