The Birds

In the news

Alfred Hitchcock couldn't dream up the plotline, it took real life.

Avian flu or bird flu is back in the limelight. Several people have died in China from a bird flu variant.
The story gets bizarre when the story reports thousands of pig carcasses floating in a river. The reference fizzles, as no connection can be made between the flu deaths and river pigs.
The flu variants differ in their transmission, severity and mode of transmission. So far, the current bad guy flu seems to be fairly non-contagious, in that relatives seem to be symptom free.
The core problem is that there now appears to be reservoirs of bird flu variants lying dormant around the world. I'm not sure but it seems like the potential number of variants is in the hundreds. Each variant would require a separate vaccine but there is no vaccine now for any bird flu that I could tell.

Here in T.O., a building topic is transit. Moving around the city and into and out of the city.
A summary, would include the Hwy 401 which crosses the city east to west approx 6 miles N of the core. There is a east west corridor called the Gardiner Xpressway across the shoreline on the southern border.
Our N - S routes are the Don Valley Xprswy a full length roadway to the east of the downtown core. Two roadways dump traffic at the cities northern boundary,Hwy 400 and the 427 ( which actually runs to the lakeshore but far to the west ).
T.O. has reputedly, the longest commute times in NA. Now, I cannot testify to this, but I do try and avoid travelling the 401 at certain times.
The solutions are not nice -  land taxes, surcharges on business and the inevitable road tolls, congestion fees at the city edge. A raise in fares.

In the east end of the city close to a thousand patients received inadequate or disproportionate amounts of their cancer drugs.
Is this another place where OOPS doesn't quite make it.

Weatherboy, is shivering but it won't last, we jump from 28F w/ a ten degree wind chill to 48 F to-morrow.