gfish: (Default)
gfish ([personal profile] gfish) wrote2003-04-03 03:21 pm

Spot the Communist

From Diplomats pull out over bug fears, about SARS in China:
"People live and work normally. The society is stable and travel safe," Health Minister Zhang Wenkang said on Thursday.

And productivity is up 15%!

[identity profile] xiadyn.livejournal.com 2003-04-03 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)
It cracks me up that the default announcement from government officials in China is always "things are fine!" They should just make it official and start a Ministry of Reassuring Foreign Investors.

It occurred to me yesterday that SSIC could do double-duty as a SARS monitoring system. I wonder if we can get extra money for that.

[identity profile] gfish.livejournal.com 2003-04-03 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)
There has been some talk of that, but so far the county hasn't seemed interested.

In fact, Bill called me to discuss that idea just as I was getting on the plane for DC. There was a non-zero chance that I'd end up skipping the conference and doing emergency SARS retro-fitting of the new SSIC client from the hotel room. Luckily it wasn't necessary.

It's really odd to be boarding a plane talking about bioterrorism monitoring. I felt obliged to do some... creative censorship of what I said out loud.

[identity profile] vixyish.livejournal.com 2003-04-03 08:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I imagine that would've been a little creepy, yeah.