irony meter

OFF THE CHARTS! 

(It's a Jesus and Mo toon)

a flu cure

This would be quite big news. Hopefully they won't price the thing in the stratosphere. No, this is not the National Enquirer.

Japan's New Drug: One Pill May Stop The Flu in Just One Day

by Bruce Y. Lee, Contributor to Forbes Magazine

One day, you may be able to stop flu viruses in your body in just one day with just one pill. Based on an announcement yesterday, that day may be someday very soon in May in Japan.

On Friday, Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi announced that the flu medication that they have developed, Xofluza, otherwise known as baloxavir marboxil has been approved to be manufactured and sold in Japan.

Beginning in October 2015, the medication underwent priority review by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Shionogi filed for approval in the autumn of 2017. Compared to Tamiflu, which requires two doses each day for five days, apparently only a single dose of Xofluza will be needed to treat the flu. Even though Xofluza has received approval, people will have to wait until the Japanese national insurance sets a price for the medication, which according to Preetika Rana writing for the Wall Street Journal, may not occur until May.  

Xofluza works via a different mechanism from neuroaminidase inhibitors like Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir). Flu viruses are like squatters in your home that then use the furniture and equipment in your home to reproduce. Yes, I know, that makes for a lovely picture. A flu infection begins when flu viruses reach your lungs. Each flu virus will enter a cell in your lungs and then use your cell's genetic material and protein production machinery to make many, many copies of itself. In order to do this, the flu virus uses "cap-snatching". The virus employs an endonuclease enzyme to clip off and steal the caps or ends of your messenger RNA and then re-purposes these caps to reproduce its own genetic material. 

After the virus has made multiple copies of itself, the resulting viruses implement another enzyme called a neuroaminidase to separate themselves from parts of the host cell and subsequently spread throughout the rest of your body to cause havoc. While Tamiflu, Relenza, and other neuroaminidase inhibitors try to prevent the neuroaminidase enzyme from working, Xofluza acts at an earlier step, stopping the "cap-snatching" by blocking the endonuclease enzyme.

By acting at an earlier step before the virus has managed to replicate, Xofluza could stop a flu virus infection sooner than neuroaminidase inhibitors. The results from Shionogi's Phase III CAPSTONE-1 clinical trial compared Xofluza (then called Cap-dependent Endonuclease Inhibitor S-033188) with oseltamivir and placebo, with results being published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The study found that baloxavir marboxil (or Xofluza) stopped an infected person from shedding flu virus earlier (median 24 hours) than oseltamivir (median 72 hours). Those taking baloxavir marboxil also had lower measured amounts of viruses than those taking oseltamivir throughout the first 3 days of the infection. Baloxavir marboxil also seemed to shorten the duration of flu symptoms (median 53.7 hours compared to a median of 80.2 hours for those taking placebo). Since symptoms are largely your body's reaction to the flu virus, you can begin shedding virus before you develop symptoms, and symptoms can persist even when you are no longer shedding the virus.

The key with any of these flu medications is early treatment, especially within the first 24 to 48 hours of infection, which may be before you notice any symptoms. Once the virus has replicated and is all over your body, your options are limited. The vaccine still remains the best way to prevent an infection.

In the words of Alphaville, this new drug could be big in Japan. While Xofluza won't be available in time to help with the current flu season, this year's particularly harsh flu season has highlighted the need for better ways to treat the flu. But will the United States see Xofluza anytime soon? Similar to Pokemon, Xofluza may need a year or two to reach the U.S. market. But one day, one pill and one day may be a reality in the U.S.

Original. But how do you know you're infected in the first day if there are no symptoms?  Regardless, thousands of lives could be saved with this med. But, how about a better vaccine in the first place? I know, I know.

woodworking, etc

It has taken me about a year since retiring to finally "settle in" to being retired and living on South Padre Island. In the grand scheme of things, that doesn't seem like a really long period of time. I take things slowly. Don't try to do too much at once. Why rush things?

Finally, I got the garage in shape. Well, mostly. There is still a lot to do, but I finally have a good workbench and a couple of sawhorses. There are several more "things" I want to get for the garage, like different types of saws, but I have enough "stuff" to do a few things. 

So, one of the very first projects was to make a wedging table for the wife. She likes to do pottery, and a wedging table is where she works the clay until it's ready for forming and/or firing. She's been using a rickety folding table and it hadn't been working.

So, finally, I got around to building a wedging table. I used leftover materials, except for the wood screws and wood glue. The garage is half full of leftover wood from other projects around the house, so I used 3/4" plywood for the top, 2x4 wood for the underskirt and 4x4 pieces for the legs. Very basic. No lower shelf. One thing at a time.

After the table was built, we stretched a piece of dropcloth canvas over the top and stapled it into place. The canvas on top helps to absorb moisture in the clay. She's used it a couple of times now and says it's perfect. This is the first woodworking project I've done in years and years. Decades, even. But it's a great feeling to build something that actually works well for its intended purpose. 

Another thing we finally got around to doing was moving an upright piano from the wife's sister's house to the island. Got it moved last week and a piano tuner will be coming to the house next week to give it its first tune-up in probably 40 years. The thing was built in 1965 and was tuned a few times until the 1970's and then it just sat. Hopefully it is tuneable. Can't wait for that thing to be in tune.

It's sitting up against one of the two large, west-facing windows to look out to the bay.

Finally, I ordered two hammock stands to hold a couple of our hammocks. They will be awesome on the breezeway, but they are also portable so I can put them in the lot, or move them to the backyard, or even take them to the beach. 

Things are FINALLY coming together. Now, I suppose a hurricane will hit this summer and blow everything away!

George Carlin

Every now and then I need to re-watch some George Carlin. Let's hear it for electronic recordings.

Imagine

good guy with a gun

As expected, Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice-President of the NRA (National Rifle Assn), came out and defended all the guns in our society over sanity at this year's CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). He even pulled out his old saw: "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Is that right, asshole? Well, we have some new details about the Parkland, Florida shooting.

From Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog:

New details undermine the right’s ‘good guy with a gun’ argument

Opponents of new restrictions on guns have presented a variety of ideas in response to last week’s high-school shooting in Florida, most of which involve adding more guns to the equation. Maybe tragedies like these can be avoided, the argument goes, if schools had armed guards.

After all, as the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre told the public after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” He repeated the line again yesterday.

There are all kinds of problems with the adage, but new details emerged yesterday that further undermined the right’s talking point: at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., there was a good guy with a gun.

An armed security officer on campus where a gunman killed 17 people never went inside the high school or tried to engage the gunman during the attack, a Florida sheriff said Thursday. 

That officer has now resigned…. Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school, “was absolutely on campus through this entire event. He was armed, he was in uniform,” [Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel] said.

The county sheriff told reporters yesterday that the armed security officer at the school remained outside, during the mass shooting, “for upwards of four minutes.”

I’ve seen some condemnations of the resigned officer’s lack of action, and I can certainly understand the outrage, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes people freeze in a crisis. Scot Peterson is hardly the first person to pause before running toward the line of fire.

The larger point, however, is that details like these don’t inspire confidence in the latest Republican talking points.

We now know, for example, that the accused gunman in Parkland wasn’t deterred by approaching a school with an armed security officer in uniform.

What’s more, for all of Donald Trump’s support for arming and training school teachers, there’s no way your typical algebra instructor is ever going to have the kind of training a sheriff’s deputy has to undergo before getting a badge and a firearm.

And yet, here we are. There was a good guy with a gun at the school, and 17 innocent people were killed anyway. Those searching for practical solutions should probably look elsewhere.

Original.