FCC 'fleeting expletives' policy in -- for now
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the government could threaten broadcasters with fines over the use of even a single curse word on live television, yet stopped short of ruling whether the policy violates the Constitution.
The court, in a 5-4 decision, refused to pass judgment on whether the Federal Communications Commission's "fleeting expletives" policy is in line with First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The justices said a federal appeals court should weigh the constitutionality of that policy.
The decision did, however, throw out a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. That court had found in favor of a Fox Television-led challenge to the FCC policy and had returned the case to the agency for a "reasoned analysis" of its tougher line on indecency.
The commission appealed to the Supreme Court instead.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said the FCC policy, adopted in 2004, is "neither arbitrary nor capricious."
The FCC changed its long-standing policy after it concluded that a one-free-expletive rule did not make sense in the context of keeping the air waves free of indecency when children are likely to be watching television.
The precipitating events were live broadcasts of awards shows in which celebrities let slip or perhaps purposely said variations of the F-word and S-word.
Under the new FCC rule, some words are so offensive that they always evoke sexual or excretory images. So-called fleeting expletives were not treated as indecent before then.
In its last major broadcast indecency case, the court ruled 30 years ago that the FCC could keep curse words off the airwaves between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/FCC-fleeting-expletives-apf-15054425.html?.v=3
This article was recommended by a reader at Survival Blog.
Masks
Category: Infectious disease • Influenza • Outbreak • Public health
Posted on: March 8, 2006 10:55 AM, by Tara C. Smith
Not the Batman kind--the influenza kind.
I received a questionnaire yesterday from ABC news. Apparently, they're doing a story on pandemic influenza preparation. Included were questions like, "What would you recommend to those individuals who are trying to obtain antiviral medications for their own personal preparedness? When should they start taking them?" and "What would you recommend to individuals who are trying to obtain face masks for their own personal preparedness? When should they start wearing them?", as well as questions about food and water stockpiling and going to work/school. (More below...)
I made it clear that I think antiviral stockpiling is a bad idea, but the mask question is a bit trickier. Of course, images of people in masks are what many of us think about when images of 1918 come to mind. Unfortunately, there's no good evidence that they helped reduce the spread of the virus--for every city with mask laws that seemed to have a milder epidemic, there's another one where disease was as severe as areas that had no such law. Similarly, there have been many published studies supporting the idea that the most popular type of masks used in healthcare outbreak situations--the N95 mask--helps to protect healthcare workers, but would that extend to the general public?
The thing is, influenza virus isn't only contracted via inhalation. The masks--if fitted and used properly--can probably decrease this risk. But influenza can enter the body in other ways, such as rubbing your eyes with contaminated fingers. Do masks provide a false sense of security, causing people to be more lax in other ways (such as face-touching, or handwashing?) This is my worry, and this is why I don't universally recommend masks. (Revere at Effect Measure says much the same, with ample additional information). Of course, as noted,
Suffice it to say nothing said here or by CDC or anywhere else is likely to stop people from wearing N95 face masks or stop vendors form selling them on the basis they will protect you and your family from influenza. Whether they will or won't, whether they can be reused or not, whether they will have other untoward side effects (interference with hearing, vision or breathing) remains to be seen.
And this is what concerns me: people who are scared and think, "hey, it can't hurt," and get lulled into that false complacency. This is addressed in this article (dealing more with a bioterrorist event than a natural pandemic, but the sentiment holds:
Even in a biological attack, the masks have major shortcomings. Like fit.
"Does it have a nose piece like a metal clip you can bend over your nose? That's a better model because the big kicker here is getting a good fit," Utgoff says.
Bad fits are deadly. Contaminated air breathed from around the unfiltered edges instead of through the N95-rated material undermines the purpose of a mask.
And, got a beard? "Shave it," says Breysse, who recommends duct-taping the mask to your face to make a good fit.
"For you to take a respirator and put it on without any training or fitting probably wouldn't give you the protection you are expecting," says Ron Herring, general manager of the Safety Products Division at Pittsburgh-based MSA.
Another huge shortcoming is that you don't know when to wear a mask. There are no reliable early warning signs that a biological agent has been released. No big air-raid warning horn goes off. News reports will be after the fact. "So here I am, I've got a mask, and I don't know when to use it," Utgoff says.
Obviously you may know when pandemic influenza is in your geographic area, so it's not quite as random as a biological warfare attack, but what then? Do you wear it all the time? Only around people you know are infected, or in public? Will that be enough to protect you?
Another problem is that the single-use masks don't last. "They are disposable because they deteriorate with sweat and wear and age," Breysse says.
And this is something Revere addresses as well--we don't really know how many uses a disposable N95 is good for. Best bet would be to throw it away and get a new one each time, but that certainly gets expensive after awhile. Recall that a regular influenza season can last 6 months from beginning to end, and for a pandemic, all bets are off.
Like Revere, I don't own any masks. My husband couldn't wear one now as it is due to facial hair, and I too am not convinced that they'll work in the community. Should H5N1 or another pandemic virus surface here, perhaps I'll get one on the chance that I need to visit someone I know is ill, but I don't see myself wearing them out on a daily basis (especially duct-taped!). I'm already a hermit, and that quality would likely be amplified in the event of a pandemic.
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/03/masks.php
CDC to mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study
Robert Roos News Editor
Jan 14, 2004 (CIDRAP News) – One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus now circulating in parts of Asia will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could spread around the world.
That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35 have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the transmissibility of human flu viruses.
Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves—in the name of preparedness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.
CDC officials confirmed the plans for the research as described recently in media reports, particularly in a Canadian Press (CP) story.
Two ways to make hybrids
The plans call for trying two methods to create hybrid viruses, CDC spokesman David Daigle told CIDRAP News via e-mail. One is to infect cells in a laboratory tissue culture with H5N1 and human flu viruses at the same time and then watch to see if they mix. For the human virus, investigators will use A (H3N2), the strain that has caused most human flu cases in recent years, according to the CP report.
The other method is reverse genetics—assembling a new virus with sets of genes from the H5N1 and H3N2 viruses. Reverse genetics has already been used to create H5N1 candidate vaccines in several laboratories, according to Daigle. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said recently it would soon launch a clinical trial of one of those vaccines.
Of the two methods, the co-infection approach was described as slower and more laborious, though closer to what happens in nature.
Any viable viruses that emerge from these processes will be seeded into animals that are considered good models for testing how flu viruses behave in humans, according to Daigle. The aim will be to observe whether the animals get sick and whether infected animals can infect others.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been "pleading" for laboratories to do this research, because it could provide some evidence to back up the agency's warnings about the risk of a flu pandemic, according to the CP report.
Klaus Stohr, head of the WHO's global influenza program, was quoted as saying that if none of the hybrids caused disease, the agency might be inclined to dial down its level of concern. But if the experiments produce highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, the agency will be more worried, he said.
Safety precautions
Because of the obvious risks in creating viruses with the potential to spark a pandemic, the work will be done in a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory at the CDC in Atlanta, Daigle told CIDRAP News.
"We recognize that there is concern by some over this type of work. This concern may be heightened by reports of recent lab exposures in other lab facilities," he said. "But CDC has an incredible record in lab safety and is taking very strict precautions."
Daigle said the US Department of Agriculture requires that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses be treated as "Select Agents" and that research on them must be done in BSL-3 labs with "enhancements." These include "special provisions to protect both laboratory workers and the environment."
BSL-3 is the second highest level of laboratory biosecurity. It is used for work with pathogens that may cause serious or potentially lethal disease if inhaled, such as tuberculosis or St. Louis encephalitis, according to the CDC.
CDC experiments with HPAI viruses have to pass reviews by the agency's Institutional Biosafety Committee and Animal Care and Use Committee, Daigle said. The facilities involved are inspected by the USDA and the CDC's Office of Safety and Health, and staff members who work with Select Agents require special clearance.
It's been done before
The upcoming experiments will not break entirely new ground for the CDC, the CP story revealed. The agency already has made hybrid viruses with H5N1 samples isolated from patients in Hong Kong in 1997, when the virus first caused human disease.
The results of that research have not yet been published, and the CDC has said little about them. In the CP report, Dr. Nancy Cox, head of the CDC's influenza branch, commented only, "Some gene combinations could be produced and others could not."
Daigle added little to that. He said, "The reassortment work with the 1997 isolate was intermittently interrupted with SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and then the 2004 H5N1 outbreak. We are currently concentrating our efforts on understanding the pathogenicity of the 2004 strains (non-reassortants) in mammalian models."
He said the CDC hopes to prepare a report on that research "in the near future."
See also:
CDC information on biosafety levels
http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/symp5/jyrtext.htm
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/jan1404hybrids.html
He becomes an idiot because of a photo opt. Polotics as usual in DC.
do you know what the difention of "polotics" is? Well break the word down, "Poly" means "many" and "tics" are blood sucking creatures. So thery you have it, DC is full of Many blood sucking creatures.
Low-flying planes cause scare in NYC
NEW YORK — A White House official apologized for Monday's low-flying photo opportunity by a backup Air Force One over lower Manhattan, which panicked some residents and workers and evoked memories of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The flight of the Boeing 747, accompanied over New York Harbor by two Air Force fighters, prompted a flood of 911 calls and some spontaneous office building evacuations in the financial district and across the Hudson River in Jersey City.
It also angered New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said: "Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo-op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination. Poor judgment would be a nice way to phrase it."
Bloomberg said he was "furious" that the city's police department and someone else in his administration were notified last week of "a flyby for a photo op" but did not tell him beforehand.
Had he known, Bloomberg said, he would have tried to stop it.
"They were up there flying very low, and it had to make you think, '9/11,' " said Lorenz Hawes, who was visiting an office building near the Trade Center construction site and said he saw some people run into the street.
Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, acknowledged approving the mission, which he said clearly "created confusion and disruption" even though "federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities. … I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused," he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force described the flight as a photo and training mission involving the look-alike version of the jetliner regularly used by the president.
The police department said it had been notified about the flight, which involved a pass over the Statue of Liberty, but said it had been barred by the FAA from alerting the public.
An Obama administration official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to be able to give more details than the official White House statement, said the FAA notified Bloomberg's office and that — at the military's request — the FAA told local agencies the information was classified and asked them not to publicize it.
Caldera's office oversees military operations aboard Air Force One.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-27-airforceone-nyc_N.htm
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