Conference back40::soapbox

    Somebody is watching Hard Copy, I'd say.

    Heard the original public health folx interviewed on NPR some months
    back.  Ebola virus was involved, as I recall.  Salient phrase was
    "crash and bleed out," a charming notion involving exsanguination from
    each & every extant bodliy orifice, plus new ones that form
    spontaneously.  
    
    Please pass the liver-and-onions, and don't hold the gravy.  There's a
    good noter.  What's delaying you!!???
    

    Considering the number of doctors and nurses who haven't seen first
    hand things like measels and chickenpox, let alone pneumonic plague.
    With every  HMO and insurance company trying to keep costs down,
    I don't fancy our chances when something big get's spread around.  My
    fear is that by the time health care providers get moving it will be
    too late, and that could be in as little time as 24 hours - and they 
    will probably be the second wave of people to be knocked out by the
    infection anyway.  We already have a considerable increase in TB, a lot
    of it drug resistent TB. 
    
    The CDC has been making hospitals aware of the possibility of outbreaks
    of several old favorites we haven't seen since the Middle Ages.  And if
    they take it seriously, then I do as well.

    Hospitals breed the new resistant strains - moral is to stay away from
    hospitals if at all possible ( I guess that's self evident).
    
    About TB - one of my personal things to hate - TB can spread through
    dust containing dried sputum.  I hate the seeming increase in people
    spitting. 

 re .4

 bubonic plague

    No, it was pneumonic plague.  This was the outbreak that scared India a
    few weeks/months ago.  

    Last fall one of the networks had a movie on about how our mobile
    society could suffer at the hands of a fast-moving plague.
    
    The story was fiction, but who's to say someone can't board a fully-
    packed plane at Heathrow with sniffles and get in NYC deathly ill.
    By then everyone on the plane is infected (because we know the air
    filtration systems on plane are the pits); the occupants spread the
    virus far and wide after they de-plane.
    
    The promos for Hoffman's flick seem rather far-fetched, (but movies
    are supposed to entertain); they may not be far off the mark.
    
    

    Wormwood.

    .8
    
    Pnumonic plague
    Hunta Virus
    Anthrax altered for germ warfare
    
    These are three of hundreds that can make you sick and die within
    24 hours.  Without exageration or hyping, right here today, it is 
    very possible for someone to get on a plane looking well, and get 
    carried out the other end near to death, or even dead.
    
    Coughs and colds get passed around in this facility with the greatest of
    ease, I would hate to think how we would manage if it was something
    more deadly.

    .10  That's the point I think the TV movie was trying to make.
    The last time a MAJOR plague was around, the airplane was no 
    where to be seen.  
    
    

    .11
    
    Haven't seen the film yet -- maybe I'll have time this weekend.
    
    Remember the Pneuomic Plague outbreak in India last year, killed 50 
    people and made hundreds sick?
    
    I wonder if the film takes into account that all of our immune systems
    are already under attack by pollution and increases in the UV levels.
    This would play a very large part in aiding the spread of any epidemic.
    
    
                                 

    .10
    
    pnEumonic plague
    hAnta virus
    
    and anthrax is germ warfare - migawd have you ever HEARD their stuff?

A contageous air-borne variation of the Eboli Zaire virus could produce 
an outbreak that would be difficult to stop.  I would be less concerned
about old plagues than about new viruses coming out of the rainforest.
The book The Hot Zone was a real eye opener about the existence of 
lethal viruses.

Jim