Vancouver, Phishing Phlu Scam, Telavancin, and Cartoon

A few things to ponder as the flu activity (mercifully) declines, at least for now:

Interested in evidence that HIV treatment has become staggeringly effective? Fully 87% of patients receiving treatment in the large British Columbia cohort have an HIV RNA < 50; not only that, the incidence of HIV drug resistance has declined more than 12-fold since 1997. Wow. I wouldn’t want to be in the business of selling resistance tests.
Did you read about this scam? The text from the hoax is pretty awkward — “This profile has to be created both for the vaccinated people and the non-vaccinated ones” is a choice bit of prose — but one could easily imagine how it could trap at least somebody. And as an example of the levels to which humans will stoop to make money, using fear of a real virus to spread a computer one has to be way down there.
Has anyone yet actually used telavancin? Not in a clinical trial, but in a patient in clinical practice? If so, what were the indications? How did it go?
Related, here is a great cartoon — but there’s an even better one on antibiotics that has not yet appeared on-line at The Cartoon Bank, so stay tuned.

HIV and ID Observations