For a larger version, visit Jorge Cham at PhD comics. It’s worth it. Especially if you are killing time not finishing your thesis (Sara…)

This comic came to me by way of Laura (thanks) and Language Log, where the true nerds among you can go for an illuminating discussion of the difference between ρ and p. Really.

We need to concede that we might get a more effective response BECAUSE of the media hype. But if the coverage does encourage (or allow) policy-makers to swing into effective action, and tens of thousands of deaths a prevented, analysis such as Roslings will be more problematic than ever. Because you see, despite all the hype, there never were that many deaths after all….

Thanks to Basia for pointing me to the video.

Why do I say “pandemic”? Because my understanding of pandemic influenza is that it involves three things:
a) a virus which is new to humans (and so we have no immunity to)
b) a virus that spreads easily from human to human
c) a virus which makes people very ill, or kills them

Using data up to Sunday, I made this graph:

As you can see, avian flu ticks boxes a) and c) but not b). Swine flu ticks boxes a) and c), but apparently not b) b), but apparently not c). Don’t forget that for both types of flu the death rates are probably overestimates, because this is registered deaths of registered cases. People who get only mildly sick are far less likely to be in contact with the health system and be tested for the flu strain — so they’re far less likely to be registered as a case — than the severe cases who die. The less virulent the infection is, the bigger the overestimate is likely to be. It’s likely that there have been tens of thousands of unregistered cases of swine flu in Mexico, and that only the most severe have made it into the country’s miserably overburdened and inequitable health system.

There has been more coverage of flu in the last two weeks than at any time since George Bush announced the pandemic preparedness plan at the end of 2005 (more than three years after the first person died of bird flu, so not-all-that-prepared plan might be more accurate). It’s all over the blogosphere, too, of course. One very good blog that I track when I’m doing my day job and that rejoices in the uninspired name of H5N1 is visited by about 400 sad, sciency nerds like myself on any given day. At the height of the swine flu scare, it was getting over 8,000 hits in a day.

One of the things that amused me as I tracked the news feeding frenzy around swine flu was how quickly it turned into cannibalism. By week two, news outlets (including my former employers) were running news coverage about the news coverage. I mentioned this in my talk in Bergen. Afterwards, a journalist from Norwegian TV came up rather sheepishly and asked for an interview, because they were doing a story about the media coverage of swine flu….

Thanks to James, who recognises the poetic genius of The Sun and archives their better headlines. And to David, who gave me the key to the other archive.

Interestingly, I can’t find anything anywhere from anyone who has actually nicked the pills off their Mum, crushed them up, rolled them and smoked them. A politician says it feels like taking smack, but his account doesn’t sound very first hand account on either score. Tooli Nhlapo, a documentary maker with SABC, said that after they smoke the meds “The children do not know where they are and they stop making sense”.

How much sense were they making in the first place? Quite a lot, in a teen-eyed view, you might argue. Smack costs money. ARVs are free, to those who need them. It’s just a matter of getting the meds from the hands of patients to those of bored, thrill-seeking teens. More than one in 10 teens is infected with HIV in some parts of the country and bored, thrill-seeking teens are the very ones most likely to be infected. So they could stop swallowing their meds and start smoking them (especially if we press ahead with the WHO’s “potential strategy” of testing everyone annually and putting pills in the hands of every infected person right away). Others teens are apparently buying ARVs off people who would rather have cash to buy booze than take their meds. It slightly begs the question: if teens have cash to spare why don’t they just skip the extra step and get high on booze right away? Are manufacturers of alcopops missing a trick in the South African market?

It’s hard to know how much of this is real and how much is just another silly season media beat-up. I notice that the usually very sensible Treatment Action Campaign doesn’t dignify the reports with any comment. But if the reports are even partly true, it is one more strike at the heart of the prevention approach which relies on young people making sensible decisions about their long-term future in the face of diversions like sex or drugs that will deliver fun right now.

Yes, Sarah Palin gutted funding for pregnant teens at just about the same time her own daughter was romping around with boyfriend but without condom. Yes, she’s a staunch supporter of the abstinence-only education which is delivering a rise in births to US teenagers. And yes, when a personal story occasions sensible reflection on a potential president’s ability to make data-free policy decisions, then I think it’s fair game for press coverage, even if it involves a family member’s sex life.

Others question that; there’s been heated discussion about what it is and isn’t fair to report.

As I was considering these issues I was reminded of a story about a bestiality and rape that was reported with great glee a couple of months back. The victim was almost certainly a minor, the rapist was 16 times her body weight. Was there a discussion about protecting the victim’s privacy? Not a bit of it. Scientists photographed the encounter, and the pictures were widely published. As here:

Lust in a cold climate

The assault involved a seal and a penguin. Different species from us, much like politicians. That’s what made it fair game for reporting.

Over at Bound Not Gagged, Jill — a seasoned reporter on penguin prostitution — assumes that the victim will soon start turning tricks (because as we know, all sex workers were set on the path to harlotry by a dark past of child abuse and incest). So say the very people who also believe that telling teens to cross their legs is an effective way to prevent pregnancy. Heigh ho.

That’s not strictly true. In many countries, HIV is driven largely by drug injection, and most injectors are men. But it also misses the point. It is not about “sexual relations”, it is about the risks that men choose to take when they have sex. Suggestions for a politer way to say “penis” are very welcome.