Child virus fears spread to China’s capital

BEIJING (Reuters) - Fears of a virus that has killed at least 26 children in China gripped parents in Beijing on Tuesday amid a spreading outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease.

The health scare prompted the Foreign Ministry to seek to assure the country it was doing its best to contain the outbreak.

“The Chinese government is paying great attention to the virus and related departments are taking effective measures to stop it from spreading,” ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference.

Hand, foot and mouth is a common illness in children and infants caused by a family of viruses called enteroviruses and outbreaks regularly occur in China.

But the current outbreak has led to fatalities mostly when linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71), which can cause a severe form of the disease that can lead to high fever, paralysis and viral meningitis.

Some 11,905 cases of hand, foot and mouth have been reported in China this year, the official Xinhua news agency said. EV71 has caused 26 deaths, largely in Fuyang, a city in China’s eastern province of Anhui. At least two deaths were in the southern province of Guangdong.

All of the deaths in Fuyang were of children under six years old and most were under two.

Parents in Beijing, host city of the 2008 Olympics that has not reported any deaths from EV71, were also on the alert.

The World Health Organisation this week ruled out the virus as a threat to the Olympics but has cautioned that the virus, which spreads mostly through contact with infected blisters or feces, could be yet to peak.

China, which initially covered up the SARS epidemic in 2003, has denied a cover-up this time round and ordered authorities to aggressively tackle hand, foot and mouth.

An editorial in Monday’s China Daily blamed the crisis in Fuyang on a “delayed reaction” by the local government.

Thousands of Chinese children have been infected by a form of hand, foot and mouth disease, which may have claimed 26 lives, the government has said.

What is hand, foot, and mouth disease?

China punishes doctors, officials for misdeeds in foot-hand-mouth epidemic

HEFEI, May 5 (Xinhua) — Authorities in east China’s Anhui province have ordered punishment for 10 doctors and officials for their misdeeds in handling the hand-foot-mouth disease that has caused 22 deaths in the province, official sources said on Monday.

China’s hand-foot-mouth cases rise to 11,905

All this adds up to China doing everything in its power to suppress negative news that might threaten their Olympics. The cost of media spin, suppression of facts. As millions of Chinese go about their daily lives and dream of tourist dollars, pollution and disease are incidental issues that must not be emphasized. China’s government cannot detain or jail viruses, they must be very concerned that word of these illnesses will leak. The Olympics at any cost must be their goal. Look at the beautiful image they project to world media. Threats of disease and toxic contamination is incidental to the larger goal of impressing the world. Image over substance is disinformation spread by propaganda! Propaganda is a form of virus, also.

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17,000 incompetent teachers in England

LONDON, Feb. 2 Failing teachers remain in classrooms at state schools because local authorities do not report them, the head of the General Teaching Council for England says.

Keith Bartley estimates that 17,000 teachers are not doing a good job. But he said the council, founded seven years ago, has only removed eight from teaching, The Guardian reports.

The government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised to improve teaching and to draw up procedures to get the incompetents out.

US Education Report Card

Alan Greenspan: “we have developed a shortage of highly skilled workers and a surplus of lesser-skilled workers,”

National Science Board: “the global competition for science and engineering talent is intensifying…the U.S. may not be able to rely on the international market to fill our unmet needs,” warns the NSB. Indeed, as globalization accelerates, bright young Indian or Chinese scientists may well have better opportunities at home than in the U.S.

Heritage Foundation: According to the most recent NAEP assessments, only 31 percent of 4th graders are proficient in reading, while 32 percent are proficient in mathematics, 29 percent in science, and 18 percent in American history. Low-income students did half as well. In fact, over half of poor fourth graders failed to show even a basic level of knowledge in reading, science, or history.[5]

Despite higher than average per-pupil expenditures, American 8th graders ranked 19th out of 38 countries on the most recent international mathematics comparison, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (TIMSS-R) of 1999. American students scored 18th out of 38 countries in science.[23] In combined scores of mathematics and science literacy, 12th-graders in the United States ranked 18th out of 21 countries on the 1995 TIMSS assessment.[24]

America has compensated for its failure to adequately educate the next generation by importing brainpower. Today’s education infrastructure is so micro managed by political agenda and marketing ploys, that teaching students seems an afterthought. America’s current administration is famous for using big words and painting pretty pictures of what they plan to do for “the next generation”. Meanwhile, the current generation will struggle to locate the capitol of their state or country on a US map. Yes, there are some very bright exceptions to this blanket statement. These students are usually highly motivated curious self learners. Too often, they are labeled ‘geeks’.

It is sad to see that Britain is in a similar boat. Historically, the decline of empires begins with self consuming assumptions of entitlement and invincibility. Empires, with no enlightened point of reference, will loose their place in the world puzzle and are doomed to fail. These students will be running our country in a few years. They will also be the guardians of our own golden years .

Marketing has dumbed America, and apparently Britain, too. Our children have become mere consumers of everything marketed to them, except academics. Mesmerized by television, internet and billboards, we Americans are brainwashed. We must eat this food, wear those clothes, see this movie, take these drugs, but not those drugs and use this product to look and feel sexy so you can get your man or woman into the sack. Manipulated into consuming robots, western civilization has infected the world with a fantasy world of comfort and prosperity. As the world joins the consumer robot culture, we discover the earth does not welcome this attitude. Dumb humans will be spanked by the larger reality that we are mere visitors on a planet that educates through demonstration.

2007 Presidential Primary Polls

National Survey Findings For Children’s Agenda

• Voters across the country believe that political leaders are not doing enough to ensure the health, education and well-being of children and that the next President and Congress need to give a higher priority to the country’s children and spend less time on other issues. This concern permeates voters regardless of partisanship or region of the country.
• Nearly half of voters nationally say that the health, education and well-being of children in America in the last 10 years have gotten worse (45%). Only 44% believe things for children have improved. Looking towards the future, just 44% think the conditions for children will get better while 41% say they will get worse.
• A significant share (38%) of voters say children’s issues will be more important to them personally in the presidential election than in past elections. Children’s issues will play a greater role with Independents (46%) than either Democrats (35%) or Republicans (33%). Independents also are most pessimistic that when today’s children in the United States grow up, they will not have the same opportunities that the current generations had (59% pessimistic compared to 40% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans).

Four Key Early Primary/Caucus States Survey Findings

• Voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada want candidates for President to provide a comprehensive agenda of how they would address the needs of children.