[b4its2late]

Okay, folks, tinfoil time, do ya think that maybe someones not tellin' us the whole story...hmmmm??

Not necessarily, but I think there are some dots that need connecting..........

[rovenstinez]

Could it be that there have always been these strange illnesses but no one connected the dots to report it?

[TinkersDam]

You forgot to mention all the invasive species that have been showing up in ecologically sensitive areas.

Remember the Baghwan followers who contaminated a salad bar as a practice run for what would happen on election day? The town and the public health officials never suspected anything.

When the Japanese used biological warfare, the Chinese did not even know it had happened.

[swheats]

Don't you realize we can't deal with life and death situations right now? Lott made a comment last week that Jackson said scared some black people. /sarcasm

Not only germ warfare but oil tankers sinking, million dollar luxury freight going down. I'd say we're being skillfully hit in major areas. That's just my tinfoil thinking.

[DouglasKC]

Could it be that there have always been these strange illnesses but no one connected the dots to report it?

This was a topic on WLS radio not too long ago. They had many military and ex-military people calling up and confirming that these kind of illnesses are pretty frequent...especially on ships and in the barracks. The navy guys said it was it was always the marines who would bring it in and get everyone else sick.

I think it's just more noticeable now because it's being reported.

[hgro]

What about these illnesses?

Credit it to instant communication!

[tinamina]

I think it's something called "unconventional warfare."

[spodefly]

It could be 'shark attack' syndrome, where the press creates a phenomenon even though the statistics surrounding that phenomenon have not changed.

Or it could be evil scientists that are smarter than our CDC, Military, and Intelligence services combined and have spiked a variety of pathogens in seemingly unrelated places (cruise ships, marine barracks, etc.) in a strategic effort to weaken our responses to thier ultimate goals.

[Life of Brian]

I don't know but if you keep this up we'll all come down with a case of CyberFreeperfever...cough.

[Cicero]

Last year it was shark attacks.

[snippy_about_it]

Outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness on cruise ships tripled in 2002, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

http://www.cjonline.com/stories/121402/bus_cruise.shtml

[Billthedrill]

A natural enough suspicion, but if it's biological warfare it's pretty badly done. Antibiotic-resistant Strep has been with us for decades. Food poisoning has been with us for all of history, recorded or otherwise. West Nile isn't (mostly) fatal and confers a lifelong immunity, and the Norwalk virus doesn't do much exept make you vomit.

I'm thinking if we have a problem here it's hypersensitivity brought on by the knowledge that there really are some very bad people out there who would be happy to do very bad things to us...if they could. But biowarfare turns out to be much harder than it sounds, which is one reason it wasn't used all that much. We mustn't let our guard down, but IMHO this isn't it.

[GirlShortstop]

It really started to hit me as odd, with West Nile, the cruise ship illness outbreaks...

Your thought process isn't peculiar by any stretch.  West Nile, which isn't atypical anymore here in NJ has, for a number of years, always been a terrorism hunch in the back of my mind.  We know that birds carry it.... but how and why are crows, non-migratory here, getting infected?  

There was an article a couple months back (read it here on F.R.) by a Physicians assn., and this organization subscribed to a West Nile bio-terror theory involving Castro.  That caught my attention because of the elderly man in FL who was deathly sick from inhalation anthrax at American Media... he blamed,  guess who?... Castro!!  IMO, that ex-Cuban ol' codger's not's so crazy after all ;-)

The cruise ship outbreaks smells ... it's even prompted a Medical Director acquaintance to speculate about the likelihood of terrorism (not a tinfoil type-of-guy by any means).

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

More likely the outbeaks are simple failure to wash ones hands, clean fruits and vegetables etc. Remember most of the worlds populations do not believe that "Germs" cause disease. That is a Wextern idea.

[Capriole]

1. Bugs mutate. We no longer have to deal with the Black Death but we do have AIDS. Disease changes through time. This doesn't mean there's a conspiracy.
2. Antibiotic-resistant TB, strep, and other bugs have been developing as a problem for many years. Used to be you could just take penicillin to knock anything back; today we have to use progressively stronger and stronger agents, and develop new ones as the occasional bug that is resistant to clarithromycin or whatever propagates. Nothing conspiratorial about that either. It's our own fault.
3. West Nile was a problem for years in the Middle East, and my European and English friends have watched its slow progress across Europe, thence to the U.S. It is not a terrorist plot, either. Birds get it because birds don't wear mosquito repellent, so they get bitten.
4. I grant that there are a lot of bizarre things going on and I can't explain the ship viruses away. But we should bear in mind that because of the ease of air transport these days, we are subject now to lots of diseases that we would once have been isolated from.

[Quix]

Been wondering similar things.

Certainly there are plenty of terrorists and hostile governments who are intent on degrading our quality of life and our survivability--as well as our defense capabilities. Plenty are intent on winding up the fear quotient wholesale.

That seems like enough dots to me.

I can't believe they are going to do such things MORE obviously than we have seen. It seems to me biological stuff would function more or less best if initially seeded quietly with sizeable diversity.

But then what do I know.