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September 10, 2003
More SARS
dave
12:00 AM
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There's been one reported (and apparently confirmed) case of SARS in Singapore in the last few days. I guess this means that we'll have a return of the panic and hysteria surrounding the disease which gripped the world earlier on this year.
SARS, or atypical pneumonia, killed about 300 people in Hong Kong in the four months or so that it was active here. Ordinary pneumonia kills about 2600 people (mostly old people) per year in Hong Kong. SARS would therefore appear to be less virulent than ordinary pneumonia. And it's far less of a problem than something like malaria, which knocks off a few thousand people per day.
May 25, 2003
SARSWatch
dave
01:32 AM
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My SARS graphs are now being used on the SARSWatch.org site after some negotiations with Tim, the creator of the site. Tim's been asking me for a certain subset of data with certain annotations to fit in a precise size and I've been able to accommodate him. Its been fun pushing RRDTool to generate a graph to someone's precise specs. Because I use the beta version of RRDTool, I've been able to match the fonts and the colours to blend into Tim's site so that it fits into his navigation bar quite nicely.
A big thank you to Tobi Oetikerfor creating the wonderful RRDTool utility. Make Tobi Happy!
Hmmm, maybe I should have a Make Dave Happy! link too. OK, Dave's Wishlist!
May 06, 2003
SARS graphs
dave
08:19 AM
Comments (1)
I've been making changes to the SARS Graphs, so check it out and let me know if they look ok, or confusing to you.
April 08, 2003
SARS Page
dave
12:00 AM
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I've now got a hopefully auto-updating page of statistics on the SARS epidemic on the SARS Page.
I'm also working on a new look. I wan a nice clean geometric look without looking like yet another livejournal/movable-type page.
April 06, 2003
The Specials
dave
12:00 AM
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This town, oo-ooh, is coming like a ghost town, oo-ooh. Bands won't play no more... That line is from the Specials "Ghost Town", but it describes Hong Kong very well at the moment. A broad spectrum of musicians have cancelled gigs here. Spectrums don't get much broader than one which has to encompass The Rolling Stones, Moby, Andy Williams and Santana.
I'm in the midst of building a page which shows the current SARS outbreak using RRDTOOL. I just need to develop some ninja Perl to deal with the WHO hand coding every page on their site, so that all the line-breaks and table formatting is different. My preliminary graphs of the infection rates are scary: it looks like a vertical wall!
March 31, 2003
More wibblings
dave
12:00 AM
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This always happens - I decide that it's time to go to bed, then remember that I meant to write something here this afternoon, but spend the whole day doing very little and forgot about it.
Anyway, I was up in Sham Shui Po today, getting something from Ap Liu Street flea market. Just about everyone was selling masks to everyone else. Wherever you go here in Hong Kong, you cannot escape the undercurrent of fear and trepidation which underlies the current news about SARS. As of the news tonight, there are over 500 cases of infection, and there have been 13 deaths. The government is not saying whether those who succumb are old or young, or had any other disease.
Meanwhile, everyone is selling masks to everyone else, so the old Hong Kong spirit is still there: "Always try and make a profit from current events".