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0 Is this website. Not the avian Flu outbreak or the epidemic, atlough it's scary in its own right. No, what scares me is the website. what it represents.
This is a government website over the Birdflu cases in Egypt. It's up to date, it's easy to use, and informative. It has information and plans to counter the problem. Up-to-date death count. It's professional.
And it's coming from this government.
See, I like my world in black and white. Either we are inept, or we are not. I decided, for my own piece of mind, that we are inept. This proves me wrong. Someone with a brain designed this and continues to work on it. This could mean that we have a government that just acts inept for the sake of it, but knows better and can do better when it wants to. They are just intentionally being inept for the hell of it.
Or this could just be a fluke.
Yeah, a fluke. That's possible, right?
It better be a fluke!
grrrr……….
English
I read the Preparation section. Are you sure that this is a REAL government Site and not some sort of joke? By the way, a serious side effect with Tamiflu has started showing up. It’s called death.
Ineptness is likely to be concentrated in government departments where there is money to be made on the side, such as road construction or arms buying.
The good website probably comes from a department that doesn’t get offered any bribes.
>for my own piece of mind
peace of mind
It’s true — the Egyptian government’s bird flu website is quite informative — a job well done!
However, there have been a couple of glitches. For one, there was a bit of a fall-off of information on the government’s bird flu website for a few months — from Oct 10, 2006 until around Feb 25, 2007, the daily updates on the bird flu situation disappeared. Before Oct 10th, there had been daily updates on outbreaks in poultry and testing done on people. For some reason, the daily updates, unfortunately, disappeared — until, that is, there was an emergency bird flu conference in Cairo attended by the World Health Organization and representatives of Middle Eastern countries. Then, suddenly, the daily updates were back…. 😉
Also, the Ministry of Health’s website hasn’t been updated since Oct 10, 2006…?:
http://www.mohp.gov.eg/sec/heducation/birdflu.asp
http://www.alwafd.org/v2/News/NewsDetail.php?id=10554&type=invest&PHPSESSID=061c37e1f1b8745e00672564bf7cfa73
It would be really great if the gov’t kept up with the daily updates because there has actually been 2300+ suspected cases of bird flu in humans in Egypt since February 2006 — and more with every passing day:
http://www.masrawy.com/News/2007/Egypt/Politics/February/13/birdflu.aspx
http://www.curevents.com/vb/showpost.php?p=678766&postcount=103
Unfortunately, though, only about 1/3 of those people were actually tested for bird flu:
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17356
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showpost.php?p=67938&postcount=20 [in French]
The other glitch on the government’s bird flu webiste was that on Feb 26, MENA reported that a woman from Beheira had contracted bird flu. Within hours, the report was denied. However, a confirmation had appeared on the government’s website. It has now been removed from the front page, but can still be seen here:
http://birdflu.sis.gov.eg/html/flu01021173.htm
Love your blog, sandmonkey! Keep blogging — but be careful! Thanks. 🙂
Well, look at it this way…
If the government is truly, truly inept. They,
a) won’t be able to actually manage perfect ineptness, and some aptitude might sneak in by mistake, but
b) keeping to their goal of general ineptness, they wouldn’t dare let aptitude get anywhere near anything serious, like a military or something.
So, nothing to worry about.
Feel better?
Maybe the state is forcing some savvy (former) blogger to do their bidding. You know, in exchange for their personal safety.
Ummmmmmm … Shouldn’t it be in Arabic?
Ummmmmmm … Shouldn’t it be in Arabic?
Zvi — it is also in Arabic:
http://birdflu.sis.gov.eg/ahtml/aindex.htm
I dunno … if there is a shortage of really good people, concentrating them in the public health sector might be a good idea.
Ah okay. Good.
Why would you hope it is a fluke? Because you would have nothing to blog about anymore? Do you want a better country or just to have something to criticize all the time?
Not to worry SM. Those responsible for this will be found and severely punished.
– Mubarak
how comes I am moderated in “Pig…” and not on the “blonde” topic ?
anyways here is :
nomad Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 5th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Islam “à la française” :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12812201/ (in english)
“A very extensive poll asking more than 90,000 Frenchies which religion they “felt closest to” showed this:
– 64% said Catholicism.
– 27.6% said no religion.
– 3% said Islam.
– 2.1% said Protestantism.
– 0.6% said Judaism.
Well, 97% to go…” (SF site)
http://www.ifop.com/europe/docs/religions_geo.pdf (in French, but the map is quite clear)
so, I am not a dreamer 😛