echoed from elsewhere

[acroyear]

I'm (almost, but not really) sorry that we in the west have gotten so used to good health and easily controlled diseases that we've forgotten what it was like to live where you could go from no symptoms to downright dead in a matter of hours, with nobody able to tell you how you caught it. But that threat remains as it always has and I admire the CDC's vigilance on this, as well as their learning from mistakes make when this last showed up in 1976.

If it doesn't explode into millions of deaths, call it a victory, whether by nature or by our attempts to contain it.

If we don't try to contain it, we only have ourselves to blame for what destruction it may eventually cause.

Please please PLEASE read about the outbreak of 1918: try to imagine a disease that killed more people in a matter of weeks than the entire 4 years of the horrid war that preceded it.  We don't know if this can turn into that, but better to act like it can AND WILL than to do nothing in response to the "hype" and watch it spread and mutate...

Comments

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU for posting this. Hype is hype is hype, but there is underlying truth to the action being taken by the government that is merited and important. Don't freak out, but don't write this off, either.

My employer just released their "pandemic flu policy", which basically reads that if you or a family member falls ill, you are expected to use all your available leave; when that is exhausted, they'll deign to give you leave without pay. (how big of them) And the kicker? If the government shuts down offices in D.C., "essential" personnel will paid "or given compensatory time", but everybody else will be charged leave or otherwise leave without pay.

So I hope folks are thinking about this in a way that also covers their livlihoods/savings.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

your employer's policy sucks. "a family member gets sick? no vacation: just get more and more stressed out and eventually you'll just have to quit because you will never get a real vacation break ever again."

THAT is something that the government will have to eventually step into and stop. that is one of the more depressing side effects of the loss of the power of unions.