Rhiza Labs FluTracker Forum

It almost reads like they have been following your commentaries, and crafting spin press releases to refute...smells more like politics than science.

They certainly have been following the commentaries and their releases are ALWAYS political, but now they are looking rather foolish.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

I started a thread on WHO obsolete reports on D225G/N.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4564

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Excuse me, im new. But if im not misstaken, wasn't the H1N1 stran of the flu in the ukraine compared to a plauge? If so, im quite sure this is not the same one there in N.C. Correct?

Don't know the basis of that comparison. This particular mutation has demonstrated unusual virulence. It is associated with deep lung infections and high fatality rates.

That answer sounds like a yes to me. Ive been reading through the Recombinomics news updates, im not smart enough to figure out the details but it makes me want to board up all my windows and chain the doors!

You rang?

I agree, that Feb03.2010 commentary was one of the best statements yet of niman’s D225G hypothesis. And, of course, he’s preachin’ to his own choir here, so it gets good reception.

But, choir, look again at what he’s doing. He starts off by saying that an isolate “appears” to be from a fatal case - but he doesn’t actually know that because the authorities don’t connect the sequences with the cases and outcomes. But, never mind, niman makes this speculative connection again and again without knowing whether or not it is accurate and then he suddenly solidifies it as “fact.”

Look at how this works in the following quote from the Feb03 commentary:
“The CDC then released five more HA sequences. Three were from the five mild cases sequenced by Mill Hill, but two were unique and appeared to be from fatal cases. Both had D225N, which had also been predicted. Now the fatal cases with D225G/N was up to six. . .”

Do you see what he’s done? He started of with “. . .appeared to be from fatal cases . . .” and ended up with the fatal cases now “up to six” thereby slyly burying completely the fact that the two may well NOT have come from fatal cases.

It is frustrating to niman, I’m sure, because the authorities don’t connect the isolates and sequences to the case history and outcome, but that does not excuse the tactic of taking unknown and speculative associations to fatal cases and later re-writing the speculation into “fact.” We expect a higher standard of scientists. Even populist scientists.

Of course, once you synthesize facts about what is a fatal case, the next step of producing a “CFR” of 1 is easy. Since you have magically associated virtually every D225G/N with a “fatal case” through speculation you are virtually guaranteed a “CFR” of “1.”

Bosh.

I have explained the logic behind calling the two new cases from the CDC fatal, and the logic has been confirmed by the subsequent samples. Here it is once again for the data analysis challenged.

WHO set in a team to gather REPRESENTATIVE samples. Since the main concern was FATALITIES and the CDC had 5 samples, the fact that three of the five were known mild samples led to the conclusion that the other two were fatal. They both had D225N. Subsequently, Mill Hill released sequences from two lung samples. Lung samples come from DEAD patients. BOTH lung samples had D225N (along with D225G). Mill Hill then tested 28 AUTOPSY lung samples. AUTOPSY lung samples come frrom DEAD patients. Ten of the AUTOPSY lung samples also had D225G and D225N, and a number also had D225N without D225G.

Agruing the D225G frequency before the 28 Ukraine sequences came out is one thing. Arguing after simply goes to your credibility, which is ZERO.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Normally the absolute number of cases doesn’t mean much epidemiologically unless you know something about (or can normalize for) population density. Even if two populations are equal in size, if they are disparate in density then comparing numbers of cases would be futile, if not misleading. The densities of CA and FL are probably way above NC, so transmission rates would be higher in CA and FL and absolute numbers and numbers per 100,000 infected would be higher.

But the data from universities are interesting because I’ll bet a strong argument can be made that the densities of colleges/universities are pretty uniform. I mean, regardless of how big or how small the school, you still basically have kids packed into classrooms, dormitories, frat houses, etc. So comparing absolute numbers of ILI cases or "attack rates" in different colleges is probably a lot more meaningful than comparing absolute numbers from different states or areas.

Thanks for the ACHA link, Tex. Those metrics could be very interesting over the next few weeks. I didn’t know about that site and didn’t follow it during Wave #2. Did anyone here watch the ACHA data then? Can anyone say how well the college data predicted what was coming? (I honestly thought that after 100,000 watched the opening OSU football game in Ohio Stadium, H1N1 would bring OSU to its knees. But it didn’t, thank goodness, and the fact that it didn’t pretty much reflected how mild that Wave #2 turned out to be.)

Although D225G and D225N are quite lethal, so far they have been relatively rare (but increasing).

However, the best judge of the level of concern is the length of delay in releasing the information. The death cluster at Duke Medical Center was in October. It wasn't announced until December, and with the caveate that it wasn't known if the dead patients infected with Tamiflu resistant H1N1 (with undisclosed D225G and D225N) died because of the Tamiflu resistant D225G/N positive H1N1.

The actual sequences were quitely released last week, which left little doubt that the three sequences with D225G and D225N and were Tamifu resistant (had H274Y) came from the three fatal cases (who I think may have all died on the same day). In any event the sequences released last week were from samples collected in mid-October.

In general, the longer the delay in releasing the data, the greater the concern, and releasing 2009 sequences well into 2010 is NOT a surprise.

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