One Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest

[athelind]

Remember a few weeks ago, when I opined that "influenza should never be dismissed as 'just the flu'"?

I was right.

Comments

[chrissawyer.livejournal.com]

It sounds like just more fear, but it is worrisome.

And all because the goddamn asians can't be bothered to keep animals seperated to prevent disease transmission. :|

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

With Britains illustrious record of controlling immigration wait for our working class to be wiped out first. This will not affect industry since the jobs can be outsourced if they haven't been already.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Canada's will be not far behind. We get more immigrants from East Asia than you do these days, too.

On the plus side, the SARS scare here a year and a half ago (the hospitals were closed to visitors while I was having Elizabeth, which was a mixed blessing) may have made us more prepared for something like this. Certainly the procedures for controlling the spread of infectious diseases have been beefed up since then.

Meanwhile, the Norfolk virus is decimating school populations, including teachers, in several schools in Hamilton, a week before the strike date set for supply teachers. Ain't life grand?

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Norfolk virus? que pasa?
No, if we're talking official immigration levels then maybe you do BUT the point is that the government have lost control over immigration now that it is so easy to get here from France. (and the French attitude to Eastern European and other immigration is "let them go to Britain while we look at the pretty flowers")
Once in Britain they disappear. Probably exploited by their own as cheap labour.
When the European trains go high speed into St Pancras/Kings Cross we'll be getting illegals straight into the heart of one of the most mixed communities in the country.
Did I mention someone nicked my passport & Birth cert. when the Passport Office obligingly sent both to me through unregistered mail?

And of the drivers who leg it from road accidents because when caught they have no insurance , no licence, and....aren't officially over here anyway?

And of the young woman who apparently has 6 or so identities...all of which are used to draw benefits?...council housing in two places....two names...

Our fear of being accused as racists means that should an ethnic individual go crooked we are frightened to look to closely....

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Norfolk virus is a nasty 24- to 60-hour flu bug. Not any more deadly than the strains covered by our current flu shot, but not pleasant. About a third of a school near here was off sick with it in the last few days. I'm think 30% infection rate, an average incubation period of three days (which is standard, I believe, for most flus) and the general poverty of that neighbourhood, should have it spreading to other schools by early next week. Sixty hours takes us to the end of next week, by which point round three will begin at other neighbourhood schools. That's when the third problem kicks in - the supply teachers go on strike as of Dec. 6. The two weeks before Christmas are going to be hellish as a result.

Canada has similar immigration issues, because our immigration laws have no teeth to them. The Chinese mafia in Toronto has been importing teenage prostitutes for more than a decade, and no one's been able to touch them. We see the girls at the airport, no passports or documents though they had them when they got on the plane in Beijing. Then they claim refugee status. They're given a court date and released. We never see them again. Meanwhile, active, drug-resistant strands of TB are popping up in homeless shelters and schools across Toronto. It's not a coincidence.

There is a section in the Immigration Act that prohibits refugee claimants from entering the country if their immediate departure point was a safe country that figures on a list in an appendix. There is not a single country on that list - not even the U.S. When the government tried to put countries on that list, thereby forcing potential refugees to make their claims from their safe third country, the uproar was huge. So we take them, and because our supreme court has declared that all people have the right to protection under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which gives them the right to representation in a court of law, we have to let them go in the community and give them a hearing. For which, of course, they never show.

I know a lot about this because my dad is an immigration officer at Pearson Airport. He says he has in fact seen a few real refugees in his thirteen years there - but not nearly as many as have entered the country claiming refugee status.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

I think about TB every time I see someone spitting...no, HAWKING and spitting in the street.

We have money laundering (which is why it's getting harder and harder prove I/D). One lady of my acquaintance was refused verification of a Marks and Spencer credit card because she doesn't drive and hasn't been abroad (no licence, no passport) and since she works had no State Benefit book. The store manager wouldn't relent so she sent the cut up card to M&S head offices with the tart observation that had she been leeching off the state she could get one without problems. She got a verified card and a letter saying the manager had been sent for retraining....bloody Jobsworth.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

These stories are sounding so familiar. . .

I just really hope that when that pandemic starts, those of us who are smart enough to have seen it coming will have the opportunity to hole up in our homes for a while and miss it. I think next summer might be nice timing for me. I always become a hermit for a week or so at the beginning of summer, in direct response to the frenetic activity of the last four weeks of the school year.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Red crosses on the door with the words "God have mercy on us?"

I've been reading a guide to the Black Death....

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Something like that. The thing is, if you keep a well-stocked freezer and pantry, there's no reason why you couldn't sit out a pandemic for several weeks without leaving the house. We're better situated for a pandemic in the West than we've ever been before.