Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

Photo: from the author's webpage and bio section.  It's on her latest books, too.  And in Entertainment Weekly, which says that her newest, Station Eleven, is "the must-read of the fall."  I don't doubt that it is.  I love her writing, from her first book, reviewed here, to her online essays.  Good writing is good writing, no matter the form or the genre.

An exquisitely-written, stays-with-you little gem of a book, more about the people who are left behind than about the people who leave.

Very short, at 220 pages, but very deep about obsession, depression, leaving and staying behind.  The characters are all representatives, of course, more than they are flesh-and-blood, exactly, which made me hate Lilia a little less at the end, when we learn in the last few sentences of the book that she lived happily-ever-after (mostly) after all, despite all the (mostly unintentional, but c'mon) heartbreak she left in her wake.

But she has been thrown through a window, seen a man driven off the road, seen a woman pulverized by a subway train, and she never had a lasting friendship or relationship until she married in her late-20s after finally staying somewhere--in this case, Italy.  Some reviews hated on her character, and I could see their point, especially how this waif with tight dark hair just so easily grabbed relationships with men and women (bisexuality is hinted at in the book)--and all she has to do to get them is to read in cultured little coffeeshops...  Yet, I don't doubt that there are a lot of Lilias out there, and that there are indeed affected women who sit in coffeeshops all the time, and bookish male intellectuals trip over themselves to be with them.  Plus, looking at the author's picture, I think it might be a bit of a self-description.  Maybe a little Freudian analysis is necessary here.  But I digress...

Lilia is representative of a type, and not full-blooded, so I ultimately gave her a pass.  After awhile of thinking about it.  Plus, I'd sit down next to her in a coffeeshop...

But all the characters are this way.  They're representative, and many of them come off far worse than she.  There's the aforementioned mother who threw her young child out the window...which was closed, by the way.  And she left the child in the winter snow to freeze, too.  Luckily that didn't happen--the freezing, I mean. 

Then there's the detective father who is the real obsessive of the book.  He leaves his wife and daughter for weeks, months and, yes, years at a time, to track down Lilia and her father, long after her abduction ceased to be worth tracking down.  (She's in her 20s, and plus she was better off away from the free-throwing mother.)  This guy's wife leaves him, then he leaves his 15-year old daughter alone as he again obsessively tracks Lilia down.  Ultimately he ends up returning to his young daughter for a short time, but then he leaves again and disappears forever from her life.  It's possible he commits suicide somewhere. 

This girl, his daughter, quits school, which he doesn't notice, and eventually befriends Lilia, and then her ex- (who Lilia leaves at the beginning and who tracks her down in Montreal, in a fashion, but he actually latches on to this guy's grown-up daughter, kinda gets obsessed with her for two weeks and never really seems that intent to find Lilia...) and then she becomes a stripper, learns something even more unsettling about her father, and then kills herself.

She's the real victim here.

The above paragraph may make the book sound like a soap opera, but it's really not.  In lesser, untalented hands, this would have been a real mess, and worthy of mockery and lampooning--but it's in great hands, and really stylishly and compactly written.  It's not my kind of book, normally, but there's huge buzz right now about Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, so I wanted to read her early stuff first.  I also read a couple of her online articles--one about NYC's reaction to Ebola before the doctor got sick there--and those were very well-written as well.

You've got to read this one.  For the writing.  For the interweaving structure.  For what it says about those who leave.  And for what it shows about those who are left.

It's well-constructed, a bit haunting and lyrical, and it'll stay with you.  It'll resonate.

And, oh yeah--Don't go to Montreal in the winter.

Ebola, Panic, Politics and Meet the Press

Some guests from October 5th's Meet the Press, and the show's moderator, have agreed to step into my blog and say exactly, verbatim, from the show's transcript, the same things they said on that show. You can read along with them via the transcript, found at the show's website. 

Welcome everyone!

GWEN IFILL:

Let me just, let's test one thing. One case of Ebola in the United States, right? One. 3,000 people dead in West Africa, which we weren't talking about last week. So all of a sudden, we are panicked. 

[BELANGER]: Right on, Gwen.  And the one case of Ebola is a guy who came from West Africa.  Not one transmitted case here, and yet we're panicked?  [Edit from Oct. 19, 2014--Two nurses treating this patient in Texas had Ebola transmitted to them from this man, probably from a breakdown in procedure and protocol when they removed their medical suits and gloves.  They are the first two, and so far the only, people to be transmitted Ebola while in America.  Reports indicate the second nurse was not showing symptoms--and was therefore not infectious--while she flew on a commercial flight to Ohio.]  What about the tens of thousands who've died of Ebola in Africa over the last few decades? Why haven't the American masses panicked for them?  Who worries for them?  Thanks for starting off our discussion with some logic and some facts.

REINCE PRIEBUS:

I think you guys spelled it out pretty well when you had Mr. Pfeiffer on. From the real unemployment rate, for the how many people are out of work, the labor participation rate is at record lows. People today don't feel better off than they were five years ago. And obviously, whether it's the GSA, the IRS, Syria, Ebola, the Secret Service, I mean, what's going well in regard to this administration and those senators that have followed this president lockstep? 

[BELANGER]: So now Obama is to blame for Ebola?  And ISIS?  Those two things are in no way related to the American unemployment rate or to the Obama Administration or to any senator.  You're an idiot.  Get off my blog.

JOE SCARBOROUGH:

No, I don't feel better. And I don't think most Americans feel better. You have everybody saying, "Hey, let's stay calm." That's what the World Health Organization said back in the spring when this broke out. And then they said, "Let's stay calm," when the head of Doctors without Borders, as The Washington Post reported this morning, went to them in late July and said, "This is a crisis." They said, "You're panicking, you're panicking."

And we're hearing the same thing now. Let's look at it. The World Health Organization has been dismal. They've ignored all of the warning signs. And then the African countries, the governments there have failed miserably. And right now, a lot of Americans are seeing what happened in Dallas and looking at your laundry list, what happened with the secret service, what happened with the IRS, what happened with the VA, what happened with ISIS being a JV team. So when anybody, any member of the government says, "Hey, just relax, everything's going to be okay," Americans don't believe that. 

[BELANGER]: Just because you're clearly panicking, Joe, that doesn't mean that all Americans are panicking.  Nor does it mean that there's something to panic about at this exact moment.  Let's break it down.  The World Health Organization said that Ebola was a crisis in Africa at that time, which is still where the Ebola crisis is, at this moment.  So don't take a serious thing like Ebola and purposely misrepresent it for your political gain.  Second: The African countries have indeed failed with the treatment and containment of Ebola, noticeably because of ignorance of how the disease is spread; ignorance of basic procedures (such as burning the dead Ebola victims rather than burying them with unprotected hands) and basic medical care (the world's doctors are there to help them, not to hurt them); ignorance of religion versus fact (it is perhaps NOT true that God is killing sinners with Ebola), and so on.  These are the same exact things that help to spread HIV / AIDS in that continent as well.  BUT...the failures of these African governments have zero to do with the American government.  Just because those governments have failed miserably, that doesn't mean that this government is failing miserably, especially in terms of Ebola.  Again, do not skewer the facts for your political gain, sir.  Lastly, Ebola and ISIS do not exist because of the Obama administration or because of WHO.

Stop trying to cause panic and have it directed at Obama.  You're an idiot.  Get off my blog.

SEN. RAND PAUL (ON TAPE): 

You also have to be concerned about 3,000 soldiers getting back on a ship. Where is disease most transmittable? When you're in very close confines on a ship. We all know about cruises and how they get these diarrhea viruses that are transmitted very easily and the whole ship gets sick. Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?

[BELANGER]: You're misunderstanding how viruses work--though your phrase "diarrhea viruses" is misleadingly amusing.  But one does not "catch" Ebola as one would "catch" a cold.  There are many different kinds of viruses.  The viruses you speak of, these diarrhea-viruses, are more of an airborne / touch virus, like the common cold, which is also a virus.  But HIV / AIDS is also a virus, and you can't catch it like you'd catch a cold.  Chances are, if you're not getting infected blood from a transfusion during an operation, and if you're not sharing needles with an infected person, and if you're not having carnal relations with an infected person, then you cannot--repeat, cannot--get HIV / AIDS.  (However, reader, I'm a blogger, not a medical professional, so you should not be seeking medical information from me.)  Anyway, that's the key here: How is the virus transmitted?  You, Senator, are perhaps thinking of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, but of course Ebola is not the flu, and it cannot be transmitted in the same way.  Furthermore, the U.S. soldiers, of course, won't have Ebola when they're shipped over there, so they won't "catch" Ebola on the way there.  And one would have to assume--unless one thinks that everyone is a complete idiot, which even I don't--that each soldier will be tested for Ebola before they're shipped back.  Plus, we know more about viruses and virus transmission, and containment, and treatment, now than we did in 1918.  

You've been a speak-first, think-later-if-at-all guy for a long time now, Rand.  You're an idiot.  Get off my blog.

CHUCK TODD:

Why though, I guess go back to the question. I understand about the outbreak, but are you going to try to do more measures? I think this is a public that is very fearful right now, because you say one thing here, and then all of a sudden, Ebola walked into a Dallas hospital. 

[BELANGER]  Sounds like you just finished Stephen King's The Stand, Chuck.  Rather than cause panic and sensationalize Ebola, wouldn't it have been better if you'd made this point: Over 75% of all people coming into America from West Africa do so via four or five different American airports, including the one you mentioned in Dallas.  So wouldn't it make sense to have medical personnel at these airports to screen these people?  Also, this is the upteenth time this episode, Chuck, that you have said that the American public is "very fearful."  Just because you repeat phrases like that, and words like panic and worry, that doesn't mean that the average American is in fact panicked or worrying about Ebola at this point.  Saying something over and over doesn't make it so.  Or--at least, it shouldn't.  But I've read Animal Farm.  Perhaps you have, as well.  Or, your bosses have.  A real newsman informs, Chuck.  He doesn't incite misleadingly-educated riots.

CHUCK TODD:

Well, let me ask you very quickly though. We've got flu seasons going to be coming up. Can the U.S. healthcare system handle the incoming that if you mix sort of fear about Ebola with your typical flu season, and people feeling sort of similar issues, fever, stuff like that, are you worried about a crush of the American healthcare system because of the Ebola fear mixed in during flu season? 

[BELANGER]: I repeat:  A real newsman informs, Chuck.  He doesn't incite misleadingly-educated riots. 

People will not typically "mix sort of fear about Ebola with your typical flu," but they may as long as ratings-minded and panic-causing people as yourself, Chuck, keep telling them to.  But, since you're a newsman, and since it's your job to just say and report the news, and not to sensationalize, misreport, or purposely mislead people with the news, then that's not going to happen, right? If you, as a responsible and professional news expert, inform the American public about the difference between the flu and Ebola, and insist that they not panic, then your question has no merit, does it?

CHUCK TODD:

There's a litany of problems that the government and the American public are having to worry about. The first case of Ebola in the United States...

[BELANGER]: Again, Chuck, just because you tell us that the American public has to worry about Ebola, that doesn't mean that we really do.  And it also doesn't mean that many people actually are.  And, by the way, this is NOT the first case of Ebola ever in the U.S.  What about Ebola Reston?  Ever read The Hot Zone, Chuck?  By Richard Preston?  About a (very luckily) non-lethal form of Ebola that made it to Reston, Virginia?  Now that was actually the first--

 CHUCK TODD:

America is on edge. Ebola's been diagnosed on U.S. soil for the first time...

[BELANGER] Dammit, Chuck, have you been listening to a damn word I just--

CHUCK TODD (V/O):

This outbreak is the largest in history, causing the president to send U.S. military personnel in an attempt to control the spread of the virus. 

[BELANGER]: Yes, Chuck, I know, but shouldn't you also say that this is still in Africa?  That the U.S. military personnel has been sent to Africa?  And that--

BRIAN WILLIAMS:

The highest alert. The CDC has now increased the emergency response to the Ebola epidemic.

[BELANGER]: Y tu, Brian?  Shouldn't you also say that this emergency response is to the Ebola epidemic in Africa?  Dammit.  I can't believe this is all from the same one episode of this show--

CHUCK TODD (V/O):

Ebola. Just one of the frightening but true stories that have been seen on TV, newspapers and the internet. 

[BELANGER]: That's it, Chuck.  I've had it with you.  You're purposely inciting and misleading the American public.  Get off my blog!

BRIAN WILLIAMS:

Ebola in the U.S. 

[BELANGER]: Yes, Brian, I know.  But, again.  They came home from Africa to get treatment here.  They got it in Africa.  So help me, Brian, if Alison wasn't so beautiful I'd kick you off this blog right--

DAVID MUIR:

The first confirmed case of Ebola. 

[BELANGER]: No, it's not.  We just went over that.  Wait--Who the hell are you?  Get off my blog.

SCOTT PELLEY:

A man in Texas has just been diagnosed with Ebola.

[BELANGER]: Yes, I know, the guy from Dallas.  But, although he was diagnosed with it here, he actually got it in Africa.  We've been over this.  Why are you guys trying to create panic?  So all the panic-stricken will watch your show?  And are we still in the same one episode?  We are?  I don't believe this.  By the way, Scott, get off my blog.

CHUCK TODD (V/O):

Because Ebola has left Africa and walked into a Dallas hospital. 

[BELANGER]: I thought I told you to stop this misrepresentation and get off my blog?

Isn't anyone listening?

  

  

Gone Girl

 Photo: Gone Girl's movie poster, from its Wikipedia site

I'd been looking forward to this one for a long time.  Gillian Flynn writes dark, edgy things, and I like reading dark, edgy things.  (I write those, too, especially my novels.)  And David Fincher directed it, and he's a very dark, edgy guy who makes very, very dark, edgy movies.

And Gone Girl did not disappoint.  It is very dark, very edgy, very well-acted and very well-directed.

What else can you ask for?

I haven't read the book, but being a cynic and pessimist, I was right there with the movie until about 90% of the way through.  If you're as much of a cynic as I am, not much of what actually happens here will surprise you, though how it's shown will impress you.  The horrific nature of some people, and of the media, and of the guy's neighbors, etc. will also not surprise you, though you may, like I did, be surprised at how well it's shown.

Neighbors will smile and wave, then want to shoot you, then smile and wave at you again.  Check.  (Though, seriously, my actual neighbors are wonderful.)

The media will crucify you, then show the truth--if you're lucky enough to be vindicated by it.  And then the media will put you in front of a camera and ask, "How are you feeling now that..."  Check.

Everyone in the known universe will use your image, and your tragedy, to make a buck for themselves.  This includes your in-laws, your family, your friends and neighbors.  Check.

The real purpose of this movie was to thrill and surprise, of course.  But, like the book, it is not satisfied to do just that.  It shoots arrows (and hits the targets) at the media, at the masses as herd mentality, and at the fickle nature of people in general--though I feel this has a particular target setting on the American media, and of the American masses.

And it succeeds at doing this as well.  I was reminded of this today while watching Meet the Press. (Cuz I'm super-exciting and super-awesome like that.)  The news guy kept asking questions like, "Is America ready for this Ebola outbreak?" though, of course, there has yet to be an Ebola outbreak in America.  Luckily, the guy from the CDC stood his ground, did not give in to this gambit that was tried on him at least three times, and maintained that--although there have been a few Americans currently in American hospitals with Ebola--the American victims contracted the virus in Africa.  As of this typing, they have not transmitted it to anyone else in America after they got here.

This Meet the Press guy, who knows better but who is clearly trying to make a name for himself (and who perhaps wants to marry his brand-new set), then asked if America has the resources to battle a flu epidemic and an Ebola epidemic.  The CDC guy reminded him again that there is not an Ebola epidemic in this country, but that, yes, America is ready for such an epidemic, if it hits.  He stressed that he didn't think one would, especially not as seen in Africa right now.  He did not, but probably should have, pointed out that the flu virus and the Ebola virus are, of course, two completely different things, and would therefore have two different responses.  One gives you a fever and a couple of days of aches and pains, while the other gives you a fever in the middle triple-digits, and then makes you bleed out of your pores and crash and burn, and it may also liquify your organs if left totally untreated.  So, yes, these are two completely different viruses, as different as, say, the common cold, which is a virus, and HIV / AIDS, which is also a virus.  Read the show's transcript here.  The Ebola part happens first, so you won't have to read the whole thing.

:::Slight digression:::  People need to now be aware of what viruses are.  And they need to learn this on their own, or from medical experts, and NOT---I REPEAT, NOT--from the media.  Because the media doesn't know, or really care, what it is.  My biggest fear now is that the masses will be herding in a panic to their nearest hospitals when they get any kind of cold, or flu, or sinus infection, or headache, or whatever, and this actually will exhaust the resources of our medical professionals so that they can't treat any take-care-of-it-now Ebola case that may come along.  And then--boom--contagion.  And spread.  It's like how people flood the 911 lines because their Big Macs are cold, and so the person calling because he's having a heart attack can't get through.  (Yes, this actually happens all the time.)

The Meet the Press guy was clearly trying to hit the panic button, purposely exaggerating and deliberately misreporting the news, and for what?  Ratings, of course.  And some popularity for himself.  Too many "news" channels and "news" programs these days.

But I digress.  Or do I?  Because that's what Gone Girl shows: the sensationalistic American (and worldwide?) media today.  It outrages and it misreports and it misleads, and does so purposely, for ratings.  But this wouldn't be possible if the American (worldwide?) masses didn't fall for it each and every damned time, like the mindless masses and herd mentality experts that we are.  Like, there were no WMDs in Iraq, and the mission has not, in fact, been accomplished.

Gone Girl shows all of this as well.  It may seem like it's digressing from its main plot of a marriage gone bad, or of a woman who may have been kidnapped and / or murdered, but stay the course, because it's all part of the same rollercoaster ride, with all its loops and turns.

Ben Affleck, who knows some things about media-gone-crazy, and Rosamund Pike (who I've very quietly loved since her James Bond film, and who turns in a career-defining performance here) excel in their roles.  They are brave casting choices, which Fincher excels at--see: Rooney Mara--but they are also good choices.  Affleck really has been through this all before, and in this movie, he looks it.  Rosamund Pike hasn't, but she does have the icy steel, the frozen beauty and intelligence, that her role desperately needs.  Tyler Perry out-Cochranes Johnny Cochrane, and Carrie Coon may steal the show as Affleck's sister, the one and only rock in his life.

So, yeah, go see this.  Even if you're married.  And, afterwards, you may want to think twice before you intentionally piss off your spouse.  (Not that anyone would actually do that.)

And you might want to question the American press and the rumor-mongerers as well.

Have you seen the movie or read the book (or both)?  What'd you think?

When Plague Strikes: Blame and Bias

 

Photos: Pieter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death," and an AIDS victim, from this link: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/plague/#/plague-painting_3338_600x450.jpg

This book is an excellent primer for anyone interested in plagues.  I read this to research The Gravediggers, and while it didn't teach me anything new (except exact names and dates), it does put many of my novel's themes in the same place for ease when I'm writing.

Essentially it focuses on the social, political and historical aftermath of the plague outbreaks.  I like that it groups AIDS together with the Black Death, as my novel does, and that it connects the social biases at the times as well.  My novel does that, too, but it's nice to get reinforcement of your ideas.

When the plagues hit, nobody understood them, and so many prevailed upon the bias of the time to find scapegoats.  But, really, if allowed to hate and maim, certain people will be happy to do so, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their actions.  And so:

From the chapter "Looking for Scapegoats" re: the Black Death:

"In 1213, Pope Innocent III decreed that both sexes, from age seven or eight, had to wear circular badges of yellow felt that identified them as Jews..."  The book then draws the parallel between those badges and the ones forced upon the Jews by the Nazis almost 600 years later.

"According to the rumors, the Jews were polluting the wells in the Christian communities with poisons imported from Moorish Spain and the Far East.  If Christians drank water from the wells...they would be infected with the plague and die..."

"...the rumors led to eleven Jews being put on trial in September 1348.  They were charged with having poisoned the wells in a small south German town.  After hours of painful torture, the eleven confessed to the deed and said they had received the poison from a rabbi in Spain...

"...In January 1349, the two hundred Jewish residents of Basel, Switzerland, were herded into a wooden building on an island in the Rhine River and burned alive..." (Giblin 36-7).

There's much more, but you get the idea.  (I don't know why I was surprised by Switzerland's involvement, considering its history of neutrality, but I was.)

Though the Native Americans were not blamed for causing smallpox, colonists and Europeans were quick to use it against them.  The most infamous was Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, who was unwise enough to put it in writing.  This was sent to a colonel:

"Could it not be contrived to send the smallpox among these...tribes of Indians?  We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."  The colonel's response: "I will try to [infect] the Indians with some blankets that may fall in their hands..."  Amherst's enthusiastic response: "You will do well to try to infect the Indians by means of blankets...as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race" (Giblin 86-7).

The British and the colonists were so happy with the results that Amherst, Massachusetts was named in his honor.

Those of my generation remember the bias against homosexuals when AIDS made its appearance here in the early-to-mid-80s.  I do specifically remember (unfortunately) some diatribes by Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell.  So, too, apparently, did this book's author:

"The conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan wrote, 'The poor homosexuals--they have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.'...

"In a statement that sounded remarkably similar to some made by clergymen at the time of the Black Death and during early smallpox epidemics, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said: 'When you violate moral, health, and hygiene laws, you reap the whirlwind.  You cannot shake your fist in God's face and get away with it."

And it hasn't always been just the clergy, or the conservative.  Haters will hate, if just given a cause to hate about:

"Wielding baseball bats, the youths rampaged through a public park frequented by gays.  They shouted 'diseased queers' and 'plague-carrying faggots' as they beat up every man unlucky enough to be in their path.  After his arrest, one of the attackers tried to defend his actions.  'If we don't kill these fags, they'll kill us with their f---[ing] AIDS disease,' he said" (Giblin 135-6).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What will the next plague be?  And who'll be blamed and persecuted for it then?

My guess: Ebola.  Who'll be prejudiced against for it?  We'll see.  Hopefully not brown-eyed little Frenchmen, but who knows?

Borders vs. B&N; 1985 and IT

Photos: Sidewalk and lights outside of my local Borders; IT cover, from stephenking.com

Okay, so...to catch up.  You may have noticed that I've been researching a lot lately--over 10 hours over a couple of days at Borders, where I went through 8 books, emailed a ton of notes to myself, and didn't have to buy anything.  (Sorry for the downer info. of HIV/AIDS, Measles, Ebola, and other scary as hell filoviruses out there.)  Researching is better there than at a library because at a bookstore you get all the latest books and information on a subject.  In the library, not so much, at least not around here.  All the while sipping coffee or espresso, seeing friends--and talking out loud to them.  Yes, another reason to prefer Borders over a library.  I also prefer Borders over B&N, too.  B&N has a better selection, especially for artsy books.  But...the atmosphere at Borders is better.  More sitting room in the store and in the cafe.  Bigger tables in the cafe, too, which is important when you're slogging through 8 books and emailing notes to yourself on a laptop.  I never had to place the laptop on my lap, which I hate to do.  I also know a few people who live near the one I frequent; I practically have my own table there like I used to at a local college at Donovan Dining Center.  Seriously.  About 11-12 years ago, students and faculty alike would find me there, upper floor, go up the stairs, first table on the right against the window.

Anyway, I also got Stephen King's new book, and may read it after (or, what the hell, during) the current stressful time--important stuff going on at the job, don'tcha know.  I thought I would pose a question:

Which Stephen King book, or movie, is your favorite, and why?  Readers may answer it either via an email to me--see above--or via a comment--see below.  Just write the title, and I'll post about the one with the most votes in a week.  If the answer is none, say that, too, but, c'mon, how can you not like any film or book of his after all this time and permeation of our culture?

I'll start by saying that my favorite adaptations are Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, Misery, The Shining (for technical brilliance and imagery only), and the original Sissy Spacek/John Travolta Carrie, in that order.  My fave books include: IT, Misery, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Stand and The Shining.  If forced to pick one, I'd choose IT, for many reasons, not the least is which because I can clearly remember getting on my Huffy 5-speed bike in 1985 and pedaling to a local Stop & Shop, where I bought the book in hardcover and read the whole thing in fewer than three days, almost around the clock--school, read, sleep (just a couple hours; I've always been an insomniac) and repeat.  With my father shutting my bedroom light off on me all the time.  He'd leave; I'd flick it on, and round and round we'd go.  And it gave me a little mantra in times of crisis; for some silly reason, it's always worked:

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

And the scenes: the haunted house at Kansas Street; Neiboldt Street; the kid shouting, "That would've been out of ----ing Yankee Stadium!"  Pennywise the Clown, of course.  Beverly Marsh and the old lady who wasn't an old lady.  And, hell, I miss the excitement of riding my bike to buy a book, all that youthful energy, the anticipation...Today I drive to buy books; couldn't imagine riding my bike there.  Back then, it was done without a thought, no problem, see ya in a little bit.  Today the thought of it makes me groan.  I'm gettin' old.

Flu Notes for Virus Novel, Still Untitled

Photo #1: Human Host, by Scott Camazine/Alamy, from nationalgeographic.com:  Human lungs are the most terrifying tools of the plague. Pneumonic plague, seen affecting both lung fields in this x-ray, is the only form of plague spread from person to person. It is transmitted by coughs and sneezes. The fatality rate of pneumonic plague is a staggering 95 percent. Treatment can be effective during the first 24 hours of infection, but plague is often mistaken as the flu. Victims are lucky to live more than 48 hours.

Photo #2: Plague Warfare, by Jason Lee/Reuters/Corbis, from nationalgeographic.com:  This building near Harbin, China, was host to Japanese germ warfare experiments during World War II. The boxes were for breeding rats, the vehicles for fleas infected with plague. Upon release these rat agents carried the Black Death—as well as cholera and anthrax—to infect enemy Chinese. Plague is still studied by governments and terrorist organizations for possible germ warfare applications.

It's worth mentioning that every source I've read says that the world is overdue for a super-virus that would devastate worse than the 1918 flu.  Wish me luck as I work on this novel.  I've already decided that the work would be present-day, but with flashbacks to other epidemics.  You'll see what I mean (I hope).  I already have a lot of images in my head about this; I can't wait to get them down on paper.   

More ominous notes from the book mentioned in yesterday's blog:

1918 flu virus: more than 40 to 50 million people died of flu in 1918-9 in less than one year, over 4 times the war casualties.  Pg. 306.

An estimated one-fifth (20%) of the world’s population was infected, and 2 to 3% of those died.

Major influenzas of 1957 and 1968 were mild, 1 to 1.5 million died worldwide each time.

1918 flu was unique because, for the first time, the very healthy died, not just the infants and elderly. 

Word “flu” first used by W.H. Auden: “Little birds with scarlet legs/Sitting on their speckled eggs/Eye each flu-infected city.”

91^st Psalm: “You need not fear the terror by night,/nor the arrow that flies by day,/nor the plague that stalks in the darkness.”

On November 7^th,1918, the ship Talune introduced the disease into islands of Upola and Savii.  Within 3 months, over 21% of those populations died, as did similarly those in Fiji and Tahiti.  “It was impossible to bury the dead…Day and night trucks rumbled throughout the streets, filled with bodies for the constantly burning pyres.”  Pg. 308.

See typhoid in Plymouth, PA in 1885; yellow fever in Philadelphia, 1793.

The plague killed 14% of 1665 London in 7 months.---Warren Vaughan, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1921.

See Numbers 11:31-34 for description of bird-caused plague.

Flu travels through the air in droplets launched by coughing or sneezing.  Victim incubates virus between 24 hours and 4-5 days before symptoms are obvious.  First signs are headache, chills, dry cough, fever, weakness, and loss of appetite.  Generalized fatigue and, in some, bronchitis and pneumonia follow.  Total recovery takes several weeks or longer.  Influenza is a distinct entity; it is not “flu.”  It is a virus and can be transmitted between people, dogs, pigs and ferrets, interchangeably.

The influenza viruses that strike humans are divided into types A, B & C.  Influenza A is the historical one, infecting man, pigs, horses, seals and birds.  This virus and its hosts have adapted mutually over many centuries and created a reservoir that ensures perpetuation of the virus.  It likely originated in aquatic birds.  When such viruses or their components mix with human influenza virus, dramatic genetic shifts can follow, creating the potential of a new epidemic for humans.

Tissue taken from a 21 year old private who died of 1918-9 Spanish flu and those of a native Alaskan who died in 1918 and was buried in permafrost were used to resurrect the extinct 1918 influenza virus.

Resurrected 1918 virus is 100 times more lethal than other strains; it produces 39,000 more virus particles than other influenza strains. Pg. 321.

H5N1 bird flu, first isolated in 1997, had by 2008 killed about 60% (236/373; 63%) of those with it, but had not jumped repeatedly or easily between humans.  75 million drug courses available in US today would treat only 25% of the population.  See http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland_security for info. on US’s plan to control a pandemic.  Also www.pandemicflu.gov.

Outbreak of April 2009, human to human passage, led to WHO phase 5 alert.  Occurred in spring (rare), infects young adults, spreading rapidly.  Type of this H1N1 was similar to that of 1977, so those aged 32 and older should have some protection against this latest outbreak.

Possible future devastating outbreaks of measles, influenza, smallpox, and HIV/AIDS.  In US, 40,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS every year; anti-viral triple-drug therapy has increased life span so much of those infected that they will likely die of something else like heart attack, stroke, etc., but it still remains within them, and if it mutates…

Soviet Biological Weapons Program created new smallpox by inserting genes of Ebola with it.  This disbanded, but where did those scientists go with their stocks of smallpox?

Cholera

Pg. 243: “…infect ten people with Ebola in downtown Manhattan and you could kill a million, or more.”

“If the two viruses [H5N1 and ordinary flu] did encounter each other inside a human host, a far more ominous strain of H5N1 might emerge.  It could be as infectious as the influenza bug that swept the globe in 1918, but several times more lethal.”  Pg. 246.

There were two waves of 1918 flu.  The first, in the spring, make people ill for just 3 days, then they recovered.  But the second wave, in the fall and winter, the genetic makeup had changed since the first wave, and this second one did all the damage.

20% of infected get mild dose of normal flu and get better.  But the rest get 1 of 2 things: so much fluid in the lungs that they can’t get enough oxygen and they suffocate.  They die in days or hours, delirious with high fever, gasping for breath, fall unconscious and die.  Second possibility started with normal flu symptoms—chills, fever, muscle aches.  But by day 4 or 5, bacteria swarms into their injured lungs and they get pneumonia that usually kills them.  Faces turn blue or black and they cough up blood.  Bodies were stacked at the morgue like cord wood.  Pg. 16. Those with black feet would not live.

There's more scary stuff about West Nile, Mad Cow, Ebola, and others, but you get the idea by now.  Makes me want to wash my hands every 10 minutes.

HIV/AIDS, My "Virus Novel" and Oldstone's Virus, Plagues & History

Photo #1: AIDS Research, photo by Karen Kasmanski, from nationalgeographic.com: A scientist in Franceville, Gabon, removes hair and blood samples from a cooperative chimpanzee. Researchers believe that an evolving AIDS virus first spread to humans from wild African chimpanzees, which suffer from a similar virus called SIV.

Photo #2: AIDS Patient, photo by Gideon Mendel from nationalgeographic.com: A doctor examines an emaciated AIDS patient in Lusikisiki, South Africa. Ninety-four out of every hundred HIV-infected people live in developing nations, where currently available drug therapies are largely unaffordable.

I'm doing research for my "virus novel"--See #1 of "On the Fire" from Nov. 4th--at Borders, because they have more up-to-date books than the library, and I got help from employees who went to the medical section, the history section, etc. while in the library you'd have to wait forever to get one librarian's help.  I took 8 books to the cafe, where after a few hours, a woman sat next to me and began talking out loud to herself and weeping to herself; she got up, walked around in a distracted state, leaving her bag on the chair next to me, and then came back and asked if she could sit with me, apparently forgetting where she'd been.  I DO attract those, I'm like flypaper for them.

In all that time, I only researched one book, Virus, Plagues & History, by Michael B. A. Oldstone.  This book was so (horrifyingly) fascinating and informative that I spent three hours just with that one.  Incredible stuff about Ebola, SARS, West Nile, polio, Yellow Fever and smallpox, but there was some truly eye-popping things about HIV/AIDS.  A few of its sobering facts (as of 2008):

HIV--"A plague as horrifying as any ever known now afflicts us, and the cause is a virus, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).  In the twenty-five years (1983-2008) since the initial case report of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), this disease caused by HIV has afflicted over 60 million people, and nearly one half of them have died." pg. 251.

Drug therapy has reduced by 2/3 the death rate in the US compared to the 1990s, but worldwide, for every 4 newly infected people, just 1 receives therapy.

"...no vaccine is on the horizon for preventing this medical catastrophe." 

UN estimates that 34 million have HIV, but author suspects 39 million.

In Africa, 3% of entire population is afflicted. 

CDC believes 40,000 in the U.S. are newly infected every year and that over 250,000 have it and don't know it. 

CDC recommends all people ages 13 to 64 in the US have tests to detect HIV as part of routine medical care or emergency room visits. 

Author says 25-50% of newly infected people don't know they are. 

By 1995, 14 years after original patient report, CDC and WHO estimated 1 in 70 males in US and 1 in 700 females had it. 

As of Oct. 31, 1995, 501,310 Americans with AIDS reported to CDC; 311,381 (62%) had died. 

From 1993 to present, among men 25-44, AIDS is the leading cause of death; for women, 3rd leading cause.  These numbers are an underestimate in the US. 

In Africa, over 1 in 40 men and women are infected.

People either die from it or become lifetime infected.  

"HIV is poorly transmitted; fewer than 5% of exposed humans are estimated to develop the infection." pg. 269.

(I'm back.)

So: Why do you think HIV/AIDS isn't as much a part of the national discussion as it used to be in the 80s and 90s, especially since more people, in Africa and in the world, are afflicted with it than ever before?  Why do you think it isn't still news?  Because it's not on the American political agenda?