Time to hunker in the bunker!
"Sounding more serious. This guy was showing symptoms while he was attending a medical conference in New York. How many people did he come in contact with? Much more scary than terrorism.
"WHO Issues Advisory on Atypical Pneumonia
" "Until we can get a grip on it, I don't see how it will slow down," WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said in Geneva. "People are not responding to antibiotics or antivirals, it's a highly contagious disease and it's moving around by jet. It's bad." "
Could be an emergent bug. Could be just one of the usual cycles (of virulent flus and pneumonias). Such as the Flu Pandemic of 1918 (which killed one of my uncles and several other more distant relatives).
Or it could even be a bioengineered Super Bug, released by North Korea or Saddam or the CIA.
Whatever, this will further kill the travel industry if it escalates by a factor of, say, 10. So long as it remains localized and rare, ARS will probably just be a blip on the radar screen.
But if it crops up in a few dozen cities, with a bunch more people dying, then people will cancel airline trips. Which means the airline industry, already teetering on the edge of widespread bankruptcies (911 fears, security hassles, high jet fuel prices), will likely go into a deep depression.
I can't say I'll miss most of the airlines. Inefficient, rude, cattlecars in the sky. Too much flitting around the country on business, anyway.
(The recent cases of security screeners leaving notes about the books and magazines of the people they screen is just another nail in their coffin...some would say that those screeners have earned tthe harshest of sanctions for their actions.)
--Tim May |
