Mad Cattlemen

From the NY Times:

The USDA will announce Friday that it is dropping a ... program in which each animal on a farm would be tracked with a unique identification number and stored in a federal database. The Bush administration created the program in 2004 after a report of Mad Cow Disease in 2003.

Government officials said the program would have made it easier to track disease outbreaks ... but critics said the program imposed costly and onerous requirements on small farmers and feared that the government would eventually make it mandatory and use it to pry into farmers' lives.

1) What happens between a farmer and his cattle is nobody's business but his own.

2) I've been right to avoid beef all these years. The government could have been tracking me, and my aluminum foil hat wouldn't have helped! (Remind me to make some shirts and underwear.)

3) What if terrorists spread Mad Cow disease? Why do farmers hate freedom?

Socked and Sacked

Liverpool Paramedics Upset Over Novelty Sock Ban

The Liverpool Echo -- Uniformed staff have been barred from wearing socks with images of cartoon characters, jokes and garish patterns after bosses branded them "unprofessional."

The strict uniform policy... also bans wrist watches, visible body piercing, excessive make-up and certain tattoos. And staff have been warned they could be disciplined and ultimately even sacked if they flout the dress code ...

Spokesman for the Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel, Jonathan Fox, said: "[They] should be addressing more important issues like why paramedic training has been stalled for months."

Whiners. Management has to have its priorities.

Friendly Skies

Fallout from the Christmas Day underwear bomber:

NY Times -- A businessman ... said he was shocked to have a female flight attendant barge in on him in the restroom while he was washing his face during a flight from Seoul. "It was kind of weird, to have a lady try to get in," he said. "She said that they had to watch people being in the restroom too long."

Lesson: Don't get constipated on an international flight.

Maybe they should just ban loo visits altogether. Fun facts:

"Many of the ingredients for explosive mixtures, such as potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate and phosphorus, were originally manufactured from putrefied urine." -- DynamicScience.com.au

"The process of making gunpowder ... Saltpeter was originally extracted by mixing barnyard wastes, the soil under privies, or bat guano." -- AmericanHeritage.com

Another incident:

CNN -- On August 28, the Saudi Arabian deputy minister of interior, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, survived a bombing attack ... The would-be assassin ... concealed the bomb... in his underwear.

 Actually, it wasn't the underwear, exactly. It's said he got through security because he had it in his rectum.

(The Friendly Skies are about to get a whole lot friendlier.)

Here's what the "Skating on Stilts" blog had to say about that:

How did the terrorist manage to set off the explosives? Well, he was allowed to call Yemen just before the explosion, so it seems likely that his accomplices in that country used a cell phone as a detonator.

Yes, it's true. Al Qaeda is now reduced to making booty calls.

Blue Xmas

Crap. There's a callout for a missing 11-year old girl in Salisbury. It's only 2.5 hours away, but we send a minimum of 2 people, and no one else has stepped up. Most of our members are students, and probably home for winter break.

Right now, it's 28 degrees there -- 19 with wind chill -- and it'll be colder tonight, and raining all day tomorrow. Not a good time to be lost.

Update, 12:35 pm
Double crap. This might be a cadaver search.

Sex Offender Charged in Kidnapping of Md. Girl, Authorities Say

One Flu Over the EMS

Y'ever notice how many things are described as having "flu-like symptoms"? WrongDiagnosis.com lists 129 medications that can have flu-like side-effects, and (once I filtered out the duplicates and minor variations), 58 different maladies, including:

Anthrax
Bowel Bypass Syndrome
Cat Scratch Fever
Chickenpox
Fire ant bite
Food poisoning
HIV/AIDS
Hodgkin's Disease
Legionnaires' Disease
Leukemia
Lyme Disease
Metal Fume Fever
Sandfly Fever
SARS
Slap-Cheek Syndrome
Smallpox
Syphilis
Systemic Capillary Leak Syndrome
Tuberculosis
Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis

So don't worry if you get swine or bird flu symptoms: it might be something totally different.

In any case, that's background for the following news story from the Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS):

LOWELL, MA, Dec. 7 - Expect discussion by the City Council Tuesday night regarding a policy ... under [which] dispatchers have stopped sending firefighters to medical calls where flu might be present ... [Fire Chief Edward] Pitta said he does not want firefighters compromising their health by responding to 911 medical calls for flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, shortness of breath associated with flu, and sore chest associated with cough."

But what if it's Slap-Cheek Syndrome?

Live-blogging from the H1N1 Clinic

11:00 AM
"So, what is DisasterMan doing today? Saving sturdy buildings from fire-breathing kittens? Rescuing the homeless from homes? Searching for 'Lost' DVDs for the homebound?"

"Putting baby powder in his super-tight spandex suit, in a vain attempt to grow babies?"

Why, yes! All those things -- and more! I'm also sitting on my butt in some bleachers at a high school, waving the occasional family in a direction that's already obvious, to go get their H1N1 flu shots.

Cracking the Codes

Under the National Incident Management System (NIMS), people are supposed to avoid use of acronyms and 10 codes on the radio, such as 10-4. (Though that one is probably OK). They vary too much from department to department, which inhibits communication in joint operations.

They also can vary a wee bit in severity. For example, 10-89 can mean a bomb threat, but for the Salt Lake County Sheriff, it means stolen bicycle. Other examples:

Alphabet Soup

Under the National Incident Management System (NIMS), use of acronyms is supposed to be avoided, because they vary between agencies and can be unclear. Instead, people are told to just speak plainly.

FEMA still has a ways to go on that. These are from FEMA documents:

"... After-Action Report (AAR) for the Top Officials (TOPOFF) 4 Full-Scale Exercise (FSE) ... composed at the After-Action Conference (AAC) ...

"TOPOFF 4 (T4) - The T4 FSE used a radiological dispersal device (RDD) scenario based on National Planning Scenario (NPS) ... As observed in T3 ... departments and agencies (D/As) ...