LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
- August 22, 2006
Dear Editor:
It's a Saturday in late July and only mad dogs will go out in the noonday sun. Okay then, the first order of business is to get a cold drink and turn on all the circulating fans.
Next, I gently lower myself onto a beach towel-lined recliner to watch sports via satellite TV, programming that in my estimation costs far too much considering the content. Read on for an explanation.
The sports menu reveals that I can start by watching the gold medal lacrosse game, Team Canada (read, Team Ontario) against Team USA, where I can watch the Americans uncharacteristically lose to Canada at our national sport. If that gets tedious I can switch to major league baseball, NY Yankees @ Toronto, or basketball reruns, first Toronto @ Washington, then Toronto vs. Sacramento followed by Boston @ Toronto.
If I get tired of Toronto basketball reruns I can watch a CFL game at 4 pm featuring winless Toronto @ Saskatchewan. This time I face double jeopardy, not only do I pay my satellite provider to see this game but I also pay for the CBC programming via taxation.
After supper I can treat myself to more basketball, the Toronto Raptors against Golden State. I can only hope that one day I'll get to watch Steve Nash if Phoenix plays in Toronto. If I'm tired of watching the pathetic Raptors I may watch a rerun of the equally pathetic hockey Maple Leafs, followed by another basketball game featuring the cellar dwelling Toronto Raptors. Doubtless, by this time you are wondering, what's my point?
You may correctly assume that I love to watch spectator sports --- but let me draw your attention to a question recently posed by Radio Canada, Why does everyone hate Toronto? If I really hated Toronto, I would point to the fact that 99% of all so-called charitable organizations that request donations from me on a monthly basis and most of our financial institutions (with licenses to steal) are headquartered there.
No, I don't hate Toronto, but I would much rather pay to watch sports that are of interest to Westerners. So, the culprits are Rogers, Bell and the CBC (all located in Toronto) who smugly assume that all Canadians are fascinated by events that occur in the center of the universe.
Wouldn't it be a smart, sound business decision for an electronic media company to start satellite programming primarily for Western Canada? Would we let Toronto watch? Why of course, as long as they paid a western media company a minimum of forty bucks a month!
- HPToews, Princeton
Letter to The Editor;
Sir;
Seems the pile of rubble that once was the Princeton Hotel will be with us for a while.
Why not make the most of it and designate it an original work of art? Have the Town post a large sign in front of the rubble titled, "The Face Of Destruction," "Artist or Artists Unknown."
Considering this picture of devastation is located in the centre of paradise when other parts of the world are suffering from major natural disasters and the scourge of war, the scene is well worth meditating upon.
Regards,
Joe Schwarz, Princeton
Editor, The Similkameen News Leader:
Last week the media treated us to the latest example of contradictory and incoherent policy-making by our masters in Victoria --- and of our own confusion about cause and effect.
First there was a spate of articles about how our earth is warming up, as is evident in our diminishing glaciers, in the falling water levels in our rivers and streams, in our precious salmon dying before they can spawn because of increased water temperatures, in the deepening drought leading to increased forest fires, and in the rampaging of bark beetles and budworm, which thrive because of our warmer winters.
The cause of climate change and global warming appears to lie in our production of greenhouse gases, which we so industriously belch into our atmosphere as a result of our increasing use of fossil fuels.
Yet in the same week, our Premier cheerfully announces grandiose plans to permit and encourage (and probably subsidize) the construction of coal-fired generators, which are a major source of the carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide, which are a prime cause of global warming. The burning of coal also produces emissions of mercury and other heavy metals, especially harmful to children.
Those who propose to build these generators blandly assure us that there is no problem, that new technology will take out the noxious gases and put them somewhere safe and secure; and anyway, jobs (and profits) will be created by burning coal to produce electricity. By the time plants are built, the gases are pouring out, and the profits are rolling in, we will be told that it's too late to close them down because we need the power, and the jobs (and the profits).
In our contradictory behaviour, we resemble the guy who suffers from terminal lung cancer, galloping emphysema and heart palpitations --- and who proposes to increase his consumption of cigarettes from one to two packs a day. Why? Because it will create jobs in the tobacco industry, and because he loves the feeling of smoke in his lungs.
He is killing himself, but he can't stop smoking environment, but we are addicted to consuming more and more energy.
The Mayor of Princeton is perfectly correct -- we are poised between the horns of a dilemma. We must choose between more jobs (and profits) by burning coal on the one hand, and cleaner air and more moderate temperatures on the other, but we can't have both.
Given the voracious thirst for more and more energy in North America, I have little doubt which way the choice is going to fall.
- Don Burbidge, Princeton
The Editor:
I am alarmed by misinformation circulating in Princeton which could create public anxiety about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome and which has the potential to start an unwarranted marmot witch hunt.
There is nothing wrong with alerting the public to the possibility, however slim, that hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) exists in our area. It is not appropriate, however, to label rodents in general, and marmots in particular, as reservoirs of viral infection and plague and to suggest that they all represent a health hazard. It pains me greatly to think that yet another animal group could be victimized by misguided human fear.
Generalizing with the term rodent is drawing and excessively long bow. Within the animal kingdom the single largest group of mammals is the Rodentia. Nearly half of non-flying mammals are rodents. There are about 1,500 living rodent species out of about 4,300 living mammals overall. Most people are familiar with mice, rats, hamsters, and guinea pigs, which are commonly kept as pets. The Rodentia also includes beavers, muskrats, porcupines, woodchucks, chipmunks, squirrels, prairie dogs, marmots, chinchillas, voles, lemmings, and many others. Rodents are found native on all continents except Antarctica. There are many species of marmots and many more species of mice.
It is important to recognize that when we, the public, and public health agencies use the umbrella term Rodent, it is normally in reference to mice or rats. Marmots and beavers do not automatically spring to mind.
It is unrealistic to think that we can somehow destroy all potentially harmful rodents. A recent Center for Disease Control (CDC) report concludes that such an attempt is "neither feasible nor desirable because of the wide distribution of (such) rodents in North America and their importance in the function of the natural ecosystem."
Marmots are nothing like the dreaded rats and mice of old disasters. These creatures are all separated by millions of years of evolution. Viruses have evolved, in concert with all other life forms, to target a specific host in a lock and key relationship.
The virus is the key; the vulnerable species is the lock. Viruses can not infect incompatible hosts any more than you can unlock a stranger's door. Through mutation, which we might also call sheer dumb-luck, from time to time, a virus gains the power to infest a new kind of host, or encounters a new species that it can, by chance, access. The key has found a new lock to open. Occasionally the new lock is human and we can be made mildly to terribly ill.
Viruses do not migrate independently. They must be transported by a suitable carrier and must then find a suitable host, or die when the carrier does. Successful viruses live in harmony and their carriers; they do not make them sick. This allows both to reproduce for many generations and to disperse widely.
All living things, including human beings, are host to all sorts of viruses that do no harm. Marmots may well carry viruses but I could find nothing in the current scientific literature available to the public to implicate them in contemporary human infection anywhere.
It is not true that Old World viruses of the Haatan family, responsible for hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), (formerly Korean fever), jumped continents to infect North America. Old World viruses and their rodent carriers evolved independently. HFRS is a nasty group of clinically similar illnesses that can lead to vascular leakage, and acute kidney failure. In North and South America, viruses in the Haatan family cause a very different, equally nasty, disease known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS); a disease about which we should be informed.
The CDC Hantavirus website explains: "Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) is a potentially deadly disease transmitted by infected rodents through urine, droppings, or saliva. Humans can contract the disease when they breathe in aerosolized (floating in the dust) viruses. HPS was first recognized in 1993 and has since been identified throughout the United States."
However, the CDC assures people: "In North America the risk of hantavirus infection is low." Since 1993 only 438 cases have been confirmed in the USA with a 36 percent fatality rate (May 9, 2006 report). Native lore indicates that this virus has been around for a very long time but remained unrecognized because HPS is so rare.
"In the United States, deer mice, cotton and rice rats (in the Southeast), and the white-footed mouse (in the Northeast), are the only known rodent carriers of hantaviruses causing HPS." The common house mouse is not a carrier. "The deer mouse is found almost everywhere in North America" (including Canada). It likes woodlands, but is also found in desert areas. "Because this type of rodent is restricted to the Americas, HPS is restricted to the Americas." It is also comforting to know that "HPS cannot be transmitted from one person to another" and that "HPS is not known to be transmitted to or by farm animals, dogs, or cats or from rodents purchased from a pet store."
Should Princeton worry about HPS? Well, we are in a rural/wilderness area and we can assume that there are deer mice in our woods. Since 1993, when the hantavirus was first identified in North America, 61 cases of HPS have been documented in Canada. Nine cases occurred in B.C. Of these, seven occurred in the Interior Health region. Three were fatal. SO, if I found rodent droppings and did not know one mouse from another, I would err on the side of caution, presume it is from a deer mouse and take remedial action.
Though the overall risk of hantavirus infection is low, I would be cautious with my clean-up and check out the CDC or Interior Health Region advice before I touched anything. I prefer the Interior Health Region website because it is local and provides practical guidelines suited to our area. Visit www.interiorhealth.ca, then select Seasonal Alerts, then Hantavirus.
To keep hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in perspective, consider that the North American continent has a population of 331,473,276 million or more people. If we assume half of these people live in metropolitan areas and have zero chance of encountering a hantavirus infected mouse, that leaves 165,736,638 potential contacts. I am guessing, but let us assume only half of these people live in truly rural settings, roughly 82,868,319 million remain. In the past 13 year (since 1993) there have been 499 cases of HPS in North America (including Canada), on average 38 per year. That means, in any given year we country folk appear to have a roughly 1:2,180,745 million chance of falling victim to HPS; very good odds for our side.
Despite my statistical self-reassurance, I will have a tiny concern about HPS and will be vigilant. Would I worry about a future plague brought by marmots and gophers? Absolutely Not!
- Karin Green, Princeton
