What a show off!

It is nice to be back in California for a change. Although I don’t really miss this place all that much – think about traffic jams, cold winters & hot summers, road rage, and unfriendly people – but it is nice to see old and familiar faces. We spent the first few days doing rounds of meeting with old friends and showing off the Future Wife to them. Why not? If your FW is as hot as mine you’d show her off too. Anyway, I digress.

So we managed to squeeze in a little time to visit the Future Wife’s aunty in San Diego  and doing some ice skating. Speaking of ice skating, I just realized that my butt does not enjoy slippery surfaces, gravity, blades for shoes, and perpetual motion all conspiring against it. Imagine not being able to sit down properly because your butt has just been bruised and abused like someones face in a UFC octagon. But I digress again.

The part that I really look forward to about this trip is being able spend time with my two nephews. Extreme Picasso & IDoMyOwnStunts are growing up so fast that I feel like I am missing out on the chance on being their uncle. I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to teach them things that only an uncle can teach. Who will teach them the finer things in life like, “Hey look it’s a chair. What else can we do with it besides sit on it? Let’s see if we can climb up to the highest part of it and jump off while making karate sound effects?” Or how about, “What the heck is this thing? But I’ll pretend it’s a rocket ship anyway because whenever I make rocket ship noises with something makes it a rocket ship?” It’s simple logic, really. Who will also teach them how to do their own stunts while minimizing mom’s wrath because someone broke the coffee table? Who will help them develop their burping and farting potential? Who will teach them that ketchup is not the best kitchen floor cleaning solution, urine is? If not me, who will? But then again I digress. Again.

Hope you all have a Merry Rocket Ship Christmas!

w/ IDoMyOwnStunts & ExtremePicasso

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

This is what we live for. This is what we were trained to do. It reminds me of that movie Jarhead. They we’re Marine snipers trained to do only one thing — shoot. Once they got to war they never even fired a single bullet. It’s quite disheartening that after all of those years of training and hard work you never ever get to use it.

News broke out Tuesday morning about an unusual flu strain, similar to swine flu, affecting two kids in San Diego, California. The next day 3 more cases appeared, 2 in San Antonio, Texas and another one back in San Diego, California. Although the flu strain wasn’t considered deadly — all patients recovered rather quickly — but it was in the best interest of the public that this be treated as if it was a deadly one. What makes this case unusual is that all of the patients never had contact with pigs. It is rare for animal virus strains to be transmitted to humans since virus receptor sites in humans are different than that of animals. But close proximity of humans to animals causes these viruses to mutate and infect humans. Usually people infected with animal flu strains, such as bird flu or swine flu, are those that work closely with them, like breeders and animal handlers.

Then Friday morning came with the bad news. 68 deaths were reported in Mexico with hundreds more suffering from flu like symptoms. Just as I had suspected. With San Diego and San Antonio being so close to the border the flu strain could have come from the south. It has already gone into an epidemic, something that we as virologist don’t wish for, but this is what were trained to do. All of those mock training and exercise on what to do during an outbreak or a pandemic, this is what we do for a living. It’s a little scary but I must admit that this is an exciting time to be an influenza virologist right now, because now we can finally fire that single shot that we have been training for.

For the latest on this news click here.