Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

First in, virology how virulent a virus is a combination of its ability to infect a new host and its ability to cause a disease. Generally speaking the common cold is highly infectious but not virulent because it doesn't as a rule kill people.
There are a host of diseases that are both deadly and highly contagious. Although a more inclusive word would be transmissible because then you could also include malaria, bubonic plague and all the other deadly diseases transmitted by blood sucking insects. Ebola, HIV, measles, small pox, polio, typhoid, cholera and a host of other viral and bacterial diseases are high transmissible and deadly to varying degrees. We just don't see them much these days (with the exception of HIV) because we live in first world countries where the population has a good collective understanding of hygiene and transmission vectors and where a significant portion of the population is vaccinated.


Making judgements on others motives is a very hard thing to do but I can certainly imagine health experts scared witless about the prospect of a flu virus as deadly as the virus responsible for the 1918 epidemic with modern air travel. The evidence they had might have been slim but if they get a similar set of evidence I hope they do it all again because the time they don't may just be the time they should have and since the only way to be sure is after the fact I hope they don't wait that long.

Not sure where you are getting your info but the company involved says differently, vis-a-vis... Not giveaways, but sales. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Yeah... or not. Saying something is wrong doesn't make it wrong. Trying to argue from Authority doesn't really help a case unless the other side has acknowledged your Authority.
You seem to have conflated the definition of virulent for disease or poison with that for pathogens. For pathogens virulent normally is a synonym for infectious. But you're correct in that I should have put 'normally' in there.

Deadly viruses tend to kill hosts before they can spread much, while infectious ones tend to spread BECAUSE they are not deadly. each carrier can infect many others. Deadly viruses also, in humans tend to get the carrier isolated quickly.

AFAIK normally when talking about the virus, virulence is about how infectious it is. When talking about the resultant disease is when the effect and toxicity come into it.

Also Spanish flu is not a good choice - there is doubt as to the cause AND the transmission vectors. And that opens a whole other subject this thread is not about.

To paraphrase something I said before, "Just because they are not after you doesn't mean you are not paranoid" In other words just because you choose not to see connections doesn't mean you can't, just that you (for whatever reason) choose not to. When 'coincidences' keep occurring eventually there comes a point where connection becomes a more likely causative factor.

Would you like to join the Illuminati? I can have my handler bring you in... He already knows who you are and your habits so he can meet you wherever you happen to be.

So, back to useful information...

This one may not be to everybody's taste. It's another of those Science results that has an 'everything' in it. The CSIRO chief said that zinc ions worked on every virus they could test it on. The blueberries were said to show effects on everything they could feed a blueberry to. This one has worked on everything they have tried it on - effects on humans are still not calibrated - you will understand why in a moment.

Take a good healthy diet, one providing all the vitamins and nutrients for good health. Doesn't matter what organism. Measure how much is needed to maintain a healthy body.

Now cut 1/4 to 1/3 off the top and live on it. In other words, don't cut out (say) meat, but recude everything by 1/4/ to 1/3 and maintain it as a normal diet.

Science says this will not only increase your lifespan by anything up to 30%, it changes the shape of your health curve. What that means is this... Let's say your life was going to be grow until 22, live healthy and hale till 70 then slowly decline in health until you die at 100, Under the caloric restriction diet you could expect to grow until 22, live healthy and hale until 125, then decline in health until you die at 130.

Not only will you live longer but you will be far more healthy for a longer %'age of the time than if you kept eating your normal diet. And you will LOOK younger and healthier.

Note: NOBDOY is suggesting a growing child/young adult should try this - it is an Adults-Only thing.

Note: Pretty sure by a normal healthy diet they didn't mean a regimen of fast foods etc.

At the time of publication in SciAm they didn't have a mechanism. Since then I have seen research that suggested to me that maybe the caloric restriction has an effect on free radical production or damage. i.e. combine it with blueberries for a maximum rejuvenation effect.

So what your saying is that anorexia is good for adults Actually, I have read a bit about that, and there does seem to be some validity to it. The question you have to ask yourself is: is it worth it? Now, I am no glutton. But death is inevitable. Prolonging it by eating less does not appeal to me, especially because the way I get when hungry means someone will probably kill me early anyway!

Depends what you are used to Ron. Most of our eating is habit-based. If we accept the orthodox history ideas we are cursory hunters who only recently developed an agrarian diet. So recently in fact that our bodies are still not used to it. Many ancient cultures maintain humans used to live MUCH longer than now - even the bible has Noah beginning his ark campaign after he was 600 years old; Egypt has history of rulers living even longer. The orthodox explanation for such history is that the ancients somehow confused months with years - this would be the same ancients that mapped Precession of Equinoxes and knew the size of a spherical earth.

What I find interesting is to note that in the bible at least, and in many other origin myths, the lifetimes shortened after the Flood. On top of which we have some very strange grains appearing around the (real) time of Flood. So I wonder if perhaps, which devastation looming, somebody made some survival rations to see us through the coming bad times, and ever since we've been addicted, even though it is killing us early.

Like a sailor lost on the ocean for weeks, living on hard tack, and coming back to civilisation and unable to give up the hard tack. What will keep you alive in an emergency is not necessarily good for you in the long run.

There are some interesting data sets developed for things like the Paleolithic/Neolithic diet, and the blood-type diet that seem to bear on the subject of what to eat for health. Our long-standing love-affair with grains (and more recently, sugar) may be killing us early.

As perhaps is our obsession with sitting around being programmed by the idiot box in the corner.

No patient that was diagnosed with swine flu in 2009 paid for Tamiflu.

All that happened was the stockpile was turned over in a period of six months rather than 2 years.

Roche had fantastic sales in six months but very little after.

Which from a business point of view is not desirable.

You would rather equally spaced smaller outbreaks on a monthly basis.

That way you can plan your supply line and rosters.









CDC discovers new viral mutation April 15

First recorded death was in Mexico April 13.

Probably more as Mexico had the outbreak long before but were unaware.

propaganda started April 22



Please enlighten me



Actually this is how viruses mutate and have done so for millions of years.



The almost out of date doses had already been purchased by the government

They were in the government stockpile.

Do you honestly think that an experienced operator as Roche Pharmaceuticals would

produced millions of doses of anything just to leave them on the shelf to go out of date?

Just in time production is what everybody does.



Let me guess, it was a world wide conspiracy started by the Czar of Russia

Wrong, Trout! It was not the last czar of Russia who started the Spanish Flu, it was....Rasputin. With financial support of the czarina he started one of the first pharmaceutical companies in Siberia. They studied insects for their suspected role in carrying viruses. Somehow one fly from Spain managed to get out, survived the Siberian cold while traveling to Moscow at the roof of a Trans-Siberia express wagon only to infect the then no.1 leader of the Trotskyist movement. This Spanish Fly was the start of it all and postponed the Russian revolution for at least two years.

There's even a song about it, by Boney M!

Oh bugger

I'm going to have to agree with Journeyman.

There is some very good research occurring at the moment which if correct may change how

we live and eat.

And it doesn't matter what you eat as long as it's reasonable.



Prof Mark Mattson is studying calorie restriction and decreased onset of dementia.

He has found that by restricting calories on an alternate day basis you can decrease onset

of dementia and it triggers the growth of new brain cells ( in mice)

Interestingly a daily low calorie diet wasn't effective. You need sporadic hunger bouts.


Dr Krista Varady

Is doing human trials on alternate day fasting

ie. one day eat only 500 calories next day eat what you want


results: lower blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugars.


She ran two groups, one group ate a "healthy diet" and the other group ate a high fat diet

end results were the same.

It would seem that what you eat is not as important as giving your body a break.


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt ... shortfilms

if you want to know more click on the link above

The first half is interesting but a bit slow

Dr Varady starts at 37 minutes

Prof Mattson starts at 43 minutes.

The first part talks about Insulin like growth factor 1 (IGF1) which may make anti-oxidants

such as blueberries not as important as is being suggested.


By the way the producer of this doco Dr Michael Mosley made a great doco on exercise

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz2fwb ... _lifestyle

I knew it

Everybody is in a conspiracy except me

Don't cry, there is one for everybody, just have to find it. You too, can become truly conspired!

Disappointment at agreeing with someone is perhaps rather more revealing than you might wish, trout.

Apple Cider Vinegar is very effective at removing warts. Our 5-year-old son got facial warts. It started as one little bump that did not look like a wart. It spread rapidly multiplying to well over 100 on his chin, neck and chest. My wife and I were very concerned that it would scar him for life.

Our pediatrician, bless his heart, offered a "home remedy" for us to try. He did not want to use "medical" treatments due to the scarring potential. We tried it and it worked! We focused on the 3 or 4 largest warts and applied the treatment every day. I don't remember exactly but I want to say it was less than a month before they were all gone.

Here is a link http://www.apple-cider-vinegar-benefits ... negar.html

On another note about viruses...scientists can treat almost any viral infection now by targeting the infected cell. A virus needs the body's cells to duplicate their RNA thereby duplicating itself. The cell then dies but it is too late at that point. The virus has already duplicated itself and the "clones" move on to other cells. There are drugs that target the infected cells through detection and then cause the cell to virtually kill itself before the RNA duplication can occur. Very cool stuff.

They have successfully cured animals with ebola, one of the fastest spreading, deadliest viruses know to man. According to what I have read, the main concern with using these treatments now is that there may beneficial viruses that are necessary for life to exist. If the drugs targets all virus infected cells, we could wipe out all virus on the planet. In turn...we could literally wipe ourselves out trying to kill the things that can kill us.

Popular Science magazine has had some great articles on viruses.

In the book Survival of the Sickest, it is said that some of the DNA that makes us human, omens specifically from viruses. Apparently they are even responsible for some of the structures in out brain.

@Trout, thank you for the link to the video. It was an interesting watch!