New Olympic Event: The Plague Pass

Uh-oh...

Which country is prominent among the first to report human-to-human transmission of H5N1?

Human to Human Transmission of H5N1 Confirmed in China

Chinese health officials have confirmed that a father caught H5N1 bird flu from his son last December, according to a report released Tuesday. This marks at least the fourth instance in which many authorities now believe there was limited inter-family H5N1 transmission.

Which country, conveniently enough, just happens to have developed a vaccine for H5N1?

China approves its first human H5N1 vaccine

China's State Food and Drug Administration approved production of the country's first human vaccine for the H5N1 virus last week (2 April).

Which country is hosting the next Olympics, an event expected to draw an audience from all over the world, who will gather in public places, jam up against each other, and then go home?

China, Air Travel and the 2008 Olympics

One of the biggest questions surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is whether China’s fast-growing but seriously stretched commercial aviation system will be up to the task of handling the 2 million visitors expected to pack the Chinese capital for the Games this summer.

Er...spread, did you say?

Olympic spirit to be spread through North America via San Francisco


Probably a good idea:

Chicken off menu at Beijing Olympics


Ground Zero articles of interest:



Human to Human Transmisson of H5N1 in China is now fulfilling all prophecies of Zombie War (Clyde's MySpace blog)

Unclean, unclean....

Microchips mulled for HIV carriers in Indonesia's Papua

"Among one of the means being considered is the monitoring of those infected people who can pose a danger to others," Manangsang said.

"The use of chip implants is one of the ways to do so, but only for those few who turn aggressive and clearly continue to disregard what they know about the disease and spread the virus to others."

I've already seen where this would lead. Norman Spinrad wrote a novella in the eighties called "Journals of the Plague Years". The spread of the plague (AIDS and mutations thereof, though it is not called by name in the story) is so prevalent that, included in the information on the national ID, there is a field with information about the person's infection status. Uninfected people's cards, when scanned, returned a blue indicator; the infected, or anyone who had missed their last scheduled medical test, came up black. Most black-carders were rounded up and shipped off to the quarantine city, San Francisco, which was surrounded by walls and guards in boats and all.

When people would meet and consider dating, there were readers in public places for the purpose of confirming one's status to the other. (I think there may have been home blood test kits, too; it's been twenty years, and the book is out of print now.)

And when a person's card registered black, they would often dive into the underground immediately, as it meant the authorities would be looking for them.

I won't go into the plot details. But that's where this is heading. Black cards, not just for diseases, but for any undesirable behavior.

Consider the usefulness of underground networks in such a case, or that of card counterfeiters and identity brokers. Should a similar future come to pass, They^TM will want to use chips because they're harder to counterfeit, but I have faith in human inventiveness.

Ground Zero articles of interest:

Another plane quarantine

Just in case you've already forgotten the fairly recent incident of the plane held in Newark, NJ for hours while the airlines sorted out sick people, here's another small reminder of how vulnerable we are to bioweaponry.

Psst. "Difficult to treat" = "drug-resistant".

U.S. authorities quarantine air traveler with TB

"This is an unusual TB organism, one that's very, very difficult to treat. And we want to make sure that we have done everything we possibly can to identify people who could be at risk,"

Tuberculosis is serious. A positive test for exposure bans you from health care and child care jobs for life. There are several antibiotic-resistant strains, because we've been treating it for so long. Oh, and it kills you slowly and unpleasantly.

Am I saying that these are cases of bioweaponry? Not necessarily; in fact, I don't think it's likely. Bioweaponry, when it is finally used en masse, will be harder to detect and spread more quickly than TB does. No, what these are is....practice. Drills.

Remember that a plague is a national emergency, and that President Bush now becomes dictator at his own discretion in a national emergency. They^TM have to see how fast authorities respond to such incidents so they can design an outbreak that gets past the authorities (the ones who aren't in on it) long enough to take hold. Next will probably come quarantine drills on public buildings.

Ground Zero articles of interest: