TR EMERITUS

(1 Aug) - It's not the type of plane either Kent Brantly or Nancy Writebol likely planned to take home. Ebola virus virion But when health officials evacuate the two American aid workers infected with Ebola in west Africa, it will be the plane they take. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has outfitted a Gulfstream jet with an isolation pod designed and built by the U.S. Defense Department, the CDC and a private company. The pod, officially called an Aeromedical Biological Containment System, is a portable, tentlike device that ensures the flight crew and others on the flight remain safe from an infectious disease. .... The American health care system is well-prepared for Ebola patients, experts say. "I think any major medical center can take care of any Ebola patient," said Dr. William Schaffner, an expert on infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine. "We have isolation rooms we use all the time." These isolation rooms are used for patients suspected to have tuberculosis, SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome or another infectious disease. Schaffner said not much would be different for an Ebola patient, though more stringent precautions might be taken to ensure health care workers are following all protocols. "But all that is minor compared to the adjustments you have to make during influenza (season), for example," he said. .... Ebola is not airborne, he said. It cannot be transmitted via coughs or sneezes. If an infected person is exhibiting symptoms, he or she can transmit the disease via bodily fluids such as blood, breast milk or semen. The virus does not die with a patient -- so deceased bodies can transmit the disease. There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Doctors can only administer what they call "supportive therapy," which means supporting the patient's own immune system as it tries to battle the infection. This usually involves intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration and shock, said Christopher Mores, associate director of Louisiana State University's Center for Experimental Infectious Diseases. This therapy for Ebola patients could also include blood or platelet transfusions and oxygen therapy. Ebola can last two to three weeks, Mores said, so patients would remain in isolation until their symptoms subside and tests come back negative for the virus. [Read more:  CNN]  Read More →

Singapore govt decided to raise vehicle entry permit fees for vehicles coming in from Malaysia. Easy revenue! What’s wrong with collecting more money? Malaysia also agrees and decides to raise fees for vehicles going through Malaysia, in and out. Both govts are now very happy as they will be the winners, collecting more money for the coffers. Some say it is a tit for tat reaction by Malaysia. And to be one up on Singapore, it is raising toll fees for vehicles entering and exiting Malaysia as well. Singapore govt responded by saying it will match whatever increases the Malaysians will imposed. Tit for tat? Who would be unhappy, the commercial vehicles that have no choice but to go in and out of both countries. The cost will just go up. The visitors, the tourists from both sides would also have to pay more. The workers working on both sides of the causeway would also have to pay more. Then the people from Singapore who have bought homes and living across the causeway would have to pay more too. It will become very unattractive if they have to commute daily to Singapore. The new charges will be quite prohibitive for those who thought the homes were bigger and cheaper. The bigger picture, Iskandar Economic Zone, all the property developers too, would be affected. The advantages of lower cost over Singapore would be eaten up in no time if fees and taxes keep going up. Those people eyeing properties in Iskandar, or those wanting to relocate their businesses would have to recompute their costs and the comparative advantages. Actually the commercial vehicles coming into Singapore would not bear the cost. They would simply pass the buck. And many businesses would also do likewise. The main casualties would be the developers and the Iskandar project. Would investors get cold feet, would potential property buyers get cold feet knowing that out of the blues some rules will change against their favour? On Singapore’s side, the masses would be the one paying for the VEP hike and toll fees. The food, vegetables, fruits and goods coming from Malaysia would just be priced higher. And those who holiday in Malaysia often, or those who went in for their daily shopping, would no longer find it cheap to travel there. Some retail businesses in Johore would be affected for sure. While everyone would have their pockets affected in one way or another, both the Malaysian and Singapore govts would be the beneficiaries and their coffers fattened. Or is it a conscious decision to reduce the flow of people and goods from both sides? Oh, one positive point, the roads on both sides of the causeway could be freer with fewer vehicles. And the jams at the Causeway would be relieved. Looking at it from another angle, it appears that one made the decisions consciously with clear objectives in mind, a decision made using the head. The other made all the decisions with the heart, and not sure what would be achieved and the negative consequences.   Chua Chin Leng aka redbean * The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenew.blogspot.com    Read More →

CPF: PAP govt recycles hot air, smoke again/ All part of the wayang to diastract us? DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said earlier this week that the government would explore the option of private pension plans for the CPF for those who are able to take higher risk. But he also warned that private pensions "will not be a walk in the park", as higher risk did not always translate into higher returns. (BT 24 July) Here we go again. Time for civil servants and fund manager marketers to reopen their files from the early noughties. As BT reported: Industry anticipation of the prospect of private pension plans for the CPF was intense in 2004. Such plans were mooted as a means to enhance returns and lower costs for CPF members. Private pension plans were envisioned as balanced or mixed-asset portfolios which would be farmed out to the private sector to be managed on an institutional basis. The ideal scenario was that there would be no sales charge, and annual fees would be reduced to a fraction of the prevailing fees ... In 2004, estimates of the fund size needed for an expense ratio of 50-75 basis points ranged from S$200-300 million to as much as S$1 billion*. In 2007, the government said the CPF's "risk-free" structure would be retained because the majority of members did not have large balances and because private pension funds would be "too risky for older members". That was the decision then. Now in 2014, Tharman is raising the issue again? Now the rich can have private pensions, he says? Hello, why didn't that happen in 2007? It was dismissed out of hand apparently on the ground that the rules had to be the same for everyone in the scheme. Is the govt trying to distract us from the real issues of the day that can cause it problems as it spends our money on ourselves in trying to buy our votes: Minimum Sum calculations, how CPF Life funds are invested and is it that safe, and Medisave, Medishield flaws that show up the govt's incompetency or meanness. One of these days, I'll blog on what actuaries say about Medishield's proposed buffer reserves: they agree with WP's GG rather Gan and Puthu. Remember the higher the reserves, the larger the premiums paid. Roy Ngerng's "revelations"** and PM's law suit distract S'poreans from these impt issues. Sadly, new media ais ana abets unwittingly the govt's wayang. And now there is more smoke from Tharman. Whatever leh, govt's attitude on private pensions, and "tweaking" the CPF system reminds me of Charles Dicken's description of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit. It describes the govt procrastinating over everything. It also can be seen as a reproach to the government that whatever it does the results are just empty words. And our govt dares call cyberspace "noise" given its track record on private pension plans? The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office. This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT. Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be — what it was. It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it. Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office. Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion. Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes, parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even parliamentary motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket, and make a regular field-day of the occasion. Then would he come down to that house with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to foot. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that the Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter, but was commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that, although the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly right, it never was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to half the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution Office sitting below the bar, and smash the honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution Office account of this matter. And although one of two things always happened; namely, either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to say and said it, or that it had something to say of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, blundered one half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority. Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a long career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to the junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as a heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance. ------- *Background facts about CPF Data compiled by Morningstar shows that there are funds which handily beat the CPF rates. Aberdeen's Pacific Equity Fund, for example, generated annualised returns of 4.6 per cent over three years; 13.8 per cent over five years; and 13.5 per cent over 10 years. The maximum loss and volatility over the periods were in double digits, however. As at March 2014, there was S$259.5 billion in total members' balances in the CPF. The Ordinary Account (OA) accounted for S$100.7 billion and another S$62.8 billion sat in the Special Account (SA). In terms of participation in the CPF Investment Scheme, S$20.7 billion of OA funds were invested, and S$5.7 billion of SA funds. **Uncle Leong (Roy's sifu) has been telling S'poreans for years what Roy has discovered. The only thing that Roy did different was to accuse the govt of "stealing" our CPF, something that he has repented of: I recognise that the Article means and is understood to mean that Mr Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore and Chairman of GIC, is guilty of criminal misappropriation of the monies paid by Singaporeans to the Central Provident Fund. 3. I admit and acknowledge that this allegation is false and completely without foundation. 4. I unreservedly apologise to Mr Lee Hsien Loong for the distress and embarrassment caused to him by this allegation. ------- Cynical Investor [Source]: Thoughts of a Cynical Investor  Read More →