Re: OT, kinda has to do with security if you squint a bit :-)

["Fergie (Paul Ferguson)" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Not really wanting to get _too_ far afield of infosec issues,
but as this Boing Boing snippet says, this whole H5N1 avian
flu thing is getting kind of scary, too:

 http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/30/h5n1_bird_flu_gettin.html

And, also for what it's worth, I keep am "outbreak" subset of
bookmarks on various health-related pandemics (what is the
fascination of it? I simply don't know...), among them:

 WHO Disease Outbreak News
 http://www.who.int/csr/don/en/

 CDC Avian flu page
 http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/

Apologies for the diversion...  ;-)

p.s. Note to Valdis: I loved the euphemism that the guy from
USAMRIID called Ebola ...."the slate wiper..."

- ferg


-- "Fergie (Paul Ferguson)" <fergdawg () netzero net> wrote:

Great book. Factual events. Scary stuff.

While I was living and working in Northern Virgina, I went by
the Hazleton Research Products' (HRP) Reston Primate Quarantine
Unit in Reston right after it was literally decontaminated and
razed. Nothing left but a pile of debris and a few bricks.

I now have a brick from that building sitting on my bookshelves
at home. ;-)

The amazing thing is that it was right across the street from
a daycare center.

FWIW: http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/filo/ebor.html

- ferg


-- Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:

Or read 'The Hot Zone' by Richard Preston.  Quick executive summary: there's 2
strains of Ebola - one that infects humans and monkeys, and is spread via
fluids (usually when the victim bleeds out), and one that infects only monkeys,
but spreads incredibly well through the air.  And scientists have no idea what
the difference is between the two, or why one is airborne, and the infects
humans.  That's part of why the CDC and everybody has a cow every time there's
an Ebola outbreak - if a third strain surfaces that infects humans and is
airborne, we're *screwed* (the monkey strain had a major outbreak in Reston
Virginia in a quarantine facility - basically, if an infected monkey sneezed,
every other monkey within 20 yards *will* end up dead. It was that virulent.
Now imagine 1 infected person getting off the plane at JFK....).


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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