Sugarcane farmers brought New Delhi to a grinding halt. They came milling in their numbers to protest a new ordinance. Seeing how they swarmed this flyover, it was no surprise the government caved in. It was a walkover!!

Will Heum is wanted across the world for child pornography and paedophilia. At the Club, we are wholly in favour of throwing the book at him if he is guilty. We believe that what the world needs is to not bury the issue but be ex”heum”ed of paedophiles!!

Evidently, “The Mouse Police Never Sleeps” in the “Tull“ephone world of Reliance Mobile!

Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya have been calling each other names. First Buddha accused Ms Banerjee of having links with the Maoists and then, she returned the “compliment”.

All this reminds one of a famous bit of dialogue from a blockbuster Hindi movie. To paraphrase,

“Mere paas gaadi hai, paisa hai, bangla hai … . Uske paas kya hai?”

“Uske paas? Uske paas Mao hai.”

!!!

On Halloween weekend, US president Barack Obama faced up to an irrational fear and announced that the USA would lift restrictions on travel of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in the USA. This is an unwarranted fear of spread of the infection; a phobia that was created in the early days of the HIV pandemic when little was known about it. He said the entry ban had been “rooted in fear rather than fact“. Truly the USA has, once again, lived up to it’s reputation of being a global leader.

There are a whole lot of countries that impose varying degrees of restriction on travel by PLWHA. One wonders when they will follow the lead given by Mr Obama.

What we at the club appreciate the most is Mr Obama’s statement that lifting the ban “is a step that will save lives” by encouraging people to get tested and to get treatment. Given that, with newer modalities of treatment, HIV is fast on it’s way to becoming a chronic disorder much like diabetes or hypertension rather than a uniformly fatal condition, it is in public interest to get more people tested and treated. One can never fight a pandemic of this nature by ostracising people.

Shashi Tharoor is not your run of the mill Indian politician. He has run into trouble with his party on more occasions than one, be it for his comments, or his “lavish lifestyle” in times of austerity. But his latest comment on Twitter, about travelling cattle class, seems to have really got his party’s goat.

Holy cow! How dare he belittle …? Who was he belittling anyway? Couldn’t have been the animal; that would be the BJP’s sacred cow. The Aam Admi? No, couldn’t be them either, they don’t fly. Maybe many in the party just thought he was getting too big for his (cattle-hide derived) boots. He really should know better than to talk bull. At any rate he has been made to eat crow and apologise for the comment. He is not getting the bird from government for now.

One wonders whether this rap on the knuckles will prevent him getting his foot-in-mouth or will he just go on with the motto ” Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will not fail me”? We’ll just have to follow his tweet to know if the cat will get his tongue.

We’re all atwitter in anticipation.

A bus crashed into a betting shop in England. What were the odds on that, we wonder?

So this zoo in Nagpur allowed a minister Balasaheb Thorat to enter a tiger cage. Apparently this flouts many norms.

Be that as it may, the general opinion at the Pelican Club is that the zoo would have looked pretty silly had the animal grabbed someone by the Thorat!!!

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

As we see the swine flu epidemic unfold in India, we are struck by how true that statement is. Pune and adjoining Satara have been notified under the Epidemic Diseases Act; presumably because a large number of cases are being reported from that region.

The statewise distribution of cases in India shows that the National Capital Region, Maharashtra, Karnataka,  and Tamil Nadu are the worst affected. Why so? Is it because we have a large number of international travellers alighting in these states? Maybe, maybe not.

As on date, there are only two laboratories that have been notified to test for H1N1 infuenza in India and these are in Pune and New Delhi. The National Institute of Virology in Pune has two additional centres in Bangalore and Chennai. The guidelines for collection and transportation of specimen for testing for H1N1 influenza are quite stringent and expensive, and not all hospitals can comply. Small wonder then that the majority of cases of the flu are being diagnosed in individuals who live in or near the notified testing centres. It is rather unscientific to assume that an infectious disease pandemic would show such extreme localisation in an affected country.

Like the great man said, statistics can be made to mean whatever one wants them to.

Parting shot: By the epidemiological definition , even one case of H1N1 influenza in any locality would qualify as an epidemic.

India has recorded its first death from Swine Flu. Our deepest condolences are with the bereaved family. The attendant media blitz has ensured that in their moment of grief, the near and dear ones of Rida Shaikh have had their privacy and confidentiality intruded upon. There was no need that her identity should have been made so public. However, that is the subject of another debate.

Is such paranoia about swine flu justified? Maybe we are missing the wood for the trees. Just to step back a bit and view it dispassionately, India has recorded 616 cases of swine flu as on date with one death; a mortality rate of 0.16%. The World Health Organisation reports that worldwide there have been 162380 cases with 1154 deaths; a mortality rate of 0.7%. Certainly not a mindbogglingly high mortality rate. Whats more, the WHO no longer calls it swine flu; just Influenza A (H1N1) or novel H1N1 flu.

This particular strain seems particularly well suited for survival. It passes with ease from pigs to humans, humans to humans and humans to pigs and causes very low mortality. Even the symptoms seem to be rather mild except in very few cases. An efficient respiratory infective agent ensures its survival by keeping the patient alive and spreading it rather than by killing the patient.

There have been several reactions to Rida Shaikh’s death. All people who could have possibly have had contact with her, some 70 in all, have been placed on passive surveillance and home quarantine. Schools have been closed. Crowds have been thronging the designated hospital in Pune demanding to be tested. The Govt of Tamil Nadu has issued an advisory against travel to Maharashtra. The public in Pune is going about its business wearing masks.

Never mind that the director of the National Institute of Virology has said repeatedly that the infection in India is largely mild and that there is need for caution, not panic.

Never mind that there are no travel advisories in place worldwide with regard to swine flu.

Never mind that the Centers for Disease Control says “Even though some severe illnesses and deaths from novel H1N1 flu have been reported, most cases have been similar to seasonal flu and have not resulted in severe illness”.

Yet, the nation panics!