Good, anything that will help put people in the habit of washing their hands will go a long way to prevent diseases of all kinds.

I agree. I was in a discussion last week on the flu, and I mentioned how I haven't had a flu in 30 years, nor have I gotten a flu shot. I wonder if it is because, from me having a touch of OCD, wash my hands multiple times a day?

I'm the type that if I meet a person, and he/she extends their hand to shake, I will shake hands but right after that person has left I immediately wash my hands. The thought will linger that those hands may have had germs and I won't be able to relax until I wash.

Tony-From-NJ, I can't wait to see this movie also. From what I understand, the movie is NOT actually based on the Robin Cook novel by the same name.

Oh really? I didn't know that. I actually meant to break out the book to remind myself of the characters before going to see it. I saw the character names on their Facebook page and they didn't ring a bell and I thought maybe I just wasn't remembering. It was long ago. Thoough I usualy remember. Odd that they name it the same, and also with such a similar plot. I guess base they will say "based on the story"? In other words not the same story, but an idea from.

I wondered the same thing as you - so I looked it up (I also read the book - but it's been a long time, I think I might have to read it again just for the fun of it). I still want to see the movie also. I often times like these medical mystery/drama/thriller movies and books. Sometimes they are so outlandish, but fun to watch or read nonetheless. It's fun for me to see what they get right and what they get wrong about science. I thought it was funny that the CDC guy drew and epi curve for Kate Winslet during the making of this movie. I know - I'm a nerd.

Summer, believe me, I think the same way. :)

If it wasn't scientifically accurate I wouldn't enjoy it as much. It goes into the "what if" factor. I'm on my way later today to see it. I read a few posts on FB from people who saw it and they loved it.

I have a collection of books by Robin Cook in a box in the garage. (I can't ever get myself to throw away books). Hopefully they will make more of them into movies.

Tony-From-NJ, Yeah, it definitely goes to the "what if" factor. The more accurate they are on the little things, the more believable the plot line can become - even if it is just a story.

Let me know what you think of it. I won't get a chance to go watch it until Monday at the earliest - I'm preparing for my cardiovascular final which is on Monday. Let me know if it's one that is worth seeing in the theatre or is it better to hold off until it comes out on Blu-Ray.

I never throw away books either. Last time I moved, I moved from Missouri to Pennsylvania for school - I couldn't bring all of my books, so some of them we sold in a garage sale, others my mom has stored at her house waiting for me. My bedroom in Missouri was really large - and every wall space without windows had bookshelves that were packed full. When we were loading them up to take to my mom's house I think there was a little more than 4000 books. Unfortunately, since moving to PA, I haven't bought any books to read just for the pleasure of reading them. Instead, I have several shelves full of med school text books. Blah - someday, I'll be done and have time to do some reading just for the pleasure of reading.

Went to see it yesterday. It was good. Scary as described. But I will categorize it as somewhere between wait for DVD and See it at the movies. The reason is that they were skipping between characters giving you their point of view and the story line had no clear direction. That plus they advertised so much that I saw most of the previews and pictures and knew what was coming next.

But that is the only negative. It was enjoyable and good in the medical mystery category. It did have that effect of feeling you need to keep back from that person in front of you at the theater, because it is a very realistic scenario.

Cool, Thanks for the info. I've only seen one trailer for it (one time) because I've been studying so much and not watching TV because of my schedule. I might have to go see it Monday, after my exam - it would be a good study break before we start our next system (respiratory).

Let me write that down. Lack of hand washing at public rest stops causes epidemics. Who'd a thunk it !!

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He never said "causes" US, and I welcome you to show me where it says hand washing doesn't prevent certain viruses from spreading.

Over-sanitation is slowly removing human resistance to disease by making the bugs stronger and stronger.

It's not the viruses that are the problem. WE are the problem.

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The virus doesn't enter through the hands. It does spread through touch though. If you don't believe that, then you need to go back about 400 years, then read up till today.

As a male, I can usually complete my visit to public restrooms without touching anything in the facility. pushing doors open and flushing with the tread of my shoe. I prefer NOT to operate the faucets, soap dispensers, and drying equipment, so usually don't wash my hands.

Anything? Wow - that's amazing Dan, I would have a hard time with the zipper at least (not to mention removing and reinstalling the most important thing)

Believe it or not, that thing is not sanitary.

p.s. don't share your fries with anyone.

Usually you get the flu by touching your eyeball, lots of folks absentmindedly rub their eyes and get the bug that way.

You keep thinking that, but with the worlds environment changing fast, you have no idea what's coming.

I do have an idea what's coming.

It's our tampering with nature and eventually we will create some genetically engineered thing that will escape into the natural world and create havoc that we will not be able to control.

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While that is possible, we are not the biggest threat on this planet. Just as life arrived here, more can arrive everyday. With the environment changing, new bacteria can spread that we will not be able to cope with.

I have to agree with Tony, the trillions of little evolutionary "experiments" that go on every minute in nature are way more likely to create a deadly contagion than some mad-made "frankenplant". It's happened before, and will almost certainly happen again.

Forget Frankenplant... You haven't experienced terror until you are met... face to face... with...

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENPLANT!

http://www.dana-mad.ru/gal/images/Alan%20Lee/Faeries/alan%20lee_faeries_jenny%20greenteeth.jpg

1776 = moron.

The GMO genie is out. Once you put altered plant genes in an ecosystem, they spread and can take thousands of years to be eliminated via natural selection.

its already too late.

lol. somewhere in that post there is something not correct, but I can't put my finger on it.

Lol, no. I meant Cherie. God, god, all the same to me.

Cherie--the Black Plague was caused by a virus, not global warming or the lack thereof. The virus came from Central Asia, and was transported in the fleas from infested rats. The fleas hid in the cloth and jumped out onto humans. Volcanic ash had nothing to do with it.

Christina-- reread her post. This part specifically:

At the cooler temperature, the plague was able to thrive in the abdomen of the flea

I have no idea whether or not that is particularly accurate, but if it is, then her statement made perfect sense. Also, Bubonic Plague is NOT caused by a virus. It's caused by bacteria.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001622/

Apparently weather did affect the spread of the plague, but not in the manner that Cherie had mentioned:

"it is clear that several existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death."

"In Europe, the Medieval Warm Period ended sometime towards the end of the 13th century, bringing the "Little Ice Age"^[14] and harsher winters with reduced harvests... Food shortages and rapidly inflating prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock, were all in short supply. Their scarcity resulted in malnutrition, which increases susceptibility to infections due to weakened immunity."

So... Yup-- climate change DID indeed have an effect on the spread of plague.

My bad--there was the original bacteria, and then there was a mutation that allowed it the disease to spread like a virus and could be transmitted by air by coughing.

The bacteria, from my understanding, has returned repeatedly to the Asian steppes. I think the last time was in the late 1800s/early 1900s. It started with the trappers of marmots (like gophers) and spread to eastern Russia, western China. The marmots are the source of the bacteria. Kind of how like smallpox originates in cows. The Soviets at one time tried to weaponize the bacteria.

It may have been the warmer weather that caused overpopulation which lead to malnutrition, but there was no volcano involved, at least that I am aware of. The warmer weather may have encouraged more trade along the Silk Road, which went right through marmot habitat. The virus was first spotted on the Black Sea and then traveled by boat to Italy, etc.

I am not saying that climate change did not have some sort of effect on the cause or effect of the Black Plague, but there was no volcano involved.

Christina's explanation sounds much more like I had heard previously. Once people figured out that they should clean more, and remove the rats, the plague subsided.

Many bacteria can spread via the air - it doesn't necessarily take a mutation to allow this, though a mutation can allow this to happen. That said, the Plague is thought to have been caused by Y. pestis - which is found in three forms (bubonic, septiciemic and pneumonic), which have to do with where the bacteria take up residence in the body. You are absolutely right that it it originated in rodents in China.

It is found in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America and North America - in all of these areas, the bacteria survives in semi-arid areas (so, yes, the climate does play a role). In the US, most human cases are found in two regions: 1) northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern Colorado, and 2) California, southern Oregon, and far western Nevada. In the US there are 10 - 15 cases of plague per year, worldwide there are about 2000 cases every year.

Not to mention the European penchant for throwing poo out their window, that didn't help much in terms of disease.

A great moral story. While the WHO and even CDC gets involved in epidemics all over the world, the real funding from our government comes when the U.S. population is effected.

I spent time in Northern Africa and had to take all sorts of pills to prevent sickness/malaria. I thought that if it's gone from the US, why didn't the cure move to the rest of the world so no one has to worry. I guess there is no money in that.

The untold story is that hospitals in the US get many basic drugs from "gray" suppliers because big pharma does't see money in making antibiotics, etc. Curing your restless leg syndrome is a big priority, though.

And once a vaccine gets created, few of the 330 million Americans will get their hands on it because it is too expensive. Go figure.

Once a vaccine is created, propagandists and conspiracy theorists convince the gullible not to take it. Or alternately, people like Rick Perry, with his ties to big pharma, will mandate it be given, as he did with the HPV vaccine, accidentally doing some good with his "big government" policy.

Why is it our job to fix everybody's problems?

Because I had to travel there. What if I brought it back?

Also, those who are sick are traveling here. One of the biggest sources of drug-resistant TB is Russian prisons. They don't give adequate amounts of antibiotics to the prisoners, so when they go back into society, they spread drug-resistant TB to people on the bus, etc. One such person took a plane to NYC, where he infected people both on the plane itself and others in the city.

Speaking of that drug resistant TB, there is a small outbreak right now in the UK.

Which was a good movie, but it had the typical Army virus escape and they quarantine a town, etc. This one is more realistic in that it shows the lives of the people going through it. It's getting good reviews.

Tony, it wasn't an Army virus, it was an alien bug caught in a satellite collection screen... The Army only stepped in because they were the agency responsible for that type of "fire".

Love that movie BTW, saw it a LONG time ago as part of a Saturday afternoon Double Feature Matinee along with The Omega Man (Charlton Heston)

Oh yes, sorry. Lol, mixed up my virus movies. Yes and the jeep rolls into town and the two soldiers are seen getting out screaming.

Project Scoop from "andromeda strain" was a mission to capture space bugs and weaponize them. Talk about bad judgment by the military...

Mother Abigail will save us....

I still think of that miniseries whenever I see a crow, or hear "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House.

His name is Walter O'Dim, originally Walter Padick...

In addition to appearing as Randall Flagg, he is also known as:
Rudin Filaro, Raymond Fiegler, Richard Fannin, Walter Hodji, Walter Farden, The Walkin' Dude and Marten Broadcloak.

Awesome villain.

If you haven't yet, read The Dark Tower series. It is the only extant metafictional epic in English literature and ties together many different fictional worlds, including Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter-- it's all part of the meta-fiction element. Check it out!

Being that flu shots get released about twice a year, I don't see how this could be an evil plot.

Now, the timing on the 9/11 weekend, that's something to think about.

I recommend going to watch the movie 'Contagion' and begin coughing violently just as the movie starts.

Make the patrons nervous.

Make the patrons nervous.

Done.

There was a story a few (5-8 ???) years ago about a man whose father-in-law worked at the CDC. This guy gets a drug resistant strain of TB, his father-in-law tells him that most likely he is not contagious, so the guy gets on a plane. He honeymoons in Europe, and while in Italy he is told that he should not fly back commercially. He would basically be stuck in Italy until a private jet could get him. So, what does this guy do? He flies commercially back to Canada, then drives to the US border, where he is arrested and quarantined. The CDC lost all respect from me after that incident. We wonder why the world hates Americans. It's the cowboy "I do what I want to do when I want to do it and screw everyone else" attitude. My CDC father-in-law says it's ok to fly, so if I might contaminate a few plane loads full of people, plus all of the people I contact in Europe, who cares? HIs father-in-law should have told him in no uncertain terms to stay put and get into quarantine. I don't think this guy was ever charged with anything; his family connections probably helped there. The CDC is worthless if it can't even stop incurable TB people from flying overseas. Let's start with the easy stuff before we conquer the next ebola virus.

The last I checked, the CDC didn't have a police force, nor does it control airline traffic. What was it supposed to do, exactly?

What? The CDC are "..... the unsung heroes of the world. " They are paid government workers, and most, very well paid at that. By the way, did they ever account for the "powdery" substance that was found in their offices in Atlanta? Nope. Another job paid for and never completed.

Another example of life imitating Hollywood. There is enough of that in the White House alone to last for decades.

The CDC can contain people; this is why the embassy in Italy was authorized to detain him. This guy was diagnosed with untreatable TB by the CDC, and his CDC father-in-law told him to go ahead and take an overseas honeymoon because he probably wasn't contagious. Once the decision to detain him was taken, he was already overseas.

The hard part is always finding patient Zero. The man who spread AIDS to North America wasn't found for years, and he had infected hundreds because he was an extremely promiscuous gay man who worked for an airline of all things.

I don't know if this guy was patient zero or not, because I don't know how he got infected, but the CDC should have treated him like he was patient zero.

We will all die anyway. None of us make it out of this life alive, right? Besides if they (elderly) already have an immunity to something there really wouldn't be any reason to vaccinate them.

Um, what? I HAVE been looking for the mad dash worldwide to collect blood samples from survivors of the 1917 pandemic. That generation has almost died out, and the stories their blood tell are invaluable. Absolutely idiotic to not save this resource before it's gone.

I would think that the elderly have seen it all. If you live to be 90, obviously you are immune to everything you have encountered so far. There is no value in vaccinating an elderly person against measles. I think elderly people are first on the vaccination list, along with babies, for the flu virus shot.

Baa! bleet-bleet-bleet... Baa!

(Translation: hell yes.)

In a way you're correct, but it isn't so much the population, but the possibility of losing our technological ability to support them that's more of a concern.

The global collapse of the power grid, either by war, terrorism, or a natural disaster (like a coronal mass-ejection), would seem to be a more likely trigger for a massive die-off of mankind. With perhaps two billion concentrated in "urban islands" dependent on power and transportation to provide food, clean water, and the removal of sewage, these will become death traps if the power goes out for a prolonged period. After that, the mass exodus from the cities will inevitably create confrontations between refugees and those in the rural areas more able to provide for themselves. Mass camps of city refugees, weakened from hunger and lack of sanitation will be hotbeds of diseases long-thought under control. Panic and conflict with a government and military deprived of its ability to enforce civil rule will collapse. It could get ugly for mankind for awhile until a natural balance between resources and population is achieved.

Forget what Einstein said about how WW IV will be fought. WW III may be our next sticks-and-stones war.

Where will I be if the lights go out? Praying...

Ideally, a virus with a built-in dormancy period, to maximize global exposure before it "wakes up" and does such lethal and quick damage that a cure can't be found in time. Taking that a step further, nanotechnology that could create microscopic "death bots" that attack vital body functions could be seeded into the atmosphere until nearly 100% of the population is infested--and no one the wiser--with some group on the "trigger" that could extort basically control of the world at the push of a button that would send the signal to these nanobots to do their grim duty.

Forget Independence Day and Battle Los Angeles. If I were an alien threat with the technology to even get to earth, and I wanted to make humanity go away I'd just quietly seed the atmosphere with nano-deathbots and do a clean sweep.

Good point. Just like today. We have evolved from Sea Power to Air Power. The next level is Space Power. Who ever dominates it will be the next Superpower in the World.

Wow thanks for that tidbit of information, I am so overwhelmed.

To set you straight, smallpox vaccine came from researchers (Edward Jenner) noticied that cow milkers or milkmaids did not contract smallpoxs and he researched more to discover that people who milked cows were immune to smallpoxs. It turns out that the disease "cowpoxs" is closely related to smallpoxs hence the milkers of cows developed a resistance to the human form of the virus aka smallpoxs.

The smallpox vaccine came from people who were exposed to cowpox and developed immunity and the rest is history. You have to give Mr. Jenner his due, one smart cookie.

He was giving people cowpox though, because having cowpox was much less unpleasant than dying of smallpox.

WE do not become immune to antibiotics because they do very little to US. Antibiotics affect bacteria. If we continually take the antibiotics when we don't need them or stop taking them too early when we do need them, the bacteria are given a chance to become immune. Then they don't work. Also we aren't being helped by the farm usages of of antibiotics that give use more bacteria that are immune. Add in that the bacteria that specialized in certain animal species don't die off when the animal becomes extinct and you have serious worries about bacteria we were not meant to get.

Most antibiotic usage in the USA is in livestock.

How could the CDC be portrayed as anything but good guys?

Well the Republicans consider the CDC to be an expensive and intrusive government agency that conspires to restrict our rights and freedoms.

We need the personal freedom to spread disease anywhere we want, its the American way.