SGU Episode 398
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| SGU Episode 398 |
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| 2nd March 2013 |
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| (brief caption for the episode icon) |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Guest |
JR: Jon Ronson |
| Quote of the Week |
The world is much more interesting than any one discipline. |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| SGU Podcast archive |
| Forum Discussion |
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This episode is in the middle of being transcribed by banjopine (talk) as of {{{date}}}. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this episode while this message is displayed. |
Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, February 27, 2013 and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,
B: Hey, everybody.
S: Jay Novella,
J: Hey, guys.
S: and Evan Bernstein.
E: Ah. Kum bah wa, everyone.
B: Kum bah yay, what was that?
E: Kum bah ya, no. Kum bah wa. Japanese for good evening.
S: Good evening.
E: Lots of SGU listeners in Japan. We know a few.
S: So apparently Rebecca has some kind of phlegm situation going on.
E: I didn't know she was Amish.
S: We're trying to decide if she has the flu, whooping cough, or strep throat.
J: Well, get this, guys. So Rebecca emails us and says that she's not feeling well; that she woke up really late today, and she's been basically zonked all day. And at the same time, we have a little whooping cough scare going on over here with the newborn. This is what happened. My sister-in-law came to visit from Denver. And in the Midwest you know that the whooping cough incidences are higher and everything and I just didn't really think much of it other than everyone in the family got the tdap vaccination, which is the whooping cough
S: Did she and her family get the tdap?
J: Yeah, they did. What I found out today was that, like many of the vaccines that we get, you know they're guessing at which strain is gonna be the one that's gonna hit that year,
S: No, hang on a minute, Jay. What you're describing is relevant for the flu. With the whooping cough, it's not that there's like a different strain hitting every year, it's just that tdap covers only a very narrow number of strains and the virus has mutated. You know, it just, new strains are developing. But it's not like there's a seasonal strain like the flu. It's a little bit different.
J: Yeah, I didn't mean to confuse that. I know, like, exactly what you said, that there is a newer version of it that just wasn't covered by that particular vaccination that we got.
S: yeah.
J: So, her sister left on Monday morning. She called us up today, we're recording on Wednesday. She said "Guys, I had a bad cold on my way home, and now it's turning into something that's very, what I would consider to be whooping cough-like.
E: Yeesh.
J: So we called up our doctor, you know, I have a three-and-a-half-week-old in the house now, and you know, like, very dialed into this. And we called up the doctor up and me like "What's up? Like what do we do? What happens?" And pertussis is a bacteria, it's not a virus. So they have an anti-biotic for it.
E: Anti-biotic. Yeah.
J: So, what do you call it, Steve? Erythromycin?
S: Erythromycin, yeah.
J: Erythromycin, yeah. So that's the one that they use for it. And it's the mega-dose, like two pills the first day and then you take like this mega-dose thing for four days. Of course the baby's taking the liquid form and everything. But I'm sitting there tonight with my wife and we're giving the baby its first medication, and it's freakin' whooping cough medication! Like I wanted to strangle people. Thank you everybody for not . . .
S: Anyone who has never gotten vaccinated for whooping cough, yeah.
J: Something that we could
E: Way to blow the herd immunity; way to go.
J: We could get rid of it. Did you guys see the info-graphic of . . . the CDC puts out information every year, and somebody made an info-graphic of the incidence of morbidity before and after the vaccination for a particular disease came and went. Right?
S: Yeah.
J: And right out of the gate, things like smallpox and stuff, I don't remember the exact numbers, but we have certain diseases where there was like a half a million people dying a year, down to zero. After the vaccination. And there's like, in this info-graphic, I think there was more than a dozen of them. It was incredible. Like you see the numbers, how dramatically different they are. Right there. That's a hundred percent proof. They work. And yet people are walking around out there today and they don't care; that information is meaningless to them. How? Why?
B: Well what is the worst-case scenario with pertussis? I mean, how bad could it get?
J: It can kill you, Bob; it can kill a baby.
E: Death.
B: That's bad.
S: Yeah, there was that famous case in Australia where a baby caught, Dana McCaffery, caught whooping cough in a community that had very low vaccination rates because of the Australian anti-vaccination network preaching against vaccines, and, the baby caught it from unvaccinated people. And died. 'Cause the child was too young to be vaccinated. It's one of the populations that need to be protected by herd immunity.
This Day in Skepticism (4:33)
- March 2, 1983: Compact Disc players and discs are released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had been available only in Japan before then.
S: Evan, so you're filling in for Rebecca this week for This Day in Skepticism.
E: I said "Good evening" in Japanese to start the show. And I did so because the compact disc, you guys remember what compact discs are, CDs,
S: They're still, they're still used today.
E: They are. Their first, most common usage was of course for music storage, right? Playing music. Put 80 minutes of uncompressed audio on one of those things. That's 737 megabytes of data. What do you think of that? So in Japan, is where the CDs were first, widely became available, in October of '82. However, on March 2nd of 1983, compact discs and their players were released for the first time in the United States and other markets around the world, whereas they'd only been available in Japan before but finally they came to the United States, and I remember this vividly. It was a big f'ing deal, for me and my 13-year-old friends and stuff who were all, in our own opinions, very big into music. And it was a rush to see who would get the first CD, who would be able to afford the first CD player. It was kind of bragging rights, in a sense. Do you guys remember?
S: Oh, yeah. Instantly replaced tapes, records; 8-tracks had already died by then.
E: Thank goodness.
S: Buy, yeah, and think about it, guys. Thirty years! And they're still a perfectly acceptable technology. I still buy CDs for music.
B: Really?
S: Sure.
B: Oh, man. I just download it all.
S: Yeah, but think about it. A CD, you can then rip it into any quality MP3 you want, which you own, without any DRM, and you have the CD for a backup. And it's still cost-effective. It's not like you're saving money by downloading. So it's still a perfectly viable technology. It's had a lot of longevity.
B: It's all right, I guess. I like, I hear a song that I like. Like, oh boy, that sounds really good. And I buy it. Within literally four minutes I have it on my iPhone and I'm listening to it. That's awesome.
S: I do that, too, but, if there's an album coming out and I know I want the whole album, I'll get it on a CD.
E: Something to remember, guys, is that when you purchase a CD, you're purchasing something physical that you actually own. And when you purchase a license to get a music or something you download through iTunes or something, there's a question, there's debates going on right now in the courts as to how much ownership do you actually have over that thing? In other words, can you put it into your estate and leave it to your heirs?
S: Right.
E: And they are fighting that. You know, the record industry, or industries, don't want those rights to be transferred on to descendents. Where, but with a CD you're guaranteed. That is yours, it's physical, you can do whatever the heck you want with it. So, keep that in mind also in the debate about, you know, what medium, what format you're gonna use for your music.
B: That's messed up.
News Items
Life Around Dying Stars (7:32)
http://phys.org/news/2013-02-future-evidence-extraterrestrial-life-dying.html#ajTabs
Ancient Lost Continent (15:06)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21551149
Electronic Tattoos (22:36)
Google Glass (31:25)
http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/
Who's That Noisy? (38:06)
- Answer to last week: Whistlepig
Questions and Emails
"Ow!" (40:36)
- Why do we say, "Ow!"? Joe Shoults
Interview with Jon Ronson (44:20)
- Interview with Jon Ronson, recorded at CSICon 2012.
Science or Fiction (1:00:50)
Item number one. Scientists have developed an imaging system that can look through walls into a burning building and identify survivors that need rescuing. Item number two. A new analysis finds that Spiderman’s webbing would have been strong enough to stop the commuter trains as depicted in the Spiderman 2 movie. And item number three. Researchers discover a virus with an adaptive immune system.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:13:44)
The world is much more interesting than any one discipline.
Edward Tufte
Announcements (1:15:27)
References
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