Scott McPherson's Web Presence

 Killer of Marine deverves the needle.

Delvis Fernandez rode a Marine Humvee's  50 caliber machine gun in the streets of Iraq. Eariler this week, he was killed in a senseless act of violence.

Only he was not gunned down in Iraq. He was gunned down in downtown Sarasota, Florida, his adopted hometown.

He was not gunned down by an Iraqi insurgent, nor was he gunned down by al Qaida-in-Iraq. He was gunned down in a carjacking attempt by a common thug (OK, accused common thug) who, according to police, was aided and abetted in the crime by his mother.

The accused murderer, Deandre Tunstall (photo below), was driven to the crime scene by his mother. Tunstall had a pistol and a black ski mask with him at the time. Police claim Tunstall's mother knew what he was about to do and lied to police about it.

Fernandez was going home after his daily classes to become a police officer. The sheer randomness and the sheer audacity of the crime are shocking, even in this day and age where hardly anything is a shock anymore.  From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

SARASOTA - A witness saw Deandre Tunstall, dressed in black from head to toe, pull a black ski mask over his face, put on black gloves and arm himself with a handgun, Sarasota police say.

Deandre Tunstall, already a felon, is charged with murder.

In the afternoon daylight, witnesses saw the man in black confront another man on the north side of the Star Mini-Mart in Newtown, shoot him several times and flee, police say.

Officials say two witnesses picked Tunstall, 18, out of a photo lineup, and detectives arrested the convicted felon and charged him with murder Tuesday night in Manatee County.

A SWAT team and other violent crimes officers surrounded a house, and found a handgun inside when they arrested Tunstall, police said.

Iraq War veteran Delvis Fernandez, 21, died Friday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. There was apparently no previous connection between Tunstall and Fernandez, police said.

Detectives believe it was a carjacking attempt.

Fernandez stopped at the convenience store, 2950 N. Washington Blvd., on his way home from community college classes Friday about 3 p.m. He was studying to become a Sarasota police officer.

A witness identified Tunstall as the man dressed in all black running east from the convenience store on 30th St., hopping some fences and telling someone on a cell phone to pick him up on Leonard Reid Avenue, police said.

Seven evidence markers showing the locations of bullet casings or bullet fragments were scattered around the passenger side of Fernandez's car, which was towed away Friday afternoon.

Fernandez, a Booker High School graduate, had returned from an eight-month tour in Iraq with the Marine Reserves, where he often manned a .50-caliber gun on the lead car in dangerous supply convoys.

When he got back home, Fernandez also rejoined his minor-league football team, the Sarasota Millionaires, which had final tryouts Saturday just blocks from the shooting.

Millionaires co-owner Bethsaida Williams said Fernandez's teammates were relieved to hear of the arrest Wednesday, as they prepared to go to his wake.

"A lot of thoughts run through your head. Who else does he have it out for?" Williams said.

The funeral is scheduled for this morning.

Fernandez's friends say he gave back to the community, such as reading to elementary school children.

He had been bilingual since his mother brought him here from Cuba, and would have made a good police officer, said those who knew him.

Police also arrested Tunstall's mother, Rose Mary Salem, 41, on a charge of helping her son commit murder and lying to police.

She admitted driving her son to the convenience store just before the shooting, police said.

Tunstall had just been released from jail after pleading guilty to a robbery. He had been arrested in February and was sentenced to time served. Wednesday night, he remained in the Sarasota County jail without bail.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20081030/ARTICLE/810300391

This is not the first time an Iraq war veteran has successfully braved the bullets of the enemy, only to come home and be gunned down by an American in a senseless act of violence.  The perp is usually some thug, some piece of crap loser with no future who acts purely out of self-interest with absolutely no regard for the consequences.

We've got some serious issues here.  Note this scumbag was just released for burglary.  It is a step up to murder, but leniency of a judge is inferred by the articles. 

In this case, the perp was black and the victim was Hispanic.  In other cases, the crime is black-on-black.  They can be white-on-white, or any variation under the sun,  Regardless of color, class or motivation, only when all facets of American society decide to deal with finality and with no remorse toward these scumbags will we actually start to regain control of our streets again and move forward together as a people.  No rationalization of the act; no psychobabble about his upbringing or his hopelessness.  Bullshit.  Only the needle or a lifetime of jail without any hope of parole will suffice for him and others like him who prey upon the lawful.

The mystery behind the outbreak of some sort of hemorrhagic fever in Zambia is beginning to be solved by the CDC and the South African government. For those not watching such things: Three people are dead from what is now believed to be a form of arenavirus.

The index case -- Patient Zero of this new and so-far unknown variant -- is a Zambian who was hospitalized in Johannesburg, South Africa. Two persons who were in the hospital for treatment unassociated with the index patient's disease (nosocomial) also develped symptoms and died. A fourth patient -- a nurse treating the second, NOT the index patient -- is in isolation and is being treated with ribavirin, which helps against lassa fever but is experimental when dealing with this new virus.

Here's a chilling paragraph from the proMED report:

"Arenaviruses cause chronic infection in wild rodents (multimammate mice) with excretion of virus in urine, which can contaminate human food or house dust. Arenaviruses have been found in southern African rodents in the past, but there has been no previous association with human disease. The virus associated with the present outbreak may prove to be a new member of the group." (bold mine)

So we have a new and previously undiagnosed form of arenavirus which has apparently jumped the species barrier from animals (rodents) to humans. Isn't that just lovely? And the virus is highly contagious to boot, as evidenced by the rapid spread to other patients in the hospital -- and the infection of the nurse who was attending one of the follow-on cases.

Now it could be forcefully argued that this could be a case of lax hospital protocols, were it not for the fact that South Africa is no stranger to Ebola, Lassa Fever and Marburg.  This means they may have made some protocol errors, and that may be a leading, if not likely source of the contamination of the two other patients. But it also shows how devastatingly contagious this new disease is.

Samples are undergoing further testing to see if they can quantify the virus further. Again, from the proMED report: A chilling incubation period also exists for this new disease, an even longer incubation period than influenza.

"The incubation period for cases in the present cluster ranges from

7-13 days. There is a prodromal illness of about 7 days with myalgia, headache, diarrhoea, and a severe pharyngitis. This is followed by a more severe illness with moderate thrombocytopenia but no bleeding.

Hepatic dysfunction with raised transaminases has typically occurred late in the course of disease."

Stay tuned.

Prince of Wales Island in Alaska is the home to the most recent outbreak of respiratory illness Adenovirus 14, otherwise known as Ad14.  And true to form, it has sickened 34, caused severe illness enough to warrant mainland evacuation of seven, and killed one. 

It has also promoted rumors of quarantine, which are unfounded.  But that is what happens when a mystery illness for which there is no treatment happens to a community.

No one is sure how the disease made its way to the island, but the virus has appeared time and again in the Pacific Northwest, so perhaps it is not surprising that it would eventually find its way to an Alaskan island. 

Longtime readers of this blogsite know I have been sounding the alarm bells on Ad14 for over a year.  This virus is the "hidden epidemic" of respiratory illnesses, in my opinion.  It is everywhere.  It is pervasive.  And we are not testing for it.  So we don't know what we don't know, and doctors will continue to misdiagnose it as "a cold" until such time as we take it for what it is:  A new variant of an old virus that can kill if not taken seriously.

Where is the research into Ad14?  While avian flu gets all the glamour, Ad14 continues to spread and to inflict disease and, in several cases, death.  While we (necessarily) prepare for a pandemic of influenza, we must also concern ourselves with this new and developing threat.  For a quick primer on adenovirus, simply search my blogsite, key word adenovirus. 

"We've come for your liver!"

"But, Im using it!"

Forgive me if I am reminded of the hilarious skit from my beloved ensemble Monty Python.  But that was exactly what I began thinking when I read the Google Alert coming from Bloomfield, Connecticut. 

Bird flu survival tied to hands-on therapy

BLOOMFIELD, Conn., Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Chances of surviving a deadly avian flu pandemic would likely increase with hands-on therapy, even without antiviral drugs, a U.S. health newsletter says.

Integrative manual therapy in the area of the spleen and liver, for instance, would help fluid, blood and lymph flow appropriately, significantly boosting people's immune systems and helping them endure the feared pandemic, The Burnham Review said.

The review said flu patients back then who received manipulative therapy had a 0.25 percent mortality rate, compared to a 6 percent U.S. average. (incredulous bold mine)

"The results are striking," Editor Kimberly Burnham told United Press International.

"Some gentle manipulative therapy resulted in a dramatic difference in mortality," said Burnham, who has a doctorate in integrative medicine from Westbrook University.

What is really striking about this news report is the claim that there was a 6% mortality rate in 1918.  And I doubt if there were so many patients who received this massage to have skewed the non-massagees to die at a rate three times that of the stated mortality rate from the virus, which has always been around 2% of those infected.

Since I do not know how to massage my liver and spleen, I assume I will need to go to a qualified professional liver massage person.  I am guessing that a chiropractor or other such person could be consulted.

I also do not know how in Hades this organization came up with metrics for 1918 that somehow the established medical community missed.  It is possible, I suppose, so let's mine this new data source for what it is worth.

Until then, I suppose this therapy is as good as any other.  Wait, there's a knock on my door.... be right back.

Something is going on in Birmingham -- the new Influenza Research Capital of the US?

I was perusing the Goole Alerts - Bird Flu folder this morning.  If I don't see evidence of avian or human cases, or breaking news such as the untimely death of Graeme Laver, I kind of pass on them until I have some free time.

So I was more than a little interested in the stories that were datelined Birmingham, Alabama.  A vaccine company out of Marietta, Georgia, named Solvay, announced that due to the economy about to do its Death Roll and spiral into the great Abyss of Flaming Mismanagement, along with a Federal shortage of grant monies to build its plant, plus the oversupply of flu vaccine, it was abandoning its plans to build a manufaacturing facility in -- Birmingham, Alabama.

Birmingham?

Then I remembered the hubub surrounding antiviral manufacturer BioCryst, of -- Birmingham.  Its human tests of its new injectible influenza N-class antiviral Peramavir did not go as well as planned, and the company voluntarily stopped Phase three testing and wrote off some $4.9 million in lost revenue from the discontinuation of the HHS-sponsored trials.  But the research into Peramavir continues.

Also showing up on the radar recently is the vaccine manufacturer Vaxin.  Now when I first heard of Vaxin, forgive me if I conjured up a magazine with scantily-clad babes and stories about how to get rock-hard abs and drive Tony Stark's Audi to the foot of the Matterhorn and climb it before lunch.  

Vaxin is actually a company that is trying to use adenovirus as a transport mechanism to deliver influenza vaccine without injection.  Delivered nasally or onto the skin, the adenovirus-transported vaccine would confer quick immunity against influenza, bird flu, anthrax, and Alzheimers (!).  No vaccine against lending money to people who clearly can't pay it back, nor a vaccine against Wall Street and Washington, DC greed, excesses and stupidity.

But I digress. Vaxin is working on the Holy Grail of vaccines:  Cell-based, not egg-based vaccines, delivered quickly and without the need for needles, thimerosol, etc.  Initial tests by Vaxim claim to prevent a host of A and B flus, including some evidence of cross-immunity against H5N1.  The nearly million-dollar NIH grant will fund the research.

Just for grins, I Googled "university Birmingham influenza" and I came up with some additional stuff.  UAB (Go Blazers!) also has a nifty influenza research department, and one Gillian M. Air published a paper on "Antigenic properties of influenza neuraminidases" with none other than the recently late Graeme Laver and the Pope of Influenza, Robert G. Webster.   Published books and papers on the structure of influenza go back well into the early 1990s, and the university has partnered with Vaxin to study the effects of its work.

So a Southern city with its history in the production of steel, civil rights heroes and football players has turned into a major influenza research hub.  I think that is pretty cool.  I also think that is a great example of what a few civic leaders with vision and persistence can accomplish.  Plus, I think it is cool that a college with a dragon as its mascot is doing flu research.