H1N1 Virus Has Reached WHO Level Six (Pandemic)

As I write this, I'm listening to Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, announce WHO's elevation of the prevalence of influenza A H1N1 (swine flu) to level six, or pandemic level. The key sentence in the presentation (the one saying that the level is raised to 6) was said at 5:08 p.m. British Summer Time.

Do not panic. Please.

This announcement only recognizes that H1N1 has spread to a global enough level that WHO can call it a pandemic. It does NOT mean that the virus has gotten worse. Indeed, most cases are still mild and not fatal. Basically, it serves as a call to countries to examine their own health systems and make sure that they have the right guidelines and restrictions (and vaccines, if able) in place. It's also, according to Dr Chan and in answer to a journalist's question, "a signal to the international community", and especially developed countries, to help developing countries by donating vaccines and other services.

The press conference in Geneva continues as of right now. It's moved on to journalists' questions. There will probably be more material (and maybe the full text of Dr Chan's statement) here or around there as the day goes on.

...

Sorry, I just felt like putting that out there. Reading through sensational stories in the papers and online over here has gotten to my head.

[8:58 p.m.: Here's the critical part I mentioned earlier:

On the basis of available evidence, and these expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met.

I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6.

The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.

We are in the earliest days of the pandemic. The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch.

The full text appears here. The video (with journalists' questions) appears here in .wmv format.

There are a lot of photos of Britain in here.

Eighteen Facebook albums worth, in fact. Check them out right here. Also Dublin, and Paris, too. Oh, man!

(Watch out for "Check". There's nothing offensive in it, unless you don't like Stella Artois.) (Don't worry, I wasn't involved in its creation.)

I can't see what you did there! How do I do it??

American culture (or whatever part of it you choose to take in) ingrains into its participants choice phrases that help them identify with the group. Some such phrases, like questions of age identification (“How old are you?”), simply separate languages or language groups (e.g. Spanish, literally “How many years do you have?”) and include a lot of people in the group it creates.

Others, however, are more selective and tag the speaker as member of a smaller set. Within these groups, everyone knows the phrase, but the group can be quite small based on the relevant phrase. Examples:

Americans of a certain age and awareness- “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

Sufferers of the late 90s-early 2000s- “Who let the dogs out?”

Central Indiana radio listeners- “Hi, Mr. Obvious. Uh, long-time listener, first-time caller.”

YouTube watchers- “We’re on a bridge, Charlie!”

IU fans- “I want them to bury me upside down so my critics can kiss my ass!”

People hopped up on caffeine and writing papers in a dorm room while someone plays Ocarina of Time- “PREPOSTEROUS AMOUNTS OF WASTED TIME! PROCRASTITONE!!!1!” (There might only be three people in this group.)

Depending on your level of involvement in these groups, you might be able to either 1) have these come to mind in almost any conversation (e.g. the popular “That’s what she said!” comment) or 2) change them to apply to random situations. I often twist the above phrases to my will, replacing the “is” with, “It depends on what your definition of the word ‘lunatic’ is,” or describing lots of bold type and CAPS lock as "PREPOSTEROUS AMOUNTS OF WRITTEN STRESS!"

I can’t do that in Britain. I don’t know the well-known British phrases that identify you as part of the group. I’m sure that with time I can make off-the-cuff jokes based on loo-ney bins and Tube vision and other uniquely-England terms, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

I definitely can’t use the phrases I’ve learned in my previous social groups. Every time I want to say, “Hokay, so, here’s de Earth,” I have to remind myself that this might not be a group of people that would understand that reference. I’ve got free reign in my flat and among the other IU students, of course, but if I say out loud that “Charlie bit me!” I won’t get a response. (Or worse, people WILL have seen it and I’ll get a negative response. Like eggs in my face.)

As most of you know, though, I can make a joke, innuendo, or play on words in any situation. (Or at least I try.) My ability to do so in Britain will come in time, and I’ll let you guys know when it happens, because I'll be excited.

A Day in Sudbury

You can find all the photos (or at least all the good photos!) here.

9:35, Saturday 6 June
Okay, so I made up my schedule last night, and I planned to leave from the Liverpool Street station at 10:38. However, the train leaves every hour, so I’ve gotten onto the 9:38 train. It goes to Ipswich, with stops at, among other places. Markes Tey, where I will change to get on the train to Sudbury.

Because I got to the station at 9 a.m. (I thought it would take longer to get here & pick up tickets!), I walked around for a bit. This station is certainly not as big as King’s Cross or Paddington, but as I’m not used to train stations, it still seems big to me. What threw me off a little bit (but only a little bit) were the pigeons inside the station. I tried to snap a photo of one in flight over people’s heads, but it didn’t work too well. I might try again later, but I might not.



9:38
We’re leaving!

9:43
It looks like it’s gonna rain. Not good.

10:01
We’ve stopped in Shenfield. Seven new people have boarded my car.

10:10
We’ve stopped in Chelmsford. Four people got off, and three people got on. I’ve still got five seats to myself, and I don’t feel guilty about it. There’s plenty of room in the car.

10:16
A train passes by going the other way. With the speed at which each of us are going, the windows shake for two seconds as if they’ve been hit by the waves of a sonic boom.

10:21
We’ve stopped at Witham. Four people got off, and two got on.

10:29
We’ve stopped at Marks Tey. (Pronounced “Tay,” of course.) I thought I would have to run to get to the next train within four minutes, but fortunately for my sense of orientation, it was right next to the arriving train I was on. It wasn’t a big station at all, only four platforms for two tracks.

This train isn’t big, either; it has just one car.

10:33
We’ve left Marks Tey. I now have two seats to myself, with two more across the aisle.

10:39
We’ve stopped at Lner. (?) Four people got off, and nobody got on.

10:41
People are much more talkative on National Rail trains than they are on the Tube. My last train had two people talking about evaluations of the higher education system, while this train features a family (with a girl of about three standing on her seat and looking out the window) two older women talking, and three teenagers in the back chatting about their weekend plans. Whereas on the Tube, people glare at you if you say, “Hi!”

10:46
We’ve stopped at Bures. No one got off, and three people got on.

10:55
Welcome to Sudbury! It seems like a bustling town, but that may be because it’s near lunchtime on a weekend. Everyone in town will be out right now.

I see a lot of older people. I wonder if this is an old-person town without a lot of kids.

11:01
I’ve walked into Roys, a grocery store with a coffee shop attached to it. I’ve bought a hot chocolate and have sat down to collect my things. (I had nearly zoned out when we arrived at the station, so I had hurriedly packed everything in my backpack and gotten off the train.)

Because I still have enough food at home for dinner, I only plan to on spending money to buy lunch here. Unless, of course, something comes up, like they have some special WWII stuff to buy here. It has to be a big deal, though, because I paid 20 quid to get out here!

11:15 (still in coffee shop)
In four weeks in Britain, I’ve learned at least this: If you don’t know what to do or how to act or what to say in a certain situation, watch someone first. I’ve applied this to the pronunciation of Lurpak, how to use my Oyster card at each Tube stop, and (just now) where to put my empty hot chocolate mug when I leave. (On the trolley.)

11:20 – 11:35
I’ve walked around town for a bit, looking for someone who might know where the old airfields are. …Wait, I didn’t explain my trip for you guys!

My grandfather, James R. Farris (far left, first row; thanks go to Uncle John), served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. He was a navigator under pilot Ralph Clinard in a B-17 called Pursuit of Happiness, and his missions flew off from an airbase north of Sudbury. My goal for this trip is to see that old airbase, no matter what state it’s in now, so I can report back to my family that I’ve been there.

There. Now you’re caught up.

11:56
I’ve just spent 20 minutes in Best Wishes greeting cards shop looking for a good British Father’s Day card. (Found one!) Once I bought the card, I asked the cashier if she knew where the Sudbury airfields were. She asked an older man (the store manager?) to come over and see if he knew. He said that I should go back down the street I was on, pass the market, keep the church and post office on my right, go through a set of traffic lights and two roundabouts, and walk another half-mile to get there. He also said that there isn’t much there, which I had gathered from Internet photos, but he and I agreed (after I mentioned that my grandfather flew there) that it’d be a treasure just to say I was there.

And so begins the 20-minute walk to the Sudbury USAAF fields (at 12:10).

(By the way, I was wrong about the rain. The weather is beautiful here! I need to wear my sunglasses.)

12:13
A guy in… interesting garb crosses the street to tell me about a medieval fair with jousting and the whole bit. It goes from 12 to 5, so I tell him that I might make it. I tuck the flyer he gives me into my pocket to remind me.

12:38
I stopped after the second roundabout to review the directions given me and make sure I was going the right way. (I have a bad history of that.)

I am. I’m fine. Time to keep walking.

Songs I’ve listened to on my iPod up to this point

Fantomen, Frigg
R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A., John Mellencamp
Bulbous Bouffant, The Vestibules
The Best is Yet to Come, Frank Sinatra
Dedicated to You, John Coltrane

Random Observation
I walked by a house with two dogs, and one of them barked at me as I walked by. He didn’t have an accent.

12:57
In the middle of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” I made it.

Honestly, it blends into the surrounding countryside a lot. The only hints I had of coming up to it were signs saying it was Private Property of the Suffolk County Council. Once I walked up to the entrance, though, I found a rock with a plaque commemorating the U.S.A.F. 486th heavy bombardment group, with flowers (though fake) posted next to it on the fence.












I’m here.






















13:34
Time to head out.

Pretty desolate out there. Whereas B-17s and B-24s flew out of here for bombing missions, now a company grows parsnip & grains, and people walk dogs & ride mopeds because they’re too young to drive cars.

That’s okay with me. Though it would have been cool for some of the buildings to be maintained, some of its “airfield qualities” have stuck, thanks to asphalt’s ability to hamper the growth of plants. Like I told the kid I met while walking around, I could imagine an airfield here. And I did.

14:21
With a little detour at the McDonald’s toilet, I’ve made it back to the centre of town. That was much longer than the 20 minutes the store guy said it would take, but he still got me there, and I appreciate him for that.

Now for the jousting fair!

14:32
I just bought three apples for 57p. That’s a pretty good deal, considering my hot chocolate was £1.10.

14:50
Warning: Contains raunchy language from underage kids. Unruly Brits. Tsk.
So, I’m walking to the Delphi Club on Newton Road when I meet this group of kids. There’s a girl and three guys, and they all look about 15 years old. (Except for one kid. He looks about 13.) They say, “Hello!” and I say, “Hello,” back to them. They cross the street to meet me.

“Is that a good apple?” says what seems to be the leader of the group. (You remember how groups of friends worked at that age.)

“Very good,” I reply back. “I’ve had better, but I’ve had much worse.”

“Are you from America?” asks the youngest-looking one.

“How could you tell?” I reply facetiously, knowing that my accent gave me away.

“This country sucks! America is like Skate Heaven, but here…”

“So, what are you here for?” asks the leader before the other three laugh their asses off behind me.

The youngest kid says through his laughter, “Did you know you have a balloon coming out of your ass?”

I raise an eyebrow, and he continues. “No, you literally have a balloon stuck to your ass. I swear we didn’t put it there.”

I feel back there, and sure enough, I pull off an orange balloon from my ass, stuck there with some gooey white substance.

“It’s like you have cum on your ass.”

I sit next to a brick wall, trying to get as much “cum” off my ass as possible, while the four kids walk toward the jousting festival.

“See, that’s why this country sucks!” the youngest one says quite honestly.

…I believe them when they say, “I swear we didn’t put it there.” I didn’t feel them sticking the balloon on my ass. I probably sat on it somewhere.

…Wait, WHERE????? How long have I had a balloon stuck to my ass?!

15:23
I’m at the jousting festival, with most of the white sticky stuff off of my pants. Mary, you would have loved this fair! Although yours were more hands-on and had better attendance. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was younger.

Either way, I couldn’t stay for long since my train was leaving at 16:00. I did have time to observe some things:

A lot of kids “fought” each other with wooden swords that their parents bought for them.

One kid asked a re-enactor if he knew about video games. Ha ha.

They served beer. …In an indoor bar that was part of the regular Delphi Club. But I still bought a cold pint of Foster’s. (I didn’t buy a sword, because I couldn’t hope to bring it back to the States.)

They weren’t jousting yet. That would only start at 16:00. Dang.

They roasted a HUGE hog. I didn’t buy any of it, since I had already bought a beer, three apples, a hot chocolate, and a train ticket today.

16:01
I missed the train.

You know that direction problem I mentioned earlier? [“(I have a bad history of that.)”] Yep, ‘cept this time is was because of a roundabout. I can’t say this in many places in the U.S., but I took the wrong left. I turned too early.

…Come to think of it, you CAN say that in the U.S. Just not within the same intersection. Basically:













I would have made it if I had turned down the correct road. I ran down here, too!)

16:09
I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided that I won’t go back to the jousting fest. (See “yours… had better attendance” and “I ran down here, too!”)

16:38
I’m back at Roys grocery store/coffee shop for one last time. I’ve been reading the Guardian G2 section from last Thursday, and it has reminded me why I brought it home from work. There’s a great column from Sam Leith about whether sauropods were straight-necked or upright-necked, a long-form story about Ahnold’s political rise and fall, and an assumption-shattering Private Lives piece written by a woman who can’t smile. The stories have taken up my new-found time quite nicely.

16:58
My bladder threatened to derail me (see what I did there?), but I made it back to the station to see the train pull in. As we’re pulling away, I see a kid of about one year walking down the aisle. He stops and looks at a nudie mag open on someone’s seat. (The “someone” is an older guy who bought it as a joke.) The father comes up behind the kid and pushes him along. The funniest part is that the kid hesitates before he starts walking again!

17:00
I’m finally on my way to Marks Tey & Liverpool Street. It’s been a long day of walking and imagining and picking white stuff off the back of my pants, so I’ll take a nap. Or at least listen to music and just sit here.

17:20
I’m at Marks Tey, and the connecting train to London is “delayed by a broken down train.” Ay!

17:49
I’m still in Marks Tey. What gives???

17:56
National Express just issued an apology for a 48-minute delay. Oy.

I ask the info guy what’s up, and he says that a train broke down five hours ago in a place where no other trains could get around it, so everything’s backed up almost an hour.

18:09
It’s here! Now I can truly rest.

18:56
I’ve arrived at Liverpool Street, 40 minutes late. They didn’t even get the delay right!

Final observations

I’ve noticed this before, but the British countryside is beautiful.

I was wrong about the number of older people in Sudbury. There were a lot of kids and middle-agers walking around, and their numbers increased as the day went on. It’s a very vibrant small town, and I wouldn’t mind living there if it weren’t for London.

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 5 of 5: "American" pizza is better than American pizza

I met with some old friends in Westminster last Wednesday (sorry for the late update!), and we were looking for a place to go eat. We walked past Parliament Square (where a group of Tamils were still protesting, though their numbers had greatly decreased since the week before, and we were halfway down the next street when I saw a sight for sore eyes. It was presented in a different way than I was used to, but it still conjured in me the same feelings for taste, goodness, and pepperonis: Pizza Express.

Now, food might be my favorite thing in the whole world. That could be because I only just got out of my teenage years & I’m still young, but the same can be said for a lot of people older than me. (Like Emeril. Or anyone who watches the Food Network.) I think the real reasons are because it’s necessary, so there HAS to be at least some affinity for it, and because it’s everywhere. (That last fact is the result of a lot of luck, grace, and the invention of refrigeration, and I’m eternally grateful for that.)

But just because it’s everywhere doesn’t mean that it’s the same across the world. It doesn’t even mean that foods that fall under the same name are the same. American biscuits are by no means the same as British biscuits, American Chinese food is uniquely American, and Pizza Express (now Pizza X) in Bloomington doesn’t even compare to Pizza Express in Westminster.

In fact, I’m gonna blaspheme. I’ve had a dish called “American Hot” pizza in two places in London: Pizza Express by Westminster on Wednesday, and Soho Pizzeria on Carnaby Street the next day. I believe I can safely say that British “American” pizza is better than pizza in America.

There. I said it. Sue me if you want.

(Say what you will about small sample sizes. I acknowledge that this wouldn’t stand up to peer review under any other name than a case study. But it’s good enough for MY experience.)
Let me describe for you the best (and second-best) “American” pizza I’ve ever had:

It is doughy, but it’s thin, so the bread tastes wonderfully without overpowering the toppings. The sauce works with the bread to keep it soft and doughy, but it stays separate enough that it retains its own quality. The pepperonis are thick, so they keep their entire internal flavor. (And I mean their ENTIRE internal flavor.) The outer crust is a little hard, which, given the flimsiness of the inside, gives the whole pizza structural integrity; it’s not crumbly, though, so it retains some of the doughy qualities of the underbelly bread.

(<- I got halfway through my pizza before I thought of taking its picture. That’s how good it was.)

My pizzas had something hot on them (jalapeños at Pizza Express, green peppers at Soho Pizzeria), but even if they didn’t have that spiciness, I still would have called them the best two pizzas I’ve ever eaten.

So, my rankings for Best Pizza:

1. American (Hot), Pizza Express, Great Britain
2. American (Hot), Soho Pizzeria, Carnaby Street
3. Anything else; they all are far too inferior to the top two for me to rank.

*In the interest of full disclosure, the Pizza Express pizza beat out the Soho pizza because I had gelato with it. Dave, you’re right. I could eat it all day!


Quotes

“I don’t have to eat… anything… ever again.” –Alex Farris
“I’m not sure if my taste buds will accept any other food.” –Emily Ivers

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 4 of 5: Lost in (and Slightly Because of) Evening Prayer

On Saturday we visited Dover & Canterbury. Photos are here, but one incident avoided photography. …Well, lots of stuff avoided photography (conversations, lunch in Canterbury, a stop by an Army surplus store, sleeping on the bus), and for those things that’s good, but one thing stands out. For me, anyway.

After we toured the Canterbury Cathedral, the seat of the Anglican Communion, we could wander around the town as we pleased until 4 p.m. I and a few other people lied outside the church in the grass, taking a quick nap or getting some sun or simply relaxing. I fell into the third group, until I thought of sitting in on evening prayer. It would start at 3:15, but because it was a Saturday night (and the night before Pentecost, even), it would last longer than usual (4:15). I made sure a few people knew where I was in case I returned to the bus late, and I made my way into the church.

I’ve done evening prayer before. Even before a small group of us did evening prayer at St. Paul’s last weekend, I had prayed the Catholic liturgy of the hours off and on for the past three years. (Admittedly, it was more “on” during senior year of high school and more “off” in my first two years at IU, but even now I sneak it in once in a while.) I knew the basic outline of such a service: an invocation, a couple psalms, a New Testament canticle, a reading, intercessions, one of three more special canticles (Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis), and a closing prayer. (Roughly. It depends on what time of day.) I felt pretty prepared.

I’ve never done evening prayer like this. Everyone was ornate and ornamental and… slow. Three things account for my inexperience: I was always by myself and able to control the tempo when doing these prayers, whereas this was in Canter-freakin’-bury Cathedral; I always said the psalms etc. to myself, whereas there was a boys’ choir doing everything (I mean everything. We didn’t sing or say anything at all.); I was always in my room, whereas… this was in Canter-freakin’-bury Cathedral. It was a slightly moving experience, “slightly” because I would have gotten more out of it if I could participate.

Because the group was leaving at 4, however, I resolved to leave at 3:45. That brought me through the entrance (with about 20 boys of the choir and five to ten adult celebrants), four psalms (twice as many as I expected!), two readings, the Magnificat, and the Our Father. I skimmed the rest of the schedule during one of the longer psalms, and I found I was going to miss a full page of intercessions.

Oh, well. Interceding was not as important as making sure the bus didn’t leave me in Canterbury. I slipped out the door at 3:45. That was all well and good, making sure that I left early enough to get to the bus on time…

…Assuming, of course, that I knew where the bus was. Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured that out before heading into the service, so I had to rely on my photographic memory to return me to the group. And that failed me. I started down the right road, but two wrong turns later I texted someone and asked where I was supposed to go. He said the coach parking lot was at the top of the map, so I started my way north after I had been walking south after I had been walking north after I had made the second wrong turn. I made it, fifteen minutes late (even though I ran a little). I walked up to the bus, and I saw the driver waiting outside. I asked, “I guess everyone else is here, right?” He said, “Yah!” I walked onto the bus, and someone said (jokingly), “Boo that man!” Then the group leader asked (jokingly, again), “Was she pretty?”

Well, the church was pretty, I thought. I sat down and slept a bit on the way home, the 150th Psalm running through my head.

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 3 of 5: Three Weeks at the Science Media Centre

I hate to put things into categories before they’re finished. Developments can happen further down the line that paint what has already been processed in a different light; oftentimes, that light is more accurate than the names you had forced events under previously. This is the edge that historians have over journalists: even though journalists keep the advantage of timeliness, historians have the great expanse of other events that provide the right context for the period they study, so their assessments of what happened at a particular point are usually more in-depth, well-rounded, and (sorry, fellow journos!) fact-based.

That said, I’ve begun to categorize my internship time with the Science Media Centre. (Now I'm used to calling it "centre," not "center.") Even though the work is continuous and carries over from week to week, the long “weekends” I have in between stints there serve as fairly reliable bold lines between stages of work. (Due to visa restrictions that everyone in the group has to follow, I can only work three days a week, which means I’m only there on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.) It happened by accident, with little willing on my part, which might lend some credence to the categories as correct representations instead of artificial constructs in my head.

So, without further adieu, this is how my three weeks have been. They’ll just be a paragraph each so I don’t do too much pre-processing.


Week One (12-14 May): Thrown into the Fire

I got to my internship at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 12. There was a press briefing at 10:30. …a.m. There were two press briefings on Wednesday, and another one followed on Thursday. For each one (except one of the Wednesday ones, since it overlapped the other one), I welcomed journalists and panelists, got journalists’ names, and sat in on the briefing. Also, each day I skimmed all the major London newspapers (Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Mail, Independent, Sun, Mirror, Express), found the science stories, and wrote a synopsis of them to send to the other staff members. Along with that, I made up a coverage report of all the press that the first briefing had gotten. (Sadly, none, but still, it was something to do.) By Wednesday afternoon, I also was given the task of aggregating all the press work we had done during a week of swine flu coverage (27-30 April) to send to the scientists who had helped us.

…Wow. Looking back on that, I realize I did a lot. They trusted me! They really trusted me!


Week Two (19-21 May): Little Ado About Nothing

I did considerably less during the second week. There were no press briefings, I finished the daily science news reports quickly, and I finished the swine flu report the first day. The only major thing that happened was a big meeting among all the departments in the Royal Institution, which despite our technical independence from the RI we attended. (Ha, I said “we!”) But apparently, I got there early in the “volunteer season” (my words), because we had another volunteer (who also works at Nature) working during the week, a third one in on Thursday, and a fourth one who had meant to come in for an interview on Thursday but got sick.


Week Three (26-28 May): Much Ado about Something Big

There was another briefing on Tuesday, which started to bring me back into the groove of lots of work. Frankly, I was missing that, because the first week was exhilarating. (And getting journalists’ names at the briefings reminds me of taking photos for the IDS! Except it’s harder to get the names spelled right because “David Derbyshire” sounds like “David Darbishure.” I’ve asked someone’s name four times because of that. Don’t worry, I’ve gotten better.)

On Wednesday, the SMC director asked me to help advertize the World Conference of Science Journalists that a few people in the office are helping to organize. I jumped at the opportunity (internally, of course!) and started sending e-mails that afternoon. I’ll be doing that work until the end, when hopefully the reward will be free entry to some seminars, some free food, and maybe a trip to a science destination. Yay! [← This explains the banner and icon appearing on my blog now. They have them for free on the website.]

Also, the volunteer that got sick the week before came in on Thursday. She’ll be there Thursdays and Fridays, so our schedules will overlap for one day a week. It’s good to get someone closer to my level in the office: She’s 24, and ::gasp:: she’s a journalist!


So that’s what I’ve done so far. The people in the office are pretty laid-back and good at their jobs, and the other volunteers are cool, too. I’m predicting a great next four weeks.