Free Republic

As anybody who read the book, Harold is a young Stephen King, in this adaptation.

CBS All Access has released the first teaser for its upcoming adaptation of “The Stand.” The short teaser, clocking in at just 30 seconds, aired during Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards. It briefly shows Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abagail, introducing herself to Frannie Goldsmith (Odessa Young) in a cornfield and beckoning her, “you come see me at Hemingfoot Home.” From there, it goes on to display eerie deserted streets, distressing hospital moments and even a little bit of levitation.

Epidemiologists — people who track diseases — use an expression: Seek and ye shall find. It's a reminder that sometimes when you see a phenomenon, it may not be entirely new. It may be that you've only just noticed it. Well, the world seems to be having a major seek-and-ye-shall-find moment right now with a worrisome new superbug. In late December, reports emerged that the mcr-1 gene, which confers resistance to an important antibiotic of last-resort, has been found in bacteria previously collected in the Netherlands, Laos, Algeria, Thailand, and France. There is reason to believe it may also be...

Thomas A. Duncan, who became ill with Ebola after arriving from West Africa in Dallas two weeks ago, succumbed to the virus today (Sunday), reports Reuters. Duncan was fighting for his life at a Dallas hospital on today after his condition worsened to critical, according to the director of the US Centers for Disease Control. The Dallas hospital that admitted him did not recognize the deadly disease at first and sent him home, only for him to return two days later by ambulance.

Guinea's capital Conakry was on high alert on Friday after a deadly Ebola epidemic which has killed dozens in the southern forests was confirmed to have spread to the sprawling port city of two million people. Eight cases have been confirmed in the capital, the Guinean health ministry said late Friday, including one fatality. All those infected have been put into isolation at the capital's biggest hospital to avoid the highly contagious virus from getting into the population.

...This Presidential campaign cycle is very different for our family than the one in 2008. This time around, we have a four-year-old daughter we adopted from Ethiopia two years ago... Because we’ve had the audacity to appear in public with our family, we’ve been getting hate mail from liberals who are deeply offended that a white family would raise a black child (the Huffington Post posted a video of Naomi and me at CPAC and it generated more than 1,000 comments, many of them utterly vile). Usually, I laugh at baseless criticism and it inspires me to work even harder...

Stephen King is offering an antidote to what he sees as the biases of right-wing radio talk shows by hiring a former Green Party vice presidential candidate to co-host a morning talk show on two stations he owns. In a rare public appearance, the horror writer held a news conference Tuesday in Bangor, Maine, at the headquarters of his three-station Zone Radio network. "The Pulse Morning Show" will be co-hosted by 50-year-old Pat LaMarche and 43-year-old Don Cookson, a former television reporter. LaMarche ran for vice president as a member of the Green Party in 2004. During the news conference...

German public health officials have recently publicized an increase in Puumala virus infections among its citizens in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria. Puumala virus is a member of the European Hantaviruses that can potentially cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. This mild form of Hantavirus results from inhaling dusts contaminated with rodent urine and feces. Anyone who develops flu-like symptoms after entering dusty buildings or after handling dead rodents should immediately seek medical attention.

Maybe a more timely novel for all to be readingisn't Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", but instead is Stephen King's "The Stand". Personally dispite King being a Obamabot I have always found this novel most prophetic and a great story of the strength of faith. Besides I think Obama much more resembles 'Randall Flagg'(AKA "the Dark Man," "the Hardcase," "the Tall Man," and "the Walkin’ Dude"), than anyone in Rand's novel, beside like Randell Obama is a all things to all people and a 'magic man' as well, I think they would get along great! Follows are some of my favorite...

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) - Multi-country outbreak - Update 44 1 May 2003 Disease Outbreak Reported Situation in China, revised case definition, support to national labs Situation in ChinaThe number of new SARS cases continues to increase steadily in China, particularly in Beijing. Today, China reported 187 new cases and 11 deaths, more than half of which were in the capital.WHO officials in China believe the development of a central database of operational SARS data would greatly aid in combating the disease. The next few months will prove crucial in the attempt to contain SARS worldwide, which now...

<p>The most chilling moment of my medical career occurred in 1985, when I led a program to test incoming U.S. Army recruits for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, little was known about the emerging HIV virus or AIDS. As I began to analyze blood samples from the first 600,000 recruits, I discovered that HIV had silently infected a large cross section of apparently healthy young adults. At that moment I realized that we were already losing the race to control the virus, and that the human species was destined to be afflicted with HIV as a fact of life -- and death -- for decades to come.</p>