It's a bird, it's a plane...it's H5N1!

I dragged myself to Blockbuster with the aspiration of fulfilling my weekend career as an overachieving couch potato by vegetating in front of Saw III or Employee of the Month, but that goal slowly dissipated when I laid my eyes on "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America." It definitely wasn't love at first sight, but Peter Parker's uncle's voice echoed through my head: With great power, comes great responsibility. And by some convoluted transitive property, this meant that as a peon - I mean, apprentice - of the public health trade, it would be my responsibility to tape my eyelids open and force the pleasures of this film upon myself. It was neither quite as original nor as terrifying as its predecessors such as 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, and many more portraying the communicable nature of Zombie zombicus. Nevertheless, it was quite an insightful film that shed light on the reality of the magnitude of impact, lack of global preparation, speed of transmission, economic impacts, political tension, mayhem/anarchy, and various other complications and issues that come into play with the emergence of a pandemic.

In addition to some of the points we've already covered, other considerations we should take in to account and guidelines we should establish when planning for epidemics and pandemics should include:
- creating sanitation guidelines easy to implement (i.e. N95 masks, washing hands, etc.)
- preserving economies as well as national security
- ensuring communications (ARPANET part 2?)
- designating sites for the deceased and establish proper steps for transportation and burial
- ensuring sustenance and survival
- media control
- collaborating with other nations to establish realistic plans that will be executable under the most draconian conditions
- dividing communities/regions into small cells and establishing disaster leaders
- knowing available resources
- establishing emergency sites and command centers
- improving instant diagnostics and establishing barriers/quarantines
- constant reassessment!

In summary, what we have here is the need for a macrocosmic synergistic effort combining something along the lines of political game theory and global logistics that will be able to effectively go into action in every community around the globe. Thus, preparing for a pandemic requires a very open-minded, diplomatic, intersectional approach. In closing, I highly recommend this film - at the least for the insight into the logistical aspect of approaching a pandemic - and I would be more than happy to lend you my more than legitimate copy of this movie. *drivel over and out*

Preparing for the Avian Flu Pandemic

Globalization and Religion: The Implications for Health

My thoughts took a ride on the attention deficit line and I found myself pondering about this one, but couldn't find anything on it. Any thoughts?

International Disease Control

Time's Global Health Blog

Time has a wicked global health blog, reporting/commenting on the latest international health issues, progresses, challenges, policies, and so on. Enjoy!

Globalization is Good

Johan Norberg's take on globalization was absolutely an eye opening experience, and as a women's studies minor, I feel a wee bit qualified to comment on eye openers. Up to this point, I can probably safely say that I had been brainwashed regarding globalization and sweat shops. Of course I can't sit here, watch a few videos, and claim that globalization is perfect, but it definitely does have its benefits. While providing seemingly meager wages, sweatshops provide competitive market wages with regards to local and regional standards. Through the competition, globalization in this aspect promotes market efficiency. The video clip has also shed light on the various governments imposing restrictions on the growth of globalization and the consequent effects on the economies. By juxtaposing current prosperous nations to poor nations, at which level the prosperous nations were once at, Norberg demonstrates the potential for economic expansion in the poor nations avoiding globalization. Thus, we can see that it is in fact the governments that are responsible for the lack of economic growth by oppressing globalization which would result in competition, resulting in labor and wage growth. In the long run, such infusion would dramatically improve the economies of such countries.