A Little Bit of This and That

Regular readers of Better Living will have noticed that lately, I haven't been posting as often as usual. The big reason for that is that I'm getting ready for the upcoming Lenten season, which starts on March 1.

This year, our congregation is doing something really wonderful during this forty-plus-day season that precedes Easter. It's our own project, which we're uncreatively calling Forty Days to Servanthood. But that's the only uncreative part of the whole thing. A team of congregational members are putting things together. My main job at this point is writing daily readings of 400-words or less, which we're hoping that every member of the congregation will read twice during each day of Lent. (Every adult and teen member, that is.) My plan is to post those readings here, starting on March 5.

Servanthood is foreign to all of us, I suppose. But I think it's especially the case with me. With a knowing smile a few years back, one of my sisters observed of me as a youngster, "You always wanted to be the center of attention." I suppose that I did. (It's amazing she didn't say that with malice, by the way!)

In servanthood, we pay heed to Jesus' call to militate against our natural impulse to be the center of attention, seek what we want, and look out only for ourselves.

One of the many things that God is teaching me these days is that servanthood is more than an appropriate response to the God Who has loved and served us through Jesus Christ, it leads us finding our very own God-designed way of life. Studying and writing for this project has enlivened me to this fact again!

A few things before I button it up for the night:

The New York Times had an interesting article today, inspired by all the tumbles being taken by Olympic skaters. It deals with a question that scientists evidently can't answer yet: Why is ice slippery? There are several theories advanced, but none pass scientific muster. When I mentioned the Times article to several folks before a Bible study this evening, one engineer asked, "Did they talk with any engineers?" When I said that no engineers were cited in the piece, he said that was their problem because any engineer could explain why ice is slippery.

To my embarrassment and shame, it's been awhile since I last linked to articles on Darfur. Briefly, Darfur is a region of Sudan. There, government-supported terrorists engage in brutality against the local population, forcing millions from their homes.

For some basic information on Sudan and Darfur, click here.
The US government is urging the United Nations to finalize plans for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur. See here.
Scotsman Stephen McGinty reports on his trip to Darfur and what he learned, here.

And then, there's the bird flu threat, for which Senator Bill Frist, Republican majority leader and a physician, reiterated on the five minutes of Hugh Hewitt's radio show I was able to listen to before heading to that Bible study tonight, America is not prepared to address. Here's a portion of the interview containing Frist's very straightforward assessment of the Avian Flu threat we face:

HH: Let's ask you to put on your doctor's hat. What do you see as the percentage of likelihood that Avian Flu will become transmissible human to human?

BF: You know, I started talking about this about a year and a half ago. And at the time, I said we were unprepared, and I said that my biggest concern was once that bird flu, which has now killed over 300 million birds, or caused the culling of those birds. Once it jumped to humans, and then came to Africa in animals, that rich melting pot, which is done last week in Nigeria, moving West the Vietnam area all the way to Turkey yesterday...every day, the likelihood of having that last, what we call an antigenic shift occur, increases. And day by day, things are getting worse and worse. I think we're unprepared today, as you know. We're unprepared today as you know. We're making real headway, but still unprepared. I don't want to put a percentage on it, but I think we need to increasingly invest, become prepared, educate the American people, because it takes just one more little antigenic shift for it to become transmissible. And once it becomes transmissible, it is going to cause a lot of mortality in this country.

HH: Has Secretary Leavett done his job, do you think? And the President done his job in terms of getting the balls rolling, and putting out the alarms?

BF: Hugh, I think they've been very aggressive. I called for a Manhattan project about a year ago to pull together the best of investment, government, non-government, private sector, our universities, and we're not there yet. But in December, we put a substantial investment in our preparedness, in our first responders, in our research and development, and in rebuilding our vaccine manufacturing capacity. 25 years ago, we had 26 vaccine manufacturers out there. Today, we only have three. Right now, it would take about 14 months to make a vaccine. In 23 weeks, in 1918, more people were killed than in all the history if HIV/AIDS. That's how quickly this moves. The past vaccine manufacturer, targeted liability in the event there's an emergency in December...we invested about $4 billion dollars in our preparedness, but we've got a long way to go.

HH: Now Senator Frist, give me your understanding. It's spreading like wildfire right now, and in Indonesia and China, today, this very day, there are massive kills underway of poultry, wild and domestic. Who has the authority, should the bird flu in birds get to the United States, to order these kind of poultry kills, which will obviously impact our economy a great deal. Whose got that right?

BF: Well, your point is very well taken. Ultimately, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is going to make the call. But it very quickly falls over into the agriculture, farming community, because that is where one of the first steps will be taken, the actual quarantining, telling people to stay at home, advising people from a public health standpoint will go through the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Leavett.

HH: But is there a federal law that authorizes federal authorities...I'm thinking after Katrina, we did this dance with the locals where they didn't want us in, and as a result, the feds got blamed. Is there a federal statute on the books that says the Director of HHS operaing pursuant to Presidential authority, can take control of neighborhoods and of poultry farms, and things like that, and order sequestration and anything else that needs to happen?

BF: There's specific provisions for things like what we just talked about, in terms of manufacturing, vaccine manufacturing, protection from the use of anti-viral agents, and dictating the use of anti-viral agents. State law, in most states, are either addressing or have addressed, although about half of them have not yet addressed the actual quaratining commands. And that will come from the state level, and it will be upon advice from the federal level, but ultimately from the state level.

HH: Senator Frist, what happens if we have a replay of New Orleans, where the advice being given from the federal level is disregarded or simply not acted on by local officials. That was a matter of life and death. This could be a matter of pandemic.

BF: Yeah, this is much bigger.

HH: Should there be stand-by authority for the...

BF: The risk now, because this is an infectious agent, to which you don't, nor do any of your listeners today, have any natural immunity to this. That's what's so unique about this virus, and unlike the common flu virus, or any other virus that you know, practically. You have no immunity, and that's why there's been about 170 people, 169 infected. About 60% of those people have died, because there's no natural immunity. And second, in all likelihood, it'll spead, even if you're not infectious, even if you're not coughing and sneezing. You couple those things together, there'll be rapid spread through not just a geographis location, but across this country, with there to be massive devastation. A Congressional Budget Office, or General Accounting Office prediction of what would happen if there was similar penetration to what happened in 1918, 1919, would affect our economy by a decrease in our economy size, or our GDP, by about 5%, or about $600 billion dollars.

HH: We've got a minute left, Senator Frist. So should the Congress of the United States equip the President with the authority he will need in the even that states are simply ineffective or recalcitrant?

BF: Well, I think so. I think so, but I'm addressing this from the straight-out public health standpoint, and my knowledge from the science of how ill-prepared we are as a nation today. Now also, let me just say, Hugh. I don't want my comments to be used to cause panic and paralysis. I do want the American people to know that I, knowing what I know as a scientist, as a doctor, believe that we're unprepared, and we're doing everything we possibly can in terms of monetary investment, but also organization, delivery of the appropriate medicines that are possible. And I think it's incumbent on us to have clear lines of authority from the President through the Secretary of Health and Human Services, through the states, down to the local communities.

Also check out this article from Voice of America, which includes this paragraph:

Medical experts say the bird flu virus could mutate into a form that could be transmitted from person to person. Since people would have no immunity to this new flu virus, such an outbreak could lead to a worldwide epidemic, causing widespread illness and death. In 1918, a flu virus killed more than twenty million people around the world.

I'm not worried about the Avian Flu threat. Actually, I'm grateful that unlike previous generations who had no warnings that the possibility--the likelihood--of pandemics loomed in their futures, we do have warnings. We can do something about this.

Above all, we need to pray, not just that such a pandemic can be avoided, but that governments around the world will take the steps necessary to be prepared for such an eventuality.

As citizens, we also need to push our governments to take appropriate action. Let's be proactive, not reactive!

By the way, the Bible study group is looking at Acts (Acts 1:1-14:10; Acts 14:11-26:32; Acts 27:1-28:31) and I hope to resume my series of posts on our discussions (see here and here) soon. We're into chapter 8 right now.