The days are long and the years are short

This is a tough time of year for real news. The news outlets do all their best/worst of 2009, and this year they are doing the best/worst of 2000-2009.

It's highly windy today.

I need to figure out my volunteer hours for Dec. They are going to be pretty large.

Well, the news about H1N1 is going to be very quiet for a while.

Many of the questions that the investigators are asking will take a while. What accounts for the difference in severity in Mexico vs. the US? Where and when was the first case? What is the transmission rate?

There have been some really interesting nuggets of information along the way. More (if not better) numbers on the effectiveness of flu vaccine. My take-away from that is that the FluMist is better for children and the shot is better for adults (and especially the elderly). The numbers cited weren't very large, in the 50% to 75% range. That may account for the estimated odds of catching the flu (20%). That's really quite high, actually, and the vaccine just makes that 5%-10%. On the other hand, the vaccine clearly makes the disease less severe.

The prediction for the flu season in the Southern Hemisphere is that the new virus will dominate and fairly strongly. Human communities don't tend to have two strains circulating widely at the same time.