H1N1 Pandemic - Well-Fought or Over-Reacted?

Vaccine galore?

As time progresses things are becoming clearer as to the nature, evolution and impact of the novel influenza A virus. From the beginning when it first appeared in Mexico in April 2009, experts were not sure as to the potential capability of the virus. All they knew was this virus, the combination of viral materials from swine,avian and human was new and human had not encountered with it before. As the epidemic unfolded, younger people were noted to be affected somewhat sparing the elderly  unlike the normal seasonal influenza.

The outbreak was severe in Mexico where about 100 deaths were attributed to it and whole city was virtually shut down for almost a week . By the time the virus had traveled around the world and a pandemic declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in June 2009, it was noted that the infection was mild and those who succumbed to it had pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease,respiratory disease, immunosuppression, obesity and pregnancy. In northern hemisphere, seasonal influenza, besides targeting the elderly, seemed to have the same effects vis a vis mortality.

The global reaction had been one for the worst case scenario. In UK the pandemic was estimated to kill about 65,000 ( to date however, the official mortality due to influenza A/H1N1 is 360). The race for vaccine was on right from day one so to speak. Pharmaceutical companies were right in the centre of the fight, increasing production of anti-virals and new vaccines. Canada (reeling from the bad experience of SARS in 2004), America,Germany and The UK ordered millions of doses of the vaccine in July- August 2009. By October 2009, following a short trial, the vaccine was ready to be distributed. Long queues for vaccination were seen in the US, Canada and other European countries  in November-December 2009.

Experts and health officials warned of the "second wave" just like in the event of deadly Spanish flu in 1918 where millions were said to have died. But in 1918 the world did not have antivirals like we do now. Could these antivirals had somehow modified the virus's "behaviour and severity"? By the way, Canada has stood down on the second wave alert. Malaysia is waiting for WHO's directive and thus is still screening for fever in all its health facilities.

Due to the "mild" impact of the virus H1N1 and the observation that the seasonal flu killed  a lot more people annually and also the heavy human toll of the recent Haiti's earthquake where more than 150,000 people had been killed, people start to wonder whether the global response to H1N1 has been exaggerated. A member of EU parliament has even accused the possible collusion of  health "experts" and the pharmaceutical industry to profit from the pandemic. A committee is proposed to investigate this allegation.

There is concern whether the public, in future, would believe the warning regarding future pandemic and would governments be easily persuaded to allocate scarce resources for similar, albeit, new anti-viral vaccine?  Some experts have come to the defense of the response by saying that it is better to err on the side of caution. Indeed,  in this situation, damned if we do and damned if we don't ( remember Y2K Millennium bug?). And it is always easy to be wise after the event.

In the meantime, millions of doses of vaccines are unused and now Canada is going to donate their left-over to WHO. And UK is renegotiating the supply of ordered vaccines with the respective pharmaceutical companies as the infection trend is declining and what in the world are they going to do with those vaccines? And you cannot force people to be vaccinated  and would people want to be vaccinated when they notice that the infection is actually generally mild?..... in Malaysia we have just got our  vaccine supply and also waiting for that "second wave". ... and  to think that Malaysia is in summers all year round.

Influenza A/H1N1 2009 viral particle

Unless, of course, if  the influenza A/H1N1 2009 suddenly mutates and causes havoc in the Northern Hemisphere( as winter is not over yet) and becomes H1N1 2010 and travels by air to us here... .. maybe I should get vaccinated after all but I am allergic to egg!

StAmPs Are BecOmINg CoLLecTor ItEms

I have been an avid stamp collector since small. My interest has become urgent in recent years as I am aware that stamps are becoming rare as who would, on most occasion today, communicate using snail mail! Almost everything is going digital.

I scanned my passport and sent it to an embassy for visa application and received a digital approval and it saved me from the hassle of  going to post office, buying stamps and sending by mail or even by courier service. Time waits for no man.

Yes, attractive and unique stamps are increasingly to be found in collectors' albums only and so I would like to share the images of the latest stamps issued by POS Malaysia in January 2010, ( According to their press statements, there are only 5000 RM5 unique sets being printed and I am one of its proud owners!).

RM50 note specimen embedded in a
RM 5 Stamp

                                                        Close-up of  RM 5 stamp

Close-up of 50 sen stamp of 20 sen denomination --->

Double-sided "copper tainted" 50 sen stamps of 10,20 and 50 sen denominations

I am quite pleased with POS Malaysia's latest efforts. Being a member of the Philately club has its advantages as I doubt I could get hold of that special set from any post outlet now.  I am waiting patiently for  50-year commemorative stamps for Malaysian Medical Association.

Just a thought that one of these days I might like to exchange stamps with people or even put on offer at market price, some of my multiple unique stamps to interested parties. Those single ones are for my eternal pleasure though... not for sale at any price!

Stockmarket and the Obama effect

The announcement by President Obama late last week on measures against the US banking practices had met with negative market response which saw stocks falling all over the world. Indeed the DJIA suffered  its heaviest losses in one day for so many years.

In fact there was already talk about Mr Obama's intention of reining in those banking juggernauts in US whose executives are paid exorbitant salaries and staff big bonuses during boom time and when things went  bust it was the taxpayers' money that bail them out at the peak of the 2008 financial melt-down.

It was discovered that banking practices contributed to the massive crisis. They were helped by financial liberalizations implemented during President Bush's tenure. Banks were using clients' money to undertake risky investments and giving out massive loans. It was likely that those practices had brought huge short-term gains for investors for those banking stocks. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs , two of the famous investment banks were raking in "profits"  then. And now with the proposed limitations to what they can and cannot gleefully do, the gains may not be as high as before so the investors react on a knee-jerk.

A typical Democrat President Obama thinks of the people, not only the rich and wealthy but the middle-class and the poor as well. Why should the wealth be concentrated only on the rich? What about the poor? They have every right to live  reasonably well. While the rich create wealth and business offering jobs for the people, they have a responsibility to ensure that those activities are sustainable and smoothen the economic roller-coaster which is bound to occur as part of the natural cycle. The 2008 market crisis and the credit crunch triggering the global financial tsunami was a steep dive for the common people wreaking terrible hardship for families when jobs were lost and small businesses suffered badly.

President Obama seems to have chosen to put in stricter banking laws rather than tightening regulations and financial control on banking practices. However the whole process might take about a couple of years to materialize as it has got to be presented to and debated in  the House of Representatives and to the Senate etc. The "capitalist" Republicans might not be that easy to convince.

By the way, I came across an article in Wall St journal about five weeks ago on this impending announcement, I sometimes indulge in the "conspiracy theory" angle to the whole market behavior. I noticed a relentless local and regional market rally two weeks after the new year then the sudden drop beginning late last week, I did think about the impending announcement and its effects on the market as predicted by the article's writer.

So short-term small time investors need to be aware of Mr Obama and the Feds' (Federal Reserve) thinking related to the US economy and finance if you do  not want to suffer losses in the stock market. Some big investors and fund managers would have known this potential effect thus the rally and its sudden "planned" withdrawal.

Ben Bernanke

US Federal Reserve Chairman

Instituted important measures to stabilize US battered economy.

(Reuters)
 
Take it or leave it, when the US sneezes, the world starts coughing. Be aware and keep reading the development so as to protect your investment especially on financial stocks and other volatile portfolios.

For some of us, the measures taken by Mr Obama may be good for the world markets in the long-term enabling us to create wealth steadily. Less risk, less return and ....... less excitement!

STOCKPICK by the well-meaning?

When I started going into the stockmarket, I was very naive. I would look for articles written about the companies and if I found the articles saying all the positive things about them, I would target the company's stocks and bought them. It was fine when the bulls were controlling the market.

I have come across articles in online newspaper or in blogs predicting certain stock's potentials for a rapid rise based on possible multimillion contracts at national or international turfs. It could be speculation or the writer has been paid by the company so that investors would buy the stocks in droves? Eventhough you see at the end of the article words to the effect that this is not a solicitation for purchase of  the stock that are "gleefully" stated.

I must say earlier on I did buy stocks on the strength of those types of articles only to regret much later. But there are genuine people who advise small time investors on certain stocks. I came across an article  predicting the rise of TANJONG and that time the stock was priced at 13.60 and the writer said it would go up to 16.60 soon. I was quite taken by his write-up especially on good management and overseas business involvement . The only thing that stopped me was the gaming business the company is in. Anyway I did monitor the stock and sure enough, after the article, the stock rose and rose and today it has reached 17.48. Would have made quite a sum had I bought it!

Then I read something on PICORP how it had been negotiating the payment of contract works in Sudan and the price was set to go up. Though it was only 0.29 sen, I had doubt as well about the writer's analysis of the situation. After all Sudan is not Abu Dhabi with its organised financial set-up. That was some months ago and PICORP price remains the same to this day!

I bought HSL stock at  80 sen based on my research on the company, its business, book value and past performance and good management and now it is doing reasonably well and will sure rise just before this current economic recession is over. (Guys, this is not a solicitation for you to buy the stock ok)

When I was debating whether to invest in AXIATA or MAXIS last year, I read an article on AXIATA in a blog I follow and I found the writer to be credible as there appears to be transparency in his writing and he also works in a broker firm. The price was 2.93 and I put quite and investment in the stock.... and today it has gone up to 3.47 almost by 18.5% . But MAXIS is kind of hovering around 5.36 to 5.39 all these weeks. I must thank the writer, indeed he was well-meaning. I am going out when the crowd is going in. Please do not say the stock is going to climb to 5.00 before the end of the year and tempt me to stay on as I am not feeling greedy right now. I just want to make good my heavy losses in the plantation stocks!

On second thought I would leave 20% of AXIATA shares behind just in case.......

Pulmonary Embolism and Herbal Medicine

As she came out of the airport one evening, Nina felt a gradual difficulty in breathing. She put it to tiredness as she had just attended a series of meeting in the capital city. The next morning the breathing difficulty worsened and she developed pain in her legs. Highly alarmed, she contacted a doctor friend who promptly advised her to go to the Emergency Department.  The clinical signs pointed to pulmonary embolism and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirmed it by showing multiple small blood clots in Nina's lungs and she was urgently  treated with an anti-clotting agent.

                                               MRI Suite 

MRI- Monitoring and recording images

                            

It was not known what caused Nina's condition, in medical jargon called pulmonary embolism or blood clots in the lungs obstructing breathing. The condition could be fatal. The pain in the leg was due to clotting in the dependent blood vessels irritating the nerve supply.

This condition has been described in women who take oral contraceptives but Nina was not taking this as she did trust the hormonal method to prevent pregnancy. She was frightened of the risk of cancer and other related side-effects such as thromboembolism (blockage of blood vessels). She told me the doctors who attended to her were baffled as she appeared not to have any risk factor for the embolism (blockage of structures in the body). Could her air travel contribute to this?  The condition could arise from long-distant air travel with prolonged inactivity. I doubt that because the air travel time was short and she had been traveling, on and off,  for about 20 years with no problem before this.

She met me one day and I asked her about her contraceptive method. You see, Nina is an attractive mother of 42 and she has already given birth to five children and she was not keen on having more children at her age as she wanted to focus on her career. She did not fancy "western medicine" so she opted for herbal medicine which  purported to protect from pregnancy.  She had been taking this herbal concoction: one of the ingredients called "manjakani" as a contraceptive since the last birth of her child three years back. Well, well.... whatever was acting as a contraceptive in the herbal medicine she had been taking was likely to have a similar effect as the "western medicine" she was afraid of.

Other women could have taken this as well with no effect  ( or no report of their condition?) as they might not have an additional risk factor of frequent air travelling that Nina did.

My advice to Nina is to stop the herbal medication or if she still wants to take it, she has to be regularly seen by a doctor just as she would, had she been on regular oral contraceptive.

Many think that herbal medicine is safe, simply  because they are plant-based but plant steroid can be just as potent and sometimes the manufacturer add some other chemical ingredients but fail to disclose on the package. And as this kind of herbal concoction is marketed as "food", they are not covered under the Drugs' Act.

Nina was lucky  this time because hospital facilities were  rapidly accessible and the clots were not large but the next time may not be so.

SunRise... Thank you God for a new day!

Chronic sinusitis and the Lily's saga

Lily was down with a bad case of sinusitis following her unfortunate encounters with several factors last month.  She was given a  two-day sick leave and a course of antibiotics when her nasal congestion was getting worse and sputum turning deep green. ( her case was related in my December 2009 posting).

She was back again at the clinic with a complaint of  pain in the left side of her chest. The pain was deep seated and not brought on by any exertion. She also described a blocked left side of her nose and a kind of discomfort in her left ear.

She then admitted that a few days after she stopped coughing in the last episode of her acute sinusitis, she went on a "langsat" eating spree. She ate the fruit almost everyday for lunch and after dinner. The fruit is in season now and sold almost everywhere at a cheap price. It is usually sweet but the fresh ones tend to be "sappy". The sap from the fruit can get stuck to the skin and obviously in Lily's case, on the surface of her throat and she started coughing again. early January. She did not want to see a doctor and began to self-medicate and drinking warm tea with lemon and honey. Her cough somewhat subsided but on the evening of 12 January felt the pain in her left chest and she came rushing to the clinic the next morning.

                                              Lily's favourite fruit, the Langsat

Having examined her, I excluded heart-related causes. I found out that her nasal septum is deviated to the left, hence the narrower nasal passage and she also chews her food on the left and swallowing on the left side of the food pipe. And so the left sided symptoms could be explained on this basis. All the while she had no fever to indicate a systemic involvement. I concluded that her left chest pain could have been a referred pain from the infected left sided sinus. It is important  to exclude any nastier causes such as a growth through a detailed history taking and examination.

Sinus infection lasting more than four weeks is a cause for concern. It did not help with Lily's daily gobbling on those sweet,watery and sappy "Langsat" fruit! I was worried the infection would worsen to involve other nearby structures and organ such as the trachea and the bronchus.  So I treated her as a case of chronic sinusitis with two types of antibiotics, one of aerobic (oxygen-dependent) bacteria and the other for anaerobes  (non oxygen-dependent). Such a mixture of bacteria is usually present in prolonged sinus infection.

Today Lily rang up to say that her chest pain has subsided and so as her nasal congestion and left ear discomfort. I was happy for her and advised her to continue with the antibiotic regime for the stated period and stay away from those "langsat"!

Missing the January Effect

 I have heard of the January  Effect where investors (in US and perhaps other countries as well)  looking to create tax losses to offset capital gains, sell their stocks (usually small caps) in December, lowering prices (a sell-off) then comes January there would be a buying spree to grab those low-priced stocks (a rally) leading to a general increase in stock prices during the month of January. Yes, I did notice the phenomenon in our Malaysian bourse in the first week of 2010 but I partially attributed it to the natural continuation of the year-end global market run-up which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Index climbing up. 

January Effect 4Jan

by AfraidtoTrade

Almost all my trading and services portfolios were up such as  SIME  which went to 9.11 and AXIATA  broke its 3.15 resistant level to 3.17 so as TM going up to 3.15  from 2.99 and look at my construction stocks MRCB and HSL! I regretted very much  buying  additional shares of  THPLANT at 1.47 when MRCB was 1.37 during the same period. While the former has gone up to 1.53 today, the latter has shot up to 1.68!! I have a soft spot for palm oil. I really must get out of this mindset.


Today it looks like the January Effect (due to whatever reasons) has become short-lived. SIME has gone down by almost 15 sen. Now, how did I miss capitalizing on the Effect? Basically I am beginning to love my stocks, I know this is dangerous. I may not be able to create steady wealth if I go on like this. Fancy having to wait for 12 more months to catch another January Effect and I bet  I would still miss that.....perhaps I may need to rely on those  fund managers after all... but then stock-watching  would not be fun anymore.

My HoLiDay PiCtuReS

                                                                      The Marina at dusk

                         Sunset Boulevard in the evening

                                                                    

 

                                                                       The  Resort Hotel Airwell

Sweet Tiger Lillies

                                           Santa and his sleigh

Resort and Spa

Lovely Poinsettia

 

Tranquil Gazebo and spectacular white sandy beach

                                                                               My Jim Thompson tote bag

 

                                                         Relaxing with a mug of lemon tea

My New Year's Eve 2010

This year on 31 December 2009, unlike most years, I had to go to the city to send a relative and her family to a hotel.It was 8 pm, about four hours before midnight which would herald the new year. As all the hotels were celebrating the coming of the new year, it was difficult to find a quite place for dinner at around 9pm. So we settled for the Golf Club which did not have any celebration as the yacht club in front of it was already holding one complete with a buffet at RM180  (for members) inclusive of a live band  and they started the merrymaking at 6.30pm. Our guests arrived at the airport at 7.40pm.

                 The club's staircase decorated since Christmas.

It was a quite dinner as we were the only people besides a couple of Japanese golfers who were having a drink. Earlier on the way to the hotel we noticed traffics were snarling to a crawl. Normally the highway is quite fast. Then we saw on both sides of the dual-carriage highway, uniformed men from the Road Transport Department (RTD) were inspecting vehicles... what the heck! Why are they doing this on new year's eve? They might have done it in the past but since I never ventured into the city on such a night I did not know whether this had always been the practice. I just failed to see the logic though. Why set up the check points well before midnight? It was a definite killjoy as far as I am concerned.

I did not see this in Australia and neither did I see this in the UK. It was a strange way of doing their work. New year's eve is not everyday. If they were to set up the check points after midnight I would have understood as drink driving is dangerous and drunk motorists need to be stopped at all cost.

It looks to me  like  they have not done their enforcement work properly all year round so to compensate  for this they need  to catch as many motorists as possible on new year's eve as more of the latter tend to travel during that window period to celebrate the new year.To me this is a negative approach to enforcement work.

We ended up taking almost double the time to get in and out of the city. As our relative had a 13-month old child, we decided to finish our dinner early at about 10.30pm and sent them back to their hotel. By the time we arrived home it was already 11.30pm. There was a full moon and the music was blaring from a hilltop bungalow across the valley from our house. They were having a new year's eve party complete with a vociferous deejay. Last year was unusually quite. It appears that  this year is a lot  merrier.

The camera does not do justice to the Full Moon! 

My precious henna tree in the foreground.

The houses in the valley below mine. 

(My camera fails to capture the fireworks!)

We sat on the veranda enjoying the light breeze and the bright moonlight and observing the valley below. I was also busy texting happy new year's messages and replying those received on my handphone. As the clock struck at midnight, fire crackers were let off and brilliant  fireworks brightened the sky almost around 180 degrees. I did not see these last year. Has our economy really recovered? My spirits lifted seeing the marks of joy people exuded for the new year.

The music from the bungalow stopped while the party revellers were doing the countdown to midnight then they roared full of mirth accompanied by fire crackers and fireworks. Their loud music stopped about 10 minutes later. As neighbors we understand and respect their right to celebrate and enjoy themselves.

Sydney 2010 

(courtesy from Chef)

I went inside the house to  watch CNN news on the massive new year's celebrations from New Zealand, Sydney and Hong Kong and those beautiful fireworks were just spectacular and I imagined  the Australian Enforcement Personnel wishing every reveller they met a Happy New Year 2010 and advised motorists to drive carefully and not get drunk for everyone's safety while their counterparts in Malaysia were busy booking motorists for the slightest infraction and merrily spoiling the peoples' new year's moods. Suddenly sadness overwhelmed me. I blame it on my overseas education. While it has opened my eyes and made me more sensitive and I would like to think, more broad-minded, I am usually at loggerhead with the cultural lag in my country.

The ice-blended mocha chocolate drink from Coffee Bean had kept me awake till the wee hours.... Good morning 2010!