Swine Flu and IT

Today for something different RantWoman's screen reader bounced over her daily Computerworld feed including something that caused RantWoman to put pandemic into the search bar on the Computerworld site.

Is IT Ready for Pandemic after mergers, layoffs?

RantWoman's major takeaway: if you make a bunch of plans and get call ists worked out and then half the topical names quit or get reorganized or laid off, you could have a problem. RantWoman would say, well chek your disaster prep every six months when you change your clocks and check the smoke detectors. Of course if half the workforce is temp and contingent anyway, everyone is going to rely on their adhoc informal functional networks anyway, but RantWoman will try to avoid wandering into that zone.

The article contained sensible points about business continuity planning and links to disaster recovery sites. It also contained hysterical comments calling on the US to close our borders and missing the point that the flu virus is kind of a different beastie from the prions that cause mad cow disease. After two such comments, RantWoman felt little need to read further in the comments.

But wait. Those articles are from April and RantWoman's email had something recent. Search string is everything. Try "swine flu." Bingo. Spammers and fake meds. Twitter. Ads. Phew. What a relief! Pretty much the average internet shooting match:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/googleSearch.do?cx=014839440456418836424%3A-khvkt1lc-e&q=swine+flu&cof=FORID%3A9#1667


And at the WHO
What is Phase 6, Moderate Severity?

Update 48