Although the GAO has made clear the limitations of its data, its $394 million tally for work through March 31 has been widely cited as the price tag for the entire launch of the "Affordable" Care Act. However, as Bloomberg's Peter Gosselin finds, looking at the full range of ACA-related contracts for just 10 firms, more than $1 billion worth of contract awards. Perhaps even more mind-blowing is that more than one third of the funds going to the top contractors working on the federal exchanges were awarded in the last six months - even as it was clear the project was failing.
So much waste!! somebody high up has exploited the hell out of the government because it does not take a billion dollars to make a working website no matter how complex it is. Super compputers cost less. It's extortion and exploitation and the government does not care. That billion dollars could have gone to better things. -Mort
An Indonesian resident in Hong Kong has become the islands first H7N9 bird flu victim. The woman who is 36 years old is in isolation and is in a critical condition.
She recently traveled to Shenzhen on the mainland and had contact with live poultry.
The World Health Organization has said that although:
“There is no evidence of sustained human to human transmission, H7N9 is an unusually dangerous virus.”
Hong Kongs food and health secretary Dr KO Wing-man said the woman:
“has a history of travelling to Shenzhen, buying a chicken, slaughtering and eating the chicken”.
“She is now in critical condition at Queen Mary Hospital, four people in close contact with her were showing signs of flu-like symptoms.”
H7N9 was first identified in April and has sickened 139 people since then, killing 45 of them. Scientists fear that the virus will have much more effect this winter when influenza outbreaks are far more common.
As well as posing a threat in its own right it’s the ability of flu viruses to mix and mutate is causing doctors to worry about the pandemic potential of H7N9.
If a person with regular seasonal flu comes into contact with someone who has H7N9 the potential for genetic mixing and mutation is high. Seasonal flu is highly contagious, and that could well give H7N9 the chance to spread rapidly through the population.
On average the world has a pandemic every 30-40 years. The last one, in 2009 let us off lightly, it was a mild disease, and this greatly limited the deaths that occurred. Even though the death rate was higher than was originally thought it comes nowhere near other pandemics that have occurred.
There have been other pandemics that people barely remember:
H2N2 Asian Flu 1957-1958
H3N2 Hong Kong Flu 1968-1969
Swine flu, nH1N1 had some characteristics of the Spanish influenza that swept around the world in 1918-1920and scientists believe it was this that made the outbreak much milder than was first anticipated. Every flu we encounter as we move through life leaves a mark, our bodies produce antibodies to fight the condition the next time we encounter it.
It’s thought that some of this deferred immunity was passed down through the generations giving large numbers of the population enough deferred immunity to produce the antibodies required to fight the disease when a new form of it appeared in 2009.
The so-called Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-1920 sickened half the global population and killed tens of millions it was so virulent. It had never occurred in humans before and therefore no one had any immunity to it.
The same can be said for H7N9. It’s a disease that’s new to humans, and therefore we have no immunity to it. All that it doesn’t have is the ability to pass from human to human easily and regularly but seasonal flu could quite easily provide it with the transmissibility it currently lacks.
Sources:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-confirms-first-human-case-h7n9-bird-193328290.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/03/world/asia/hong-kong-h7n9-case/index.html?eref=edition
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/12/02/hong-kong-reports-first-case-h7n-bird-flu/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-25181387
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by Chris Carrington of The Daily Sheeple.
Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up!
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