When pigs fly... or when Swine Flu...

I think it was Obama's consigliere Rahm Emanuel who alluded to never wanting to waste a perfectly good crisis. The monetizing of this one particularly sticks in my craw. While the best way of preventing the spread of this illness is proper and frequent hand washing, a company called Purell bought a full page ad in today's New York Times pulling a quote out of a document from the Center for Disease Control and using it to pimp their product. Who knows how many other papers this has run in- and a full page NYT ad is around $140,000. You still pick up the bottle. The germs are still there to get to someone else. The germs that survive the Purell are STILL on your hands.

WASH. WITH. SOAP. AND. WATER.

I spent ten years around folks whose livings were made in American hospital operating rooms. Trust me, they all WASHED.

While we are on the topic, in the same issue of the Times (the paper whose mission it is to keep me crazy) had this article about the inability to contain this illness. Here is a link to the article.
The one line that made my head spin was a quote from a Dr. Michael Osterholm that showed how vulnerable we really are in an economic sense when the concept of closing the borders is invoked. Not only would we have no source for sterile hospital masks, gloves, gowns and other related stuff but even important drugs and/or the raw materials needed to make them. Then he said "Our global just-in-time economy means we are dependant on others... A Kellogg's Nutri-Grain bar has ingredients from nine countries in it"

So let me see if I get this straight. If the borders were to close tomorrow one of the largest cereal companies in this great land of ours couldn't manufacture a freakin' cereal bar? How are we supposed to successfully build the next generation of automobiles when we can't make a cereal bar under our own power? Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?

If this was no more than a marketing opportunity for some well placed pharmaceutical companies, the governments would do what they did a few years back for the SARS epidemic. Lock down cities and whole parts of countries and ground flights to MAKE SURE that travel is restricted. The company I used to work for was sweating bullets during that episode because it had moved most all of its production to Singapore, and NOTHING was going in or out for a while.

Luckily, there seem to be no major issues in the suburban area that includes Garnerville, NY. There will be a facility wide Arts Festival and here is a link to their website. RandoRadio will be celebrating its first full year of streaming- webcasting- digital hurling- whatever. Go click on the RandoRadio picture at the upper left and go to OUR website to see more of what we will be doing. We will also be asking for some kind of economic stimulus because RandoRadio Is Too Big To Fail!!!

Of course, the main idea is you will hear the effects of your stimulus with us immediately, not months or years down the road.

Time to figure out what will really work for the live show this Saturday. Check out our website and give a listen.

Peace be with you,
Glenn