News roundup, 3 Dec 2025

- British researchers warn that shifting rainfall patterns have caused a net loss of fresh water from central and southern Europe, even as the northern part now has more. For a look at what that might mean for the future, Iran is in a severe crisis, with Tehran potentially facing water rationing or even evacuation. Where you would evacuate the 15 million people who live in the metro area to is another question.

- The American real estate listing company Zillow has removed climate risk data from their listings following complaints from sellers and realtors that the data was negatively affecting sale prices. Not sure how that's supposed to make the problem go away.

- The involvement of conservation officers in patrolling the border for potential migrants in response to Trump's claim that has not led to any additional reports of suspicious activity beyond that already found by the RCMP and border agents. Political scientist Christopher Adams figures everyone knew all along that they wouldn't find much (who'd want to sneak into that country right now anyway?) and that it was more about "optics to the Trump administration". If that was all it was, it it would be kind of futile (we all know Trump has annexation on his mind so he's not going to be appeased by this), but I think it's also about optics regarding the regime. Adams says that the provinces and the federal government were trying to say to Trump, "Look, we're doing everything we can and I hope you're happy with that", but I think it's more about telling those affected by the tariffs that.

- The mayor of Winkler, Manitoba gave a very, very mild admonition to his constituents that essentially amounted to "look folks, we've had a lot of cases of measles around here, and people up in Winnipeg talk about it, and it's embarrassing, and you really should do your research about vaccines, OK?", knowing full well that the people he's addressing think they've already done their research. It seems kind of weak and milquetoast, but then again I'm not sure what he could have said that would have made a difference. I think it was more a way of signaling to the rest of the province "hey, I know my constituents are crazy, but I'm not, and we can still do business, OK?"

- Scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris warn that a pandemic of one of the H5NX flu strains, while not especially likely, could be far worse than COVID-19 if it did occur. Myself, I think it would be far worse even if the actual virulence and contagiousness were identical to COVID due to the difficulty governments would have in getting people to comply with public health protocols.

- The 71 year old driver of a charter bus full of junior high students was pulled over reentering Saskatoon following a field trip after multiple reports of erratic driving from the public. He was found to be under the influence of alcohol, fentanyl, and hydromorphone. Certainly not a good career move; for his part, he attributes his poor decision to severe back pain.

- A Brantford, Ontario resident who lived along the route of the city's Santa Claus parade evidently was not in a festive mood about the matter. They posted signs in their windows saying such things as "Santa isn't real", "Your parents are Santa", etc. Several outraged neighbours called the police about the matter, and apparently an officer spoke to the person and convinced them to remove the signs; they clarified later that they couldn't actually force their removal. Left unspoken is how they persuaded the person to take them down.

News roundup, 10 Sept 2025

- The US and the EU have tentatively agreed on a "Framework Agreement" on trade; what's disconcerting is what Europe seems prepared to give up in order to continue their trade relationship with the Americans. Buried in the document is a statement that the countries "intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards" with regard to motor vehicles; in other words, the EU is prepared to accept gigantic hulking American trucks and SUVs on their streets in order to satisfy the current US regime. The European Transport Safety Council has issued a statement condemning the move; whether it can be reversed, though, is a good question. I suspect that most European leaders know that it really isn't a good idea but are preparing to move forward due to fears about the economic impact of tariffs. Unfortunately they're in a tight spot, because much of the voting public takes a very short-sighted, immediate view of such matters and are willing to accept a worse future in order to avoid a pay cut in the present.

- Israel bombed Doha on Tuesday, attempting to justify the attack by saying that they were targeting Hamas leaders who were in the Qatari capital for peace negotiations. The Israelis were at one point claiming that the attack was greenlighted by the Trump regime, but later retracted the statement, saying that they had acted alone. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the attack "an intolerable expansion of violence"; even Trump seems to think it may not have been a good idea. It's definitely not good for the peace negotiations. Presumably that was Netanyahu's goal, since what he seems to want is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza so he can just annex it to Israel, and that would be a hard thing to justify even to his own people if the negotiations were still active.

- Poland says that they have shot down Russian drones that had strayed into their airspace in the course of a Russian attack on Ukraine. 

- The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles caused a stir with an Instagram post that read "Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews". There was an instant backlash as the museum's social media followers thought about who else the post might be referring to, and the post was removed with a grovelling apology.

- Manitoba's Minister of Health, Uzoma Asagwara, has announced that two police officers will be stationed at the emergency ward of Health Sciences Centre at all times, and weapon detection equipment will be installed at all entrances. This follows the "greylisting" of HSC, the province's largest hospital, by the Manitoba Nurses' Union. The union's president isn't sure this is the best way to do it, favouring more funding for specialized safety officers rather than tying up police resources. It might be a necessary evil, though.

- Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald, encouragingly, has not ruled out lifting the tariffs on Chinese EVs in the hope of getting Chinese restrictions on Canadian canola lifted. On the other hand, he also says that the government wants to "ensure any changes wouldn't jeopardize other industries or sectors"; that suggests that we shouldn't get our hopes up, though, since those autoworker votes are important.

- The mayor of Barrie, Ontario, Alex Nuttall, has declared a state of emergency in the city in order to address concerns about homeless encampments. Ontario's emergency management law empowers the city to create a new task force to oversee the response to encampments, as well as hiring contractors and consultants to assist them in the matter.

-Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm warns that the Trump regime has "basically destroyed what capacity we had to respond to a pandemic" since taking office the second time around. On the bright side, if we get a big enough pandemic it will do wonders for the fight against climate change.

Why the media can't cope with swine flu

Ben Goldacre has written an interesting article on the subject:

First it was the emails, and the tweets. This is all nonsense about the aporkalypse, surely? Just like with Sars, and bird flu, and MMR, is this all hype? The answer is no, but more interesting is this: for so many people, their very first assumption on the story is that the media are lying. It is the story of the boy who cried wolf.

We are poorly equipped to think around issues involving risk, and infectious diseases epidemiology is a tricky business: the error margins on the models are wide, and it's extremely hard to make clear predictions.

Here's an example. In Glasgow in the 1980s, less than 5% of injecting drug users were HIV positive. In Edinburgh at the same time, it was almost 50%, even though these two places are only an hour apart by train. Lots of people have got theories about why there should have been such a huge difference in the numbers of people infected, and there's no doubt that it's fun to try and come up with a plausible post hoc rationale. But you certainly wouldn't have predicted it.Maybe some bloke with HIV got off the train at Edinburgh station instead of Glasgow on a whim, some fateful day in the early 1980s.

Maybe there was a different culture among heroin users, or services.

Nobody really knows.

We face the same problem with swine flu. All people have done is raise the possibility of things really kicking off, and they are right to do so, but we don't have brilliantly accurate information. Someone has said that up to 40% of the world could be infected. Is that scaremongering? Well it's high, and I'm sure it's a bit of a guess, but maybe up to 40% could be. Annoying, isn't it, not to know.

...

By Tuesday, pundit-seekers from the media were suddenly contacting me, a massive nobody, to say that swine flu is all nonsense and hype, like some kind of blind, automated naysaying device. "Will you come and talk about the media overhyping swine flu?" asked Case Notes on Radio 4. No. "We need someone to say it's all been overhyped," said BBC Wales.

I assumed they were adhering, robotically, to the "balance" template, but no: he kept at it, even when I protested and explained. "Yeah, but you know, it could be like Sars and bird flu, they didn't materialise, they were hype." Simon Jenkins suggested the same thing. It's not true, I said. They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is. I've never been hit by a car, but it's not idiotic to think about it. Simon Jenkins won't be right if nobody dies, he'll be lucky, like the rest of us. Do people think this flappily in casinos? The terrible truth is yes.

From the Guardian. What it amounts to is, the media wants nice clear-cut yes/no answers, and at this stage in the pandemic, anyone who gives you such an answer is lying, or at best being overly simplistic. For my money, I'm thinking this is going to end up on the low end of the risk spectrum, but there are too many unknowns to say for sure.

WHO raises pandemic threat level... again

M-O-O-N, that spells Phase 5:

The World Health Organization on Wednesday raised its global pandemic alert level to five — its second highest level — meaning a pandemic is imminent and countries must finalize preparations to deal with the outbreak of swine flu.

"Based on assessments of all available information and following several expert consultations, I have decided to raise the current level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 4 to Phase 5," WHO director general Margaret Chan said during a briefing from the organization's headquarters in Geneva.

Phase 5 is called when there is human-to-human spread of a virus in at least two countries in one region, according to WHO's pandemic response guidelines.

Chan said the new alert level is a signal for governments around the world to take action with "increased urgency and at an accelerated pace."

Meanwhile, the idea that two different strains are involved has been raised again:

A leading West Australian virologist says it is possible the Mexican outbreak of swine flu could be a different strain to the virus detected in the United States.

More than 150 people in Mexico have died from the virus while there have been no fatalities in the US.

Dr David Smith from Pathwest says there could be a number of reasons for this, but it is an unusual situation.

"We are seeing two very different descriptions of disease with apparently more severe disease occurring in Mexico," he said.

"And then the cases as have occurred outside of Mexico have been quite mild infections people have recovered from. It is unusual to see that much difference in the patterns of disease by what appear to be very similar viruses.

"If we don't know exactly what the strain is and how it compares genetically to the one that's coming from the US," he said.

"It's something we need to know if that is the case or not, but that may not necessarily be the case, the apparent differences may be explained by other reasons."

Dr Smith says it is likely both countries have the same strain but researchers will need to wait for the results of genetic testing to be sure.

From the ABC. Let's hope it's not two different strains, and that the other explanations given in the Slate article cited in my previous post are the reason. Because if it is two strains, it would be only a matter of time before the more virulent one hops Mexico's borders. On the other hand, it's also possible that infection with the mild strain will confer immunity to the virulent one.

Meanwhile, though, they're backtracking on the number of reported deaths; they're now saying only seven deaths in Mexico and one in the US can be definitely linked to this outbreak. So maybe this isn't as big a deal as previously thought. No doubt we'll know soon enough.

More flu news

The first death outside of Mexico has been reported:

The first death in the United States from swine flu was reported on Wednesday, as the number of confirmed and suspected human cases worldwide continues to rise following an outbreak in Mexico.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said on Wednesday that swine flu caused the death of a 23-month-old child in Texas. It is believed to be the first death outside Mexico.

Dr. Richard Besser, the CDC's acting director, confirmed the death during an interview with CNN on Wednesday. No further details about the child or the circumstances of the death were provided.

From here. This is not in keeping, though, with the pattern of mortality in Mexico, where (worryingly) a disproportionate number of deaths, as noted previously, have been young adults. Slate has an article examining possible reasons for the differences between Mexico and the rest of the world in the way the flu is impacting them. They propose four:

1) Perhaps population-level genetic differences render the U.S. population more resistant to this strain's effects than the Mexican population.

The author considers this unlikely for the following reason:

This isn't like the smallpox situation of 500 years ago, when American Indians were decimated by a virus they'd never encountered while Europeans carried it easily because centuries of exposure had selected them for resistance. This strain of swine flu virus is apparently new to everyone—a combination of bird flu, seasonal human flu, and (predominantly) two kinds of swine flu, all in a form our bodies have never seen. There seems no reason any human population should resist its effects substantially better or worse than any other.

To this one could add the fact that many Americans have Mexican ancestry. There doesn't seem to be any data on the ethnicity of cases from the rest of the world, but I would expect that at least some of the infected had visited family in Mexico.

2) We're really looking at two different viruses, but WHO and the CDC haven't picked up on it.

So far, tests have failed to find any difference in the viruses from the fatal cases in Mexico and the less severe cases elsewhere. It's possible that some subtle difference exists that the tests haven't detected, but it seems less likely owing to the heavy scrutiny the virus is being placed under.

3) Some secondary health issue present in Mexico but not elsewhere—another bug common in the population or in hospitals—is combining with the swine flu to make it more deadly there.

Quite plausible. Either another infection (perhaps bacterial) could be complicating matters, or the severe air pollution in many parts of the country may make people more susceptible to lung damage, or both. The air pollution hypothesis could be effectively tested if an infected person turned up in another highly polluted place (like Beijing), but so far Asia seems to have avoided infection, and let's hope it stays that way.

4) Some difference in the way we're tracking and counting cases—a "surveillance difference"—is making the Mexico situation seem worse than it is and the U.S. situation seem better than it really is.

In other words, there have been a lot of mild cases in Mexico as well, but they've flown under the radar. This is extremely plausible, because if the actual mortality rate is very low you wouldn't likely see many deaths (if any) among the relatively small number infected in the rest of the world. And, as the article points out, this outbreak emerged during Mexico's regular flu season, so a lot of mild to moderate cases would not have seemed unusual before the discovery of this strain.

So we don't really know. I guess all we can do is stay tuned.

WHO boosts pandemic alert level to 4

The stakes are getting higher:

The World Health Organization raised its global pandemic alert to Level 4 from Level 3 on Monday, meaning the global health body feels the virus causing the swine flu outbreak can easily transmit between people.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general, confirmed the change during a briefing from Geneva following an emergency meeting of the organization.

Countries should focus their efforts on mitigating the effects of the virus — which the WHO has confirmed has spread to Mexico, Canada, the United States and Spain — because containment is impossible, he said.

However, Fukuda added: "A pandemic is not considered inevitable at this time."

Fukuda said the WHO doesn't recommend closing borders or restricting travel but is encouraging people who are ill to delay travel.

"The deliberations of the emergency committee and the decisions of the director general really reflect a lot of very careful and sober discussion and a number of important considerations," said Fukuda.

Despite the WHO's comments, the European Union and the U.S. have advised against non-essential travel to Mexico because of the outbreak of the virus believed to have killed dozens in Mexico. Canada was expected to issue a similar advisory.

From here. Actually, my view is that the travel advisories don't go far enough; if I were in charge I'd be advising against all non-essential travel period, including domestic travel. The travel industry would shit, of course, but if you want to seriously tackle the issue, you need to take the bull by the horns.

Flu update...

Well, it seems that that British flight attendant does not have swine flu. On the other hand, there are some suspected cases in New Zealand, and a possible one in Israel. (On a side note, can you imagine the conclusions folks might have jumped to, and the consequences, if Israel -- or Iran or Pakistan, for that matter -- had been the site of the initial outbreak?) The news from this country is contradictory; this CBC story reports possible cases in Nova Scotia, but the most recent flu story in the Chronicle-Herald says otherwise. In any case, the CBC story quotes one specialist as saying fears are overblown:

A Toronto infection control specialist said it's important to keep the outbreak in perspective.

"This sounds like a pandemic — while it's not trivial — that is less severe. And less severe is something that we spent a lot of time planning for and a lot of time working on," Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital told CBC News.

Reassuring... maybe. Also interesting, and perhaps reassuring, is this:

A big question is: Just how deadly is the virus in Mexico?

The seasonal flu tends to kill just a fraction of 1 percent of those infected.

In Mexico, about 70 deaths out of roughly 1,000 cases represents a fatality rate of about 7 percent. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed an estimated 50 million worldwide, had a fatality rate of about 2.5 percent.

The Mexican rate sounds terrifying. But it’s possible that far more than 1,000 people have been infected with the virus and that many had few if any symptoms, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a prominent pandemic expert at the University of Minnesota. U.S. health officials echoed him.

“In Mexico, they were looking for severe diseases and they found some. They may not have been looking as widely for the milder cases,” said Schuchat of the CDC.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I know I freak out easily; maybe it's all the books I've read (The Stand, The Last Canadian, Earth Abides, etc).

Uh-oh...

Test Results May Mark Spread Of Swine Flu To New York

Health officials here are expected to announce as early as today whether it was swine flu that sickened dozens of students at a private school in Queens.

If so, it would heighten concerns nationwide about the spread of a disease that has killed 68 people and strickened about 1,000 in Mexico.

From here. The mortality rate so far has not been huge, so it's probably no Captain Trips, but I'd be interested to know how many of those infected have actually recovered (as opposed to "haven't died yet"). Noteworthy too is this fact:

The majority of the people killed in Mexico's fatal flu outbreak were adults between 25 and 45 years old, a Mexican health official said on Friday.

This has been observed with other nasty outbreaks, including the infamous pandemic of 1918 which killed more people than World War I. Somewhat paradoxical, but this situation sometimes arises through a mechanism called a cytokine storm:

It is believed that cytokine storms were responsible for many of the deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed a disproportionate number of young adults.^[1] In this case, a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset.

Not a good thing.

Update: looks like it may be worse than initially thought:

I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.

From the BBC. Now to be fair, this is just an anonymous post by a visitor to the site, but further down the page we see this:

Dr Duncan Wood, Mexico City

Yesterday in my office it was a bit surreal walking in to see all in blue masks with deep cleansing of computer equipment and surfaces going on. Let's hope it is contained and does not escalate. The local news is reporting 200 fatalities and reports of flu spreading from areas outside of Mexico City. Given the volume of daily commuter traffic on cramped busses and trains, this may not have to be too virulent to be disastrous in human terms. I wonder what controls there will be on flights in and out.

Not so anonymous this time, and more or less consistent with the above comment. This is highly ungood.

Additional update: Looks like those BBC comments were the result of scaremongers (possibly the same person); the claim that "the local news" is reporting 200 fatalities seems to be belied (so far at least) by this:

As Mexico struggled against the odds Saturday to contain a strange new flu that has killed as many as 68 and perhaps sickened more than 1,000, it was becoming clearer that the government hasn't moved quickly enough to head off what the World Health Organization said has the potential to become a global epidemic.

68 is a lot better than 200. Still, we're far from out of the woods. The disease has showed up in Kansas, and now the UK:

A member of cabin crew was taken to hospital with "flu-like symptoms" today after falling ill on a British Airways flight from Mexico City to Heathrow.

The World Health Organisation has warned countries to be on alert for any unusual flu outbreaks after a swine flu virus was implicated in possibly dozens of human deaths in Mexico.

The BA employee, who has not been named, has been taken to Northwick Park hospital in Harrow, a hospital spokesman said.

He added: "He has flu-like symptoms and is responding well to treatment. The patient was admitted directly to a side room and the hospital is scrupulously following infection control procedures to ensure there is no risk to any other individual in the hospital."

The man was taken from flight BA242 which landed at 2pm today, a BA spokesman said.

If I were in charge, I'd have quarantined that whole damn plane, but that's just me.