a little round up of stories in the Europress this week.

by cough cough splutter splutter - we all fall down. Thu Oct 07, 2004 15:00

(I kid you not)
someone has stolen a blue paper bag, from Sants international railway station in BCN where it was not very well attended on a platform bench.
In this bag are five vials of 15 centimetres in length, two centimetres in diameter with black safety tops, which contain, the culture of Tuberculosis.
Seemingly TB in culture form is green and solid just like toxic slime in the movies.

All the authorities have asked if anyone finds these five vials, that they resist the temptation to open them and have a look/ sniff/ feel. As this is one of the quaintly named "plague" cultures. There is a "prescription" type paper in the bag which lists the contents of the vials, quite probably written in illegible hand and scientific jargon.

Meanwhile, in the real world, if your bag gets stolen in a railway station, it's generally the work of "problem hard drug users". These people generally don't watch news updates, and for some reason are averse to calling police or governmental emergency numbers.
And in my experience they are the types who always "open the vial".

http://www.informativos.telecinco.es/dn_16577.htm

by im sweating already and i swear i've a cough. Thu Oct 07, 2004 15:13

Tuberculosis is a disease caused by an infection with the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. During the 19th century, up to 25 per cent of deaths in Europe were caused by this disease. The death toll began to fall as living standards improved at the start of the 20th century, and from the 1940s, effective medicines were developed. However, there are now more people in the world with TB than there were in 1950, and three million individuals will die this year from this disease - mainly in less developed countries. The disease is more common in areas of the world where poverty, malnutrition, poor general health and social disruption are present.

The bacteria that cause the disease are inhaled in the form of microscopic droplets that come from a person with tuberculosis.

(these look like green slime if you put a lot of them in a glass vial.)

The incubation period is 6 weeks.

so I'll let you know if we are plague ridden by the middle of november in the comment updates, you might like to let Bertie Ahern know and do something about the cheap air flights to Girona.

this is the universal symbol for biohazard. DO NOT TOUCH anything we this symbol. Even if it's a fan of the rock music band. especially if it's a fan.