I’m forced to go there

We just looked at another place tonight, a rental house close to us. We were pleasantly surprised at the size of the place (as well as the reasonable rent), and it is definitely in play. I'm going to call tomorrow and we'll look at another place tomorrow evening. I think we'll work on a "pros and cons" list and try to get it all laid out and logical, because that is the way we roll (Jamie!). It wasn't until I wrote this that I realized who the owner reminded me of...Tim Robbins! You know, Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption."

"That was the longest night of his life...."

Thank you, everyone, for your ideas and support in our Great Residence Search '09. It is greatly appreciated, believe me! I'm hopeful that we'll have good news to report about it soon.

I have other things I want to write about, but with this H1N1 mess, I feel I should write a bit more about it. I've written often about influenza in the past (just do a search for 'influenza' in my current blog, or in the Nutwood Junction archives), and you'll find topics including the vaccine, how viruses operate, the 1918 pandemic, and Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider. (Note the Neuraminidase and Hemagglutinin markers in the graphic above. That’s where the H1N1, or others like H5N1, designation comes from.)

Two big stories today. The first U.S. death, a toddler in Texas. Two other serious cases in Texas, another toddler and a woman who just had a C-section, are both in critical condition. Keep in mind that influenza generally targets the young, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. This is nothing new.

The other big story is that the WHO has ratcheted the alert up to level 5, meaning that a pandemic is imminent. I think what is being missed is that you can have a pandemic without having a highly lethal infectious agent. A pandemic merely means that it is widespread throughout many countries, and highly transmissible from human-to-human. This strain was bad news in Mexico, because it seemed to be particularly lethal in 20 to 40 year olds, which is a major red flag for influenza outbreaks. It appears to be less virulent in the States and elsewhere in the world, which leads me to believe that it is moderating and becoming less of a nasty bugger.

Oh, and I guess there was another big story (at the risk of sounding like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition guys), in that it has now been determined that it is a combination of two swine strains, rather than human-swine-avian, as originally reported. The two strains are the North American and Eurasion swine viruses. Neither have been shown to be contagious in humans before, and that is a problem. People won't have any immunity to this new hybrid virus, and that's why it could become so widespread.

So I agree with the cautionary efforts of the WHO and the CDC, although some might find it a little over the top. It's merely intended to keep people vigilant, and yes, to cut down on travel, in order to try to keep it from spreading. The cat is probably out of the bag, because it is already worldwide, but we can still all work to keep it from spreading to those who are always more vulnerable to the flu. Nothing has changed there. The usual precautions apply...this is nothing new. Influenza, the regular one that arrives every season, kills thousands worldwide every year.

I'm not going to do a little dance and say "I told you so!" because this is a nasty infection that has killed people. But I've said for some time that we will eventually face a pandemic infection at some point (have I mentioned that we're overdue?), and it's not surprising that it might be a virus (they mutate like crazy). So far, it looks as though this particular nastiness will not be a killer. But the potential exists for one that could be a killer, and smart companies will come up with a plan for how they will deal with a massive outbreak. The lab I worked at had a plan, and Ken's company has one. It's going to be okay, I believe that.

To lighten the mood a bit, David made me laugh with this take on H1N1, which he found on another blog. Hee hee!