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[Leeravitz]

[SPEC] Viruses and Bacteria

[cassandra]

Scarlett references what is likely the same epidemic in an old journal entry:

[Mima]

For tidiness sake here is the article, could someone please amend the thread title to reflect the new article & date. Thanks.

[Mima]

That seems to be a very large quarantine zone, and here, most vaccine production facilities are outsourced to the big Pharma's (international production facilities).

I think you would be very lucky to have those sorts of facilities here. They seem to be building redundancy into the medical system, whilst certainly in the UK, we are very short of beds, and most of our hospitals run on very high bed occupancy rates.

It is exactly what you will need though if the current Bird Flu starts successfully transmitting from person to person.

I can't imagine a hospital in the UK publishing any sort of information about preparedness for an outbreak. This is the sort of information that gets hidden away - two reasons - firstly so as not to alarm the public with how little can be done in case of an outbreak, and secondly in order not to let terrorists know.

It does speak of a medical system where there is a lot of spare cash, and some policital will-power (to calm the storm presumably caused by the last epidemic).

[cassandra]

Or perhaps the PxC medical industry has a bit of insider information and is banking (rather less metaphorically than usual) on a 'surprise' epidemic.
(Yes, I'm cynical.)

Though I'm rather surprised that UK hospitals wouldn't distribute information on disease outbreak prevention. I know that when West Nile first erupted in animals on the East Coast a few years back (I was in DC at the time), we were given pamphlets on it and the government funded mosquito-killing and dead animal/bird removal teams. Everyone was warned not to have standing pools of water in their yards.

And I won't even go into the rules distributed on neighborhood quarantines in case of bioterrorist incidents

[Mima]

After 9/11, in the UK, we did not recieve information pamphlets for over a year after you guys did, and then it was an 10 page large type leaflet that basically didn't tell you what to do if anything happened except watch the news!

[RI_Barnica]

That's dramatically better than what the US government did. They issued a booklet that suggested duct taping plastic sheeting over your windows in case of terrorist attack. Assuming a home so completely air-tight that no infectious organism can enter, does anyone care to calculate how long the occupants might live? (Feel free to turn off the furnace and ask the family not to use flame-based cooking techinques!)

I ask you.. what's better: almost no information, or ridiculously off-base information?

[Violet]

Re: [SPEC] Viruses and Bacteria

[Mikeyj]

No vaccine for the virus here Violet...and even if they did have one, they have to be produced and distributed rapidly in order to prevent or control an epidemic.

I agree with Mima, that's a huge facility, and

[cassandra]

Well, a flu epidemic here on Earth could easily kill hundreds of thousands to millions of people. Influenza comes in many strains and mutates almost yearly, which is why companies have to produce different varieties of vaccine depending on what's predicted for the flu season. In 1918, 20-50 million people died in one year from the flu, with casualties in almost every nation.

If there were a viral transfer somehow between Earth and PxC, I wouldn't blame the hospitals in Perplex City from panicking slightly, though clearly they have superior methods of treatment.

[Violet]

They're always trying to stab me in the arm with a new vaccine for flu because I'm in an at risk group. They could easily fill that many beds to safely quarantine a similar virus over there because of the rapid mutation, but I still doubt it could be directly from us as a result of the Cube theft. Surely if anyone was going to be infected by transferred viruses it'd be us - the Cube came from them to us afterall

[Scott]

[Mikeyj]

Agreed Cassandra, but I still think that this is overkill. If the contact with Earth is transient then the number of microorganisms transferred is going to be a tiny, tiny inoculum. The number of pathogenic microorganisms on Earth as a proportion of all microorganisms is negligible. The likelihood that an infectious organism is transferred from Earth, survives the trip, survives indigenous flora, has the opportunity to cause an infection, is present in sufficient dosage etc etc is infinitesimal.

Not that article is about Earth bugs and not that it means it wouldn't happen.

I got a bit carried away with the bacterial excitement of it all.

As an aside, did you know that we have no idea how many species of bacteria there in a gram of soil, a ml of seawater, or tap water for that matter. I love bugs...that sounds like a job for life to me!

[Violet]

MikeyJ, you're not MikeyJ at all are you, you're Tarquin from the Yakult ad!

Bacteria!!!

[daveg01]

Mabey you dont need to look at the numbers of people killed but the percentage killed, there has been no mention of anthing other than the city (unless im wrong) so a few ppl out of that will have allot greater affect than a few out of the whole world.