Kiera Butler

Senior Editor

Kiera answers your green questions every week in her Econundrums column. She was a hypochondriac even before she started researching germ warfare.

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Kiera has written about the environment, arts and culture, and more for Columbia Journalism Review, Orion, Audubon, OnEarth, Plenty, and the Utne Reader. She lives in Berkeley and recently planted 30 onions in her backyard.

The Flu, Explained

This year's flu season is the worst in recent history. Here's what you need to know.

—By Kiera Butler

| Mon Jan. 14, 2013 4:06 AM PST

Get your flu shot. It's altruistic!

This year's flu season is no joke: On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had reached epidemic status. Although experts believe that the season may have peaked in most places, flu incidence is still thought to be very high. The media blitz about the flu seems to be an epidemic of its own—so I spoke to several experts to set the record straight on some of the most common flu questions.

Where in the US is the flu worst right now?

It's sort of hard to tell, since the CDC is not releasing any real time data; its stats are about a week old. Also, maps like the one below don't track the flu itself, just flu-like symptoms. Here's a look at the CDC's symptom activity map for the week that ended on January 5:

Map courtesy of CDC

How do I even know I have the flu? How can my doctor tell?

To know for certain, you'd need to have a blood test. But most doctors won't do that, since it won't really change the treatment (rest, drink fluids). But there are some key differences between a bad cold and a flu, says CDC spokesman Curtis Allen. "You will be running a high temperature for several days, and it will keep you in bed for a week or more," he says. But the most distinctive feature of the flu is its sudden onset. "You could be feeling fine at 10 and very sick at noon."

If the flu season has peaked, should I still get a flu shot?

Yes. A typical flu season is 10 to 12 weeks long—so if it just peaked, that means there's still another five or six weeks left. The caveat: The shot takes about two weeks to kick in, so even if you got the shot today, you could still come down with the flu, says Allen. Even if you think you've already had the flu this year, you should get a shot; it's possible (though unlikely) that you could still come down with a different strain.

Can you get the flu from the flu shot itself?

No. That's impossible, since the virus in the shot is not alive. You might get soreness, irritation, or even a fever after the shot, but that's your body reacting to the shot, not the flu.

If so many people get flu shots, how come there's still an epidemic?

This year, a little more than a third of the population got one of the 128 million flu shots that were distributed to clinics nationwide. That's pretty good—but unfortunately the shot is only about 62 percent effective. That's pretty typical for a flu shot, says Allen.

I'm young and healthy. It's not like the flu is going to kill me. So why should I bother with the vaccine?

Herd immunity. If you don't come down with the flu, there's less of a chance that your elderly neighbor, your friend's infant, or your coworker who's going through chemo will.

I tried to get a vaccine, but the damn pharmacy ran out. I give up.

Not so fast! The CDC says that there's plenty of vaccine this year to go around. There might be shortages at particular clinics, but they'll be getting more in the next few days. You can check back or try somewhere else.

How do they figure out what to put in those shots, anyway?

You can thank the Southern Hemisphere for this year's vaccine. During our summer, it's flu season down under. Public-health experts monitor the strains there and use that information to predict which strains will hit us down the road. This year, they did a pretty good job of figuring out which three strains to include in the vaccines; the CDC estimates that 90 percent of this year's flu cases are from one of the three strains in the vaccine. Next year, Allen hopes that the vaccine will include four strains.

That said, flu prediction is not an exact science, says Jeffrey Shaman, a flu researcher and assistant professor in the department of environmental health sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "They monitor the flu, they see what's happening," he says. "People look at that and get a feel for the patterns. It's what we used to do for weather before we had sophisticated models." Shaman is trying to improve this science with a new tool that uses real-time data from Google Flu Trends, which employs users' search terms ("flu," "fever," "body aches," etc.) to paint a picture of the location and severity of the flu. (It's actually pretty accurate.) Since Google's information is constantly updating, Shaman's models are continuously learning new information about how the flu behaves—thus increasing their accuracy. Shaman says his model can offer pretty accurate predictions of flu timing and case numbers at the municipal level. He declined, however, to offer a prediction for this year.

Why is there a "season" for the flu?

Several reasons, says Shaman. Some have to do with us humans: In the winter, we spend more time indoors sneezing on each other. During this time of short days and long nights, we don't get as much vitamin D or melatonin—both thought to be essential for healthy immune system function. Then there's the virus itself: It seems to thrive when absolute humidity is low, a common condition in cold winter weather.

So that's why the flu is so bad this year—the drought! So climate change actually made the flu worse, right?

Wouldn't it be nice if epidemiology were that easy? Unfortunately, it's not. If that were the case, you'd never see the flu in hot, humid places. But there's just as much flu in Florida right now as there is in some parts of Canada. Other variables make it impossible to predict flu seasons based on weather alone.

It's worth noting, though, that in a paper last year, Shaman and his colleagues did document that each of the four flu pandemics of the 20th century were preceded by La Niña cycles, likely because birds mingled with each other differently during these unusual weather patterns. The flu strains that they were carrying probably hybridized and created a strain so new that humans had no immunity to it. Since, as we recently learned from this Climate Desk video, climate change does interact with El Niño/La Niña cycles, it's not completely out of the question that global warming could affect flu transmission, at least indirectly.

What's the difference between this year's seasonal flu and other kinds of flu (like avian and swine)?

They're just different strains. What allowed 2009's swine flu—properly called H1N1—to turn into a pandemic was that it was a novel strain. That's unlikely to happen with this year's seasonal strains, since they've all been around in humans before, so we have some immunity built up. Fun fact: H1N1's symptoms were actually much milder than this year's flus.

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MAP: 2012 Was the Hottest Year on Record in the US

—By Kiera Butler

| Wed Jan. 9, 2013 3:34 PM PST

Just saying.

This NOAA map shows a sampling of places where weather records were broken last year. You probably guessed that red indicates heat. Yellow represents dryness; orange is a double whammy record for heat and dryness.

Image courtesy of NOAA

15 Green New Year's Resolutions for 2013

MoJo staffers weigh in.

—By Kiera Butler

| Mon Dec. 31, 2012 1:01 AM PST

Welcome to the third annual Econundrums new year's resolution roundup! I like to end every year of Econundrums by asking: What are your environmentally-themed goals for the year to come? (You can check out previous years' resolutions here and here.) This year, I posed the question to my fellow Mother Jones staffers. Here are some of their responses:

Rinse and re-use plastic zip lock bags. Remember to take reusable vegetable bags to the store. Remember to turn off power strips not in use. -Khary Brown

Divest myself from fossil fuels. -Tim McDonnell

Stop buying palm oil imported from Indonesia. They're destroying entire acres of precious habitat in order to grow palms for palm oil. The baboons who live here, as well as a species of tiger, are losing their habitat and may become endangered. -Young Kim

Make the switch to natural cleaning products. Go cruelty-free with cosmetics. -Allison Stelly

Eat less cheese. -Kate Sheppard

Eat only sustainably harvested fish/shellfish. Oh! I’m going to miss it so! And make all gifts and cards for the year out of things I already own–sewing projects using old clothes, mostly, but some book binding too. -Emma Logan

Bike to my nearest "park & ride" (as opposed to driving!) -Jacques Hebert

Stop drinking soy milk. -Maddie Oatman

Overcome the idea that real action on environmental problems has anything to do with individual consumer choice. -Luke Smith

Remember to bring my own bag and stop getting charged 10 cents. Reuse food scraps and pulp (for soups, pies, curry) before throwing into compost. -Jaeah Lee

Drink more—from reusable containers like growlers. -Tom Philpott

I want to opt out of a full-body TSA scan at least once. I'm not comfortable with the amount of radiation those scanners give off, or the way TSA handled the public's health concerns around them. -Maggie Severns

Refill my hand, dish and laundry soap from the bulk section at my local health food store rather than bring new containers into my home. -Amber Hewins

Stop being afraid to tell the 7-11 guy that I don't need a plastic bag. -Sydney Brownstone

...and as for me, I'm going to volunteer for at least one environment-related project in my community—maybe a community garden workday, a beach cleanup, or trail maintenance at a local park.

Do you have an environmental new year's resolution? Leave it in the comments.

Lisa Jackson Leaves the EPA

—By Kiera Butler

| Thu Dec. 27, 2012 9:52 AM PST

Wikimedia Commons

EPA chief Lisa Jackson has stepped down after four years on the job. The NY Times puts her resignation in the context of what many perceive as a lack of climate-change action on the part of the Obama administration:

Ms. Jackson's departure comes as many in the environmental movement are questioning Mr. Obama's commitment to dealing with climate change and other environmental problems. After his re-election, and a campaign in which global warming was barely mentioned by either candidate, Mr. Obama said that his first priority would be jobs and the economy and that he intended only to foster a "conversation" on climate change in the coming months.

Here's Jackson's statement:

I want to thank President Obama for the honor he bestowed on me and the confidence he placed in me four years ago this month when he announced my nomination as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. At the time I spoke about the need to address climate change, but also said: "There is much more on the agenda: air pollution, toxic chemicals and children’s health issues, redevelopment and waste-site cleanup issues, and justice for the communities who bear disproportionate risk." As the President said earlier this year when he addressed EPA’s employees, "You help make sure the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are safe. You help protect the environment not just for our children but their children. And you keep us moving toward energy independence…We have made historic progress on all these fronts." So, I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference.

More at NY Times.

How to Talk to Kids About Newtown

How to help children and teens face their fears about school shootings—without freaking them out even more.

—By Kiera Butler

| Fri Dec. 14, 2012 6:46 PM PST

On Friday morning, 27 people were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Among the fatalities are 20 children, 6 adults, and the shooter. We're following this story closely with regular updates here.

It seems safe to say that we'll all remember the tragedy that unfolded on Friday at Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut for the rest of our lives. The news has been full of disturbing images: scared kids, guns, emergency responders, and families in the throes of grief. It's enough to upset any adult. But how does exposure to news like this affect kids?

I found some hints in a 2011 paper, published in the journal American Psychologist, in which psychologists Roxane Cohen Silver of the University of California-Irvine, and Nancy Eisenberg of Arizona State University offer a useful roundup of recent research on kids' reactions to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While 9/11 was a different kind of tragedy than the Sandy Hook shooting, the research still sheds some light on how children process trauma.

One of the main takeaways: Watching a lot of TV coverage of frightening events does not seem to help kids (or adults) cope. Take this 2007 study out of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in which researchers observed that children who watched the most TV were more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD in the months after September 11. The researchers concluded that "Media viewing of tragic events is sufficient to produce PTSD symptoms in vulnerable populations such as children." Similarly, in 2008, researchers from Columbia University's psychiatry department "found children's television use to be associated with elevated perceptions of personal vulnerability to world threats (i.e., crime, terrorism, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods)."

And it's not just kids that react negatively to graphic video and images. For a forthcoming study, Silver analyzed the effect of news coverage of 9/11 and the Iraq War on adults. Her team found that individuals who repeatedly exposed themselves to disturbing images were at greater risk of developing PTSD over the next two to three years. Subjects who went on to watch a lot of TV coverage of the Iraq war had an even greater likelihood of PTSD symptoms. "Based on my research, there is no psychological benefit to watching repeated pictures of horror," says Silver.

Kids' response to traumatic events will depend in large part upon their age and level of psychological development. "Most kids under the age of 10 don't yet fully realize that they can't control other people's actions," says Ginny Sprang, a child psychiatrist and the executive director of the University of Kentucky's Center on Trauma and Children. "If kids are forced to confront this fact before they're ready, it can be very anxiety-producing. For kids who are especially sensitive, you could see regression. If they are potty trained, they might slip up. They might want to sleep in the same bed as mom and dad. They might have separation anxiety at school."

So what's the best way to talk to your kids about the Sandy Hook tragedy? "Children tend to have the myth of invulnerability, this idea that we're safe in the world," says Sprang. "So when something like this happens, the first thing a child thinks is, could this happen to me? Am I safe?"

While encouraging kids to ask questions and talk about their feelings helps, research suggests that parents' behavior might be even more important.

Sprang recommends that parents encourage kids to speak up about their feelings. "Ask kids how they feel, and what questions they have. Tell kids about everything that schools do to keep them safe, that there are adults on the job working to take care of kids." Tailor your conversation to your child's age level; while older kids and teenagers might be able to handle a conversation about the politics of gun control, abstract ideas will be less useful for kids in primary grades, who will want to know whether they are safe.

It's also worth noting that while encouraging your kids to ask questions and talk about their feelings helps, research suggests that parents' behavior might be even more important. "Parents can model healthy adaptive coping," says Sprang. "So if parents are highly anxious and distressed, kids will be as well." Indeed, a 2010 Columbia University study found increased levels of PTSD—and even major clinical depression—in New York City kids whose parents had restricted their travel in the six months after 9/11. By the same coin, a 2004 study in the journal Applied Developmental Science found that teenagers whose parents displayed "positive affect" after 9/11 were more likely also to display positive affect. The researchers concluded that "Parents who show positive emotional states may model positive ways of coping with stressful life events."

To recap: Limit your child's (and your own) exposure to disturbing news coverage. Talk to your kids, and reassure them that everyone is working hard to keep them safe. Try to send them this message of confidence not only with your words, but with your own behavior, as well. And hug them.

Of course, this troubling fact remains: Incidents like the horrific shooting in Newtown are happening with frightening frequency. That parental positive affect that those researchers described? It's becoming harder and harder to muster.