From Flu Wiki 2

Forum: Volunteers Needed As Lookouts Worldwide

22 October 2006

AnnieBat 23:17

Circle the Wagons and Post the Lookouts

A couple of days ago, on the thread “Have the Mods Agreed on an Alert Signal”, I posted the following comment:

“What I do think we need to do is ‘circle the wagons’ and post guards looking out in every direction. If we just look at Indonesia we are likely to get shot in the back! (Perhaps we need volunteers to take a small region of the world each and watch all news items? I think this would be more pertinent as winter approaches up north.)”

As a result of that comment, and some encouragement from others, I agreed to prepare some information and ideas on how we could achieve this. Today is definitely an indoors day so I got out my trusty atlas, made lots of coffee, put Abba on the stereo, and devised some plans. So, this is my suggestion.

Summary of Plan

  1. Carve the world up into manageable blocks of countries
  2. Seek volunteers for each of the various regions
  3. Have a thread for each region where information could be posted
  4. Links in the News Summary to those threads that are ‘active’ with events going on of interest to others

What does it involve if I volunteer?
This means you are willing to commit some time on a reasonably regular basis to research the region and gather news stories or situation updates. This means finding and tracking local news sources and government agencies for anything that is going on.

If you live in a particular region it might be better to volunteer there and use local knowledge – but we do not need 500 volunteers for the USA! There may be some language barriers to overcome as well, so if you are multilingual, please can we exploit these skills.

If you have children who are internet savvy and you would like them to increase their geographical knowledge etc., why not make it a family project?

How many volunteers do we need?
This is a case of many hands make light work. Take a peek at the Indonesia Outbreaks thread to see the group that works on that area and what they achieve by sharing the workload. Watching the meters on this site, there are at least 1,000 people that regularly visit, so, theoretically that gives enough people to give plenty of helping hands to each region. If we could achieve 6–10 volunteers for each region, perhaps with 1–2 coordinators of effort, it should work really well.

How do I volunteer?
If you are the first to volunteer for a particular region, add your name to this thread, stating which region you are going to initiate (and the number), then create a new thread with the following title

Lookout Post for [region-name] (e.g. Lookout Post for Central America and the Caribbean)

If you are not the first to volunteer, go to the appropriate thread and add your name there and join in.

The World in Geographical Regions
(I apologise in advance if I have given incorrect regional names to some countries – I have used the regional names more as a guide than as being absolutely geographically correct .. )

  1. United States of America (including Alaska and Hawaii)
  2. Canada, Greenland and the Arctic Circle
  3. Central America and the Caribbean
    • From Mexico to Panama inclusive and all off-shore islands
  4. South America
    • all countries on the continent and surrounding islands (Galapagos, Falklands etc)
  5. Northern Africa
    • Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara
  6. West Africa
    • Benin, Burkina, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo
  7. Central Africa
    • Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Zaire
  8. East Africa
    • Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda
  9. Southern Africa and Madagascar
    • Rest of Africa from Angola, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique in the north (10 countries), plus Madagascar
  10. Northwest Europe and the British Isles
    • Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland
  11. West and Southwest Europe
    • Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Monaco, Andorra, Gibraltar, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Italy
  12. Central and Southeast Europe
    • Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Greece
  13. Far Eastern Europe and Baltic region
    • Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation
  14. Middle East and Caucasus regions
    • Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria
  15. Arab Peninsula
    • Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
  16. Central Asia
    • Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan
  17. Southern Asia
    • Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
  18. Mainland East Asia and Japan
    • China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan,
  19. Southeast Asia
    • Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, Thailand. (Indonesia has its own thread and focus already)
  20. Australasia, Melanesia and Micronesia
    • Australia, New Zealand, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Nauru and all the other island groups along these chains
  21. Pacific Islands and Antarctic
    • Fiji, Cooks, Nuie, Pitcairn, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Ester, Christmas, Tokelau, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa and all other island groups in the region, Antartica

So, there you go.

IMPORTANT – do not let the task or the information you glean overwhelm or alarm you though – keep some perspective but keep us all informed. Have fun!

23 October 2006

Commonground – at 06:49

This would be wonderful. Please sign up if you can to help.

cottontop – at 08:31

Commonground- I will volunteer for Northern Africa. I can’t at this moment set the thread up, as I have 3 hours ahead of me in town(should have already left), and the repair man coming. As soooon as this is behind me today, I will set up. Just wanted you to know. One wagon? where’s the rest? Come on people!

The day after tomorrow – at 09:24

I am willing to work collectively with a group for my region. Northern Central US

Green Mom – at 09:30

I’m homeschooling a 15 year old net-geek. Wow! I can work this into his curriculum and help save the world-how cool is that? Problem is-he dosn’t have speak any foreign language unless you count computer languages. I’ll go over it with him and get back to you-its pretty early in the day here, yet.

anonymous – at 12:10

who would agree to call me on the phone when something serious happens, if I promise to do the same ?

Urdar-Norge – at 12:16

I am on nr the # 10 job, as allways ;)

AnnieBat 15:34

Thanks to you all - this is most encouraging. All great things start with little ideas ..

Mstrbubbie – at 15:48

Count me in.I’m on the gulf coast of Mississippi.just give me a yell on what you need.My e-mail addy is in the profiles Later Yall

cottontop – at 15:52

commonground- ABBA- sooo cool. O.K. I don’t know a foreign language. Well I do but it wouldn’t be appropriate for this.(ha ha). I love to do research, and hunt/gather. So, that’s what I can offer. I’ll try to get this puppy up and running.

Blue Ridge Mountain Mom – at 15:53

I’ll help on #3 and #4. We’ll see how bad my spanish has gotten. ;)

I’ve also been keeping on an eye on the Middle East region because of the peace keeping forces being sent to Lebanon from different countries. I’ll post what I can there as well. I won’t be able to create the Central and South American thread until later this evening, so, if there is anyone else out there for this area, feel free to start, and I’ll happily play catch up.

I’m with AnnieB on this one. I think that we are watching the wind and rain whip up, but the twister is still off in the distance!

Wagons Ho! Giddy-up, round ‘em up, Rawhide!!

cottontop – at 16:35

Blue Ridge Mountain Mom- Amen. Here we go into the wild bird flu and over the hills and far away…. I know that was silly. counldn’t resist with the wagons ho!

Okieman – at 16:41

I’ve been watching Papua New Guinea for months now;-). But I would welcome at least one other person to help keep an eye on developments there.

Influentia2 – at 16:47

Okieman 16:41

I have the threads you posted before for PNG, I would help you. If you have more threads post them too. Let me know.

AnnieBat 16:49

Okieman

I am also concerned about Timor Leste (East Timor) now that it is ‘on its own’ from Indonesia yet shares a land mass. Are you happy to ‘wind it into one Lookout Post’ - include PNG with the #20 thread? I am sure we can get a few more Aussies and Kiwis to help out there. Then you won’t be on your own.

Commonground – at 17:00

I’ll just stick to Indo like I’ve been. I’ll be taking a break from posting from December 8 - January 8th. Moving 2 States away.

Commonground – at 17:06

Just remembered that my computer is going up to New Hampshire with the movers on December 2nd. I’m not going up till the 9th. So I won’t be around from December 2nd through January 8th or so…….

Karina – at 17:08

I’ll take West Africa. I know French, which will be a help. I’m a little worried about how good my research skills are. Any tips?

AnnieBat 17:11

Karina

Go to Google and key in newspapers+west+africa and you get quite a good response list. You could also look for websites of NGOs working in the area. Hope that helps ;-)

Urdar-Norway – at 19:07

10: Northwest Europe and the British Isles Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland

13: Far Eastern Europe and Baltic region Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation

Mu proposal is to remove the brits from the scandinavnian, and add the baltics. to nr 10

Nr 10 would then be; Nordic countries: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

We are getting more together than before ;-) and I think the brits should be with france, belgium etc.. The news are just diveded that way since we are neighboring countres, Sweden reports on the baltics, while sentral europe is more for the brits to handle.

For the other east block countries they are more to the russian news sources. Poland is more germany linked.

Urdar-Norway – at 19:19

esj.. forget it, there is only russian newspapers from the baltics, do we have some russian speaking here? Estland is the coountry with most % of population on net, but dont seem to have any major newslink on english.. I will keep an eye anyway..

senegal1 – at 20:43

Katrina: I have friends in West Africa — specifically Ghana and Cote dIvoire. Be happy to ask them to keep a look out for me and let me know if they see large die offs of birds. Unfortunately many of those countries are both so poor and so strife ridden that bird flu is pretty far from the minds of most. I can read French and read/write/speak Spanish. There is a pretty fair sampling of french reports on Flu Trackers in the late evening as well many from French Speaking West Africa.

AnnieBat 21:00

Urdar-Norge (Norway) - as we are hoping there will be a few volunteers for each ‘area’ then I would hope that the work will be suitably spread and the languages and locations won’t be a real issue. Of course, always happy to have people take in whatever countries they want to their lookout post ;-)

Senegal1 - have you posted this to the West Africa lookout thread? - I haven’t checked, but since Karina has got that thread going, I am sure all help would be most welcomed - and thank you

cottontop – at 21:10

Is there anyone doing East africa?

Epidemic Hazard Africa-Kenya http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert.php

Okieman – at 21:52

Influentia2 – at 16:47

I have posted most everything that has caught my eye in Papua New Guinea, with a few tantalizing exceptions that never came to anything. In other words, I do not have any files/articles saved away.


AnnieB – at 16:49

I’m willing to roll PNG into the #20 thread. I kinda expected the Aussies and Kiwis to be the most interested in this area. “Close” to home for ya’ll. The PNG thread I started had begun to feel like Okieman’s Private PNG Blog. It will be nice to have some company. Below is a good news media link for any interested:

http://www.abyznewslinks.com/


Karina – at 17:08

You might check out the news media website I listed up above. It has links to Africa newspapers and news sites that should help you get started. Try finding sites that have search functions and type in the French words (W. Africa) or Swahili words (E. Africa) for “bird flu” or “flu” or “respiratory” or “cough” and see what pops up.

Okieman – at 21:59
Okieman – at 21:59

Correction. Looks like most of the newspapers in E. Africa are in English or French. A few Swahili, but not many.

Gary Near Death Valley – at 21:59

I could keep you updated on the area just out of Death Valley call the Pahrump Valley. About 75 miles from Las Vegas up in the mountains, large percentage of retired people, and absolutely no avian flu information here. This place will be very bad when the pandemic begins. All food deliverys like most places, all from trucks etc.

Pixie – at 22:05

cottontop - at 21:10:

Wow, that is quite a map! It covers a bunch of hazards like volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, biological outbreaks, live and in color. What do you bet that this map will beceome the new screensaver for many here. :) It will be hard not to check in at it now and then, at least, just to check out what is going on around the world, hazard-wise.

AnnieBat 23:47

I have just started the Lookout Post for region 20 so any other volunteers from the area please go there. Cheers.

24 October 2006

Blue – at 03:01

I can help with no. 20-Where the **** is Timor Leste..I suppose it is where all that bickering was a while back. So it’s on that same landmass as PNG?

(I don’t know.)

All I really do everyday is read the paper’s at home; check the paper’s website for incoming information; read fluwikie and maybe flutrakers(which does not seem to be anywhere near as good) and just type birdflu into google every now and again.

I don’t really know much about the govt. dept’s and to be honest have not ever thought about them because I believe that any significant developments will be mentioned in the MSM or it will not be significant.

So I anticipate that I will need some help in where to look, but am willing to put my name forward as willing to contribute to what should become a very effective tool.

jplanner – at 03:15

Blue- is it “Timor L’este?”…in french that’d be East Timor. ;)

AnnieBat 03:32

Blue - yes, it is the previous East Timor - shares the same land mass as Timor - was part of Indonesia.

Great to have you on board for the Lookout Post - just keep reading the local papers etc and if there is anything you think we should all know then go tell us on the Lookout thread ;-) (Or go to the thread and see if any help is needed and there are bound to be ‘clues’ as to what to do.)

Blue – at 03:42
 O.K. Just do what I can and the many hands approach will come through.
cottontop – at 05:58

pixie @ 22:05

yea, isn’t that something? this will help to keep an eye on the bird flu as well. Did you notice the flashing chicken in the states? Just confirmed the low path strain. this is one for my top sites to check weekly.

Commonground – at 08:58

The Wiki makes me proud - once again. We have something here that other forums don’t. We chip in, we work together, we get along. The team effort for the Indo tracking has been the envy of other forums. It speaks volumes. Keep signing up if you can, everyone taking a little time to help - will bring it all together for the benefit of all. Thanks.

cottontop – at 09:46

Commonground- Have you checked out the link I found (at 21:10 yesterday, asked about east africa?) It’s quiet a sight. Everyone should see this.

26 October 2006

AnnieBat 01:22

I am just starting a lookout post for Southern Africa and Madagascar (region 9) since there is news today of suspect outbreak in ostrich in Zimbabwe - anyone want to help keep an eye on this??

Dennis in Colorado – at 12:37

I will take East Africa. My Kiswahili is not very good (it was 30 years ago that I was in Kenya) and I do not speak Kirundi at all (for Burundi articles) but maybe I can find enough in English to be worthwhile. It will take a while for me to get articles posted (between conference calls at work today) but I will start the thread.

Commonground – at 15:05

Free Translation Sites
http://tinyurl.com/yyjcvx

Systran - French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
Free Translation - French, German, Spanish
Babelfish/AltaVista - French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugese, Russian, Spanish
InterTran - 28 different languages - Brazilian Portugese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Spanish, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Latin American Spanish, Norwegian, Filipino, Polish, Portugese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Welsh, Turkish
Promp-Reverso Online - French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish
WorldLingo - Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugese, Russian, Spanish

Blue Ridge Mountain Mom – at 15:30

AnnieB - 01:22

There have been stories in the financial sections this past week regarding the South African ostrich farmers being desparate to start exporting again and have themselves declared bird flu free….

FriscoParentat 15:42

I’ve had someone in Bogota, Columbia watching out for b.f. there. I can let you guys know what I hear from him or any information sent to me. I can get newspaper links from the area as well. I think Blue Ridge Mountain Mom has S. America already. I will add to her thread once its started I suppose :)

Blue Ridge Mountain Mom – at 16:12

FriscoParent - 15:42

Please add any news sources that you can find! Feel free to start the thread as well. Thanks!

27 October 2006

AnnieBat 00:06

Great to have all the volunteers. Please get the threads started then the link will be included in the News Summary. (I also think that once a thread is started people just start adding to it ;-) )

Swann – at 02:31

Urdar-Norway at 12:16

Hi Urdar! I’ll volunteer for your #10, too, if you’ll have me. Great Britain and Ireland in particular have always held a special place in my heart, so I would find this group most interesting.

AnnieBat 06:51

Urdar-Norway and Swann I have started a thread (Lookout Post) for you - thanks for volunteering.

28 October 2006

cottontop – at 08:08

AnnieB- It is a relief is see more lookout posts being started, and more people joining those posts. I have been having a awful time trying to fing sites, let alone current info. Thank you for your time and effort.

bgw in MT – at 16:36

Is there a listing somewhere of the areas that need volunteers? I will try my best to find information on the Pacific Islands and Antarctic

I will check Google news each day. Does anyone know where there are news sites that are local to any of these islands or how I would go about finding local news sites?

By the way, is Ester the same as Easter Island, or is it an entirely different place?

bgw in MT – at 17:41

I’ve found three local news sites for Fiji, but no mention of local papers for the other islands. Surely they’ll pop up sometime.

cottontop – at 18:11

bgw in MT- Welcome aboard! We need all the help we can get. If I come across anything I think you can use, I’ll pass it along on this thread.

Thanks for your effort.

Walrus – at 18:18

I’ll lookout for Australia. I’m in Melbourne way down south, we need people in Darwin, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. I’ll try and follow East Timor if I can.

AnnieBat 18:38

bgw in MT - I will start a Pacific Islands Lookout Post for you - in fact I might just start a few of the Posts and then people can get started ;-)

walrus Thanks for your help - there is a Lookout Post started for Australasia etc - just start posting what you find there.

Bump - Bronco Bill – at 20:22
bgw in MT – at 22:17

A few of the Pacific islands have outbreaks of dengue, but I don’t think they are anything else. One article said that global warming was leading to more suitable habitats for the aedes aegypti mosquito that carries dengue and chik. That is supposed to be why we are seeing an increasing prevalence of the mosquitoes worldwide. I would hate to put them in the new thread and cause people to check it for nothing.

bgw in MT – at 22:22

I would hate to pu.t the dengue articles in a new thread I mean.

29 October 2006

bump – at 14:25
AnnieBat 15:06

bgw in MT - please do post this sort of information to the thread. It gives a good indication of what is already happening in the region, which is positive - when a report comes in of ‘something’ we already have our baseline information, which may give a better picture of the situation.

Also, I missed your question re “ester” - yes this was a typo, it should be Easter and has been returned to that status in the Lookout Post ;-)

bgw in MT – at 22:16

Annie, I just didn’t see anything to get excited about in the relatively few cases of dengue mentioned. There were also articles about estimates of number of possible fatalities and some flu conferences that were held a month ago, but I just can’t see these being of any real interest to anyone. I’m afraid if we post too much trivia, people will just quit checking these thread.

If you want the article about global warming possibly causing increased dengue and chik cases posted, I think it would be better off summarized and posted on the news thread.

I thought what we were looking for was a fairly large or steadily increasing numbers of cases of mystery diseases, or diseases that ‘might be flu if they were diagnosed incorrectly, or when H5N1 has been found in animals in an island.

I’m checking Google every day with several search terms for the islands.I’m using fever, flu, H5N1, disease, influenza plus the names of the islands for my Google check. When I looked for media for these islands using the Oceania list of directories and search engines, I found very few media listed for these islands and what there was are usually not updated regularly or completely. Surely there are more newspapers than are listed, but if so, they don’t seem to have a web site. I found about 8 newspapers in all but about three of those were for Papua,New Guinea and the Solomons which aren’t really in my list. The Fiji Times looks like a pretty fair newspaper.

bgw in MT – at 22:20

Pardon the punctuation in the post above. I hate the way type appears in the comment box. For some reason it is much harder for me to proofread.

03 November 2006

Nimbus – at 12:53

I will be happy to start watching Central Africa. Just a note: Zaire no longer exists as a country; it’s now part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Central Africa : Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Zaire

There is nothing of note happening in this part of the world other than a spate of deaths in Cameroon from cholera, which is bacterial rather than viral. Is it worth mentioning?

AnnieBat 14:15

Hi Nimbus - thanks for that. Yes, I think it is worth mentioning the current ‘stateof afairs’ in this region so we have a ‘benchmark’ for future reference if illnesses etc start to appear.

I will start a Lookout Post thread for you - I cannot see one there already.

Hmmm, countries come, countries go … no offence intended with that statement of course.

Cheers

04 November 2006

History Lover – at 12:20

I really don’t know how to begin doing this (I’m at a pre-school technological level compared to everyone else), but I live on the Texas-Mexico border and would like to do Central America. Could someone give me some tips as to how to Google these news items?

Jane – at 18:06

I can check on South Korea and Japan. I don’t think I’ll start a thread until something happens, though. They are in section 18, but there’s a whole lot more in 18. I’ll just start with the ones I have newspaper ideas for, for now.

Nimbus – at 18:36

History Lover – at 12:20

You can start by just googling central american news. You will get more hits than you know what to do with. ;-) Here are a couple to get you started.

http://www.world-newspapers.com/americas.html

http://www.abyznewslinks.com/centr.htm

http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/cat/1e6da80e3bfca450/

05 November 2006

AnnieBat 01:00

History Lover @ 12:20. A Lookout Post for Central America exists ( here ) so you could take a look to see what links they are already using as well. I know they would love to have you on board as a volunteer to help.

Most groups are using the second link from Nimbus above to get them started.

The main thing is that every little bit helps and you will be surprised how quickly you become very adept at hunting things out - I have really surprised myself with my techo maturity since I have been with Wiki.

Enjoy the hunting and the learning

13 November 2006

bgw in MT – at 21:51

Annie B….Hope you had a wonderful golf vacation. I’ve got all my searches saved and bookmarked now, so it’s not taking me very long at all to do the South Pacific, but I’m not finding a single thing for the last few days, not even dengue. Lots of articles, but none on our topics.

I see that # Central and Southeast Europe: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Greece don’t have a lookout post at all. I am starting to try to work up some searches for this area. The newspapers in these countries are in their own languages of course, so it’s going to take me a while to get it built up. I’ll work on it steadily, everyday. I think this is an important area since they had H5N1 last spring. I’ll try to cover it the best I can. I’m not familiar with this type of searching. So far it has been unsuccessful.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for all you’ve done for us here!It has been invaluable.

14 November 2006

Nimbus – at 06:05

AnnieB - I’m starting a Lookout Post for Central and Southeast Europe in order to post a news article. I’ll keep my eyes open but I’m not signing up for ownership. :)

AnnieBat 15:34

bgw in MT and Nimbus - thanks for your work - it is the community effort that makes this happen - I just sprouted an idea ..

ALL FOLKS OUT THERE , according to my scan, we are still missing outlook posts for areas 14 (Middle East and Caucasus), 15 (Arab Peninsula), and 16 (Central Asia). Any volunteers to get these started.

As has already been shown with the other Lookout POsts, once they are started, many people join in the search and updates.

A very special thanks to all those who have made such great efforts already

Volunteers Please – at 15:35

ALL FOLKS OUT THERE , according to my scan, we are still missing Lookout Posts for areas 14 (Middle East and Caucasus), 15 (Arab Peninsula), and 16 (Central Asia). Any volunteers to get these started.

As has already been shown with the other Lookout POsts, once they are started, many people join in the search and updates.

A very special thanks to all those who have made such great efforts already

15 November 2006

Volunteers Please – at 00:28

I’ve started a thread for the Arab Peninsula since I found an article that would be appropriate for the thread.

Please help to search for news if you can. Feel free to join in on any thread- the more the merrier:-)

Thanks to AnnieB for getting this all organized!

17 November 2006

Volunteers Please – at 01:22
Volunteers Please – at 12:25

All volunteers are very welcome

Thanks to everyone who has been posting, ‘keep up the great work!

bgw in MT – at 14:20

I’ve found that I can’t do the searches in the Central European languages without my system freezing upfor some reason. This computer has always been very stable, too. The one time I did get a Hungarian translation finished it made no sense whatsoever, since it was mostly still in Hungarian. It made Toggletext look like a model of clarity. The searching I do for these countries are going to have to be in English only. Sorry ‘bout that.

25 November 2006

A Canadian Nurse – at 19:17

Hi According to the New England Journal of Medicine the bird flu virus is changing. In which direction do you feel it is changing? Is it getting closer to easier human to human transmission or away from it? Why do you feel the way you do? I live and work in Eastern Ontario in nursing.My place of employment is part of a regional disaster plan.

A Canadian Nurse – at 19:17

Hi According to the New England Journal of Medicine the bird flu virus is changing. In which direction do you feel it is changing? Is it getting closer to easier human to human transmission or away from it? Why do you feel the way you do? I live and work in Eastern Ontario in nursing.My place of employment is part of a regional disaster plan.

A Canadian Nurse – at 19:18

Hi According to the New England Journal of Medicine the bird flu virus is changing. In which direction do you feel it is changing? Is it getting closer to easier human to human transmission or away from it? Why do you feel the way you do? I live and work in Eastern Ontario in nursing.My place of employment is part of a regional disaster plan.

crfullmoon – at 20:23

Hello! (There is an Ontario preppers thread somewhere about, too) How did you come here?

“Why do you feel the way you do?” I’ve been following H5N1 news online since at least Jan 2004, when a couple of scientists said this virus was the only thing in their field that was keeping them awake at night. I’ve felt the biggest ignored danger to the US was an influenza pandemic like 1918, and I felt that way before and after 9/11 (on 9/11 itself, I admit I was more concerned, for a few hours, about nuclear war).

A slow-motion train wreck, down a track that hasn’t been used in 88 years or so, and my townsfolk won’t get off the tracks, because the local officials decided to spare them the scary news; and I’m worried the train will come over the hill into sight any day now. Rumbling is just getting louder, and, H5N1 is in so many Places/Species Unmonitorable; Nature will roll the pandemic dice, eventually.

A Pandemic Influenza Year presents challenges no emergency plan nor regional disaster plan (based on finite time and location, and, mutual aid from unaffected areas) can hold up under; especially if the public is not preparing on a household level for avoiding infections that may mean fatalitites, surviving disruptions to our JIT and import-reliant system, and dealing with collateral deaths from grid and medical and other system failures.

Have you read why A Severe Pandemic is Likely, by Monotreme ? That presents the case better than I can.

I hear some leftover pumpkin ice cream from our Thanksgiving day calling my name. Goodnight to you, A Canadian Nurse. Take good care of yourself; people also need nurses for life post-pandemic.

AnnieBat 23:14

A Canadian Nurse above - there was considerable dicussion oon this very matter over several threads here, but I can direct you to this one for starters H5N1 Receptor Binding 2

Just scroll down until the November posting start - about a third of the way into the thread.

I hope this helps a bit

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