Leaving Poxlanta

Sing it, Sheryl Crow.

Public health: EXPLAINED!

So the public talks with the decision-makers, the decision-makers talk to both the public and the partners, in addition to extending a thin yellow arrow towards the metaphysical realm of "health impact goals and action plans" while the science-based policy proposals are disseminated to all three: the public, the partners, and the decision-makers. The "health impact goals and action plans" are influenced by SCIENCE, but also by the public and the partners who are already interacting with the decision-makers, and also by the thin yellow arrow extended directly from the decision-makers themselves.

Please make note of the helpful definition of Health Policy, and try not to think too hard about how SCIENCE is actually the main ingredient in this easy recipe.

Public Health needs more tact and smarter people

Maybe it's just me, but when I got this announcement in my CDC inbox today I was pretty weirded out. The subject reads:

Reminder-- Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the First Reported Cases of AIDS

followed by this graphic:
Why does this bother me? First of all, it looks like a big company's Fourth of July barbeque invitation-- 25 years of great service! Second, snippets of the American flag appear FIVE times throughout the poorly-constructed collage-- once suspended in front of [gasp] SKYSCRAPERS. I don't know about you, but the little seizure induced by such imagery reminds me that my government protects me and that I am safe.

What is the most bothersome, however, is that AIDS wasn't called AIDS until late 1982. Prestigious medical journals and newspapers [The Lancet, The New York Times] were calling it Gay Compromise Syndrome, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, and Community-Acquired Immune Dysfunction. The CDC finally suggested and stuck with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in September of 1982.

Also, the HIV virus was first linked to a group of AIDS patients in 1984. But is this cutesy patriotic banner supposed to make me forget that when Dr. Mason of the CDC said

"I believe we have the cause of AIDS."

he was referring to the French virus isolate, LAV, and he was basing his opinion on the findings made in the preceding weeks by the researchers at the Pasteur Institute who had discovered the virus the previous year. The very next day, the infamous Dr. Gallo reported he had isolated the virus that caused AIDS, called it HTLV-III, devised a rapid test for it, and slapped a on big fat patent. As it turns out, LAV and HTLV-III are the same virus, the one the International Commitee on the Taxonomy of Viruses didn't officially dub HIV until May of 1986.

So while all these grinning federal weenies are blowing up their AIDS balloons in time for their totally innacurate and meaningless party date, you'll find me taking a leisurely crap in Dr. Julie's billion dollar koi ponds.

[Stupid] vanity plate, [Really stupid] ring tone

This morning I pulled into the CDC behind a champagne colored sedan with a vanity plate reading:

SHARONL

Wow. That's so boring.

I thought the point of a vanity plate was to make you and your car seem more clever than your average roadmate. SHARONL has failed to do this on a few levels and has instead inspired half a blog-rant from a stranger. Actually, we're on a first name basis now... Sharon.

Reasons why SHARONL is a stupid vanity plate

1. "Sharon" is a boring name
2. Now Sharon will have a harder time pulling off that hit-and-run
3. It's not this vanity plate:


Even more annoying at the CDC today is one of my lab mates' ring tone. It's a baby. Making baby noises and crying, punctuated by a standard cell phone "wind chime" sound. I'm guessing the name of it is "hate me".

Other Recommended Ring Tones based on Sounds People Love

1. Spongebob Squarepants' continuous laughter
2. Heavy mouth-breathing
3. Someone's feces dropping into a public toilet
4. The screaming of the lambs

I think it's important that I leave work soon.

Avian Influenza preparedness

One of the gazillion words that gets thrown around at the CDC, to my complete and utter annoyance, is "preparedness."

While the addition of the suffix "-ness" to most words makes me chuckle, a la the "Celebration of Special-ness" in the movie True Stories, "prepared-ness" makes me want to throw up. It literally screams "we don't have the slightest clue in terms of how to proceed in the event of an emergency."

In short, it makes me think that the master plan locked away in our government's basement regarding avian influenza looks something like this:

How I was vaccinated against smallpox

The director of the CDC, Dr. Julie Gerberding, put on her suit and did this:




And then my arm looked kind of like this 7 days later:

Hee hee

But no one involved with the CDC's poxvirus program is really freaking out. They're just eating potato chips and whispering about each other.

Surprise, CDC!

I'm NOT a terrorist! I may look like tired rodent in my picture, but I'm NOT a terrorist. Badge detail:

My mentor Russ had just finished making me laugh really hard. He stood right behind the camera and made ridiculous faces, and essentially launched a full-blown terrorist attack on my photo-op. The ID Badge guy took one picture while I was laughing that was actually quite nice looking-- very carefree and light-hearted-- but he wouldn't let me keep it because you couldn't see my eyes clearly. I guess just in case, like in "Minority Report," I decide to have someone else's eyes put in my sockets and come to work. So he took a second one when I was trying to relax, unsuccessfully.

Ultimately, I think it makes me look like the perfect government employee. Weary, smush-faced, and drugged-down. Keep in mind, my badge doesn't open any doors yet. That, hopefully, will be initialized tomorrow...

So cheers to being able to walk freely around the grounds of the CDC after nearly two months of living here!

Trenching and Shoring

I'm at work right now [ha HA!] and I'm taking some on-line saftey tests. I'm done with the ones I was supposed to have mastered, and I came across one about "Trenching and Shoring." I realized that I want to master this knowledge, too.

Here are some critical quotes from the slide show regarding "trenching and shoring":

"When you dig a trench, you're not just digging a big hole—you're entering a different world. And it can be a dangerous world down there."

and

"When you set foot in a trench it's like entering another world. Whether you come back out alive or not depends on how well you know the natural laws of dirt."

I will tell you more once I have become a MASTER.

"Denied Access"

I am officially denied access to the CDC. Apparently, it was wrong of me to sign in as a visitor repeatedly for the entire month of October as there is a 5-day-per-month visitor limit. My mentor didn't know, I didn't know, and now we are apparently "famous" at the CDC. So famous that their attempts to sneak me in today through one particular guard failed simply because everyone knows about "Russ Regnery and THAT girl." Oh well, October's almost over and then I get 5 brand new visiting days-- suckers.

I really would have liked to go in today, because I was scheduled to give a presentation to the lab about my summer research. Adorably enough, all the way up in Saratoga Springs, my summer colleague is also presenting his research today in Senior Seminar. Now our trans-eastern seaboard presentation party is ruined!

In other news, I went to a real live auction last night. It was in some sketchy antiques warehouse and the man spoke fast and everything. Not only did he speak fast, but he was hilarious! Towards the end of the auction they were putting up boxes of random stuff and the auctioneer had to [quickly] pull stuff out and [quickly] say what was so great about it, along with keeping us updated with the current bidding level of course. He grabbed a box, took out some cut glass paperweight and said "bhrbahbhb-doIhear5dollar-hbrbrhlbrhr-It's RUSSIAN!-hbhrbh-maydaymayday-onedollar-bhbghbrdld" I nearly peed myself. There was complementary wine [Woodbridge, but I wasn't complaining] and lots of antique furniture to sit on while you try not to twitch or move suddenly so that you don't end up going home with a dresser or something. It's every Wednesday night, too! And it's so much more exciting than watching Antiques Roadshow.

Brunch with the Fellows

Tomorrow morning, I will arrive at the Sunday EID Fellow brunch looking haggard. There will be a hardness in my expressions that will make the others wonder. Did her cat just die? I bet two of her tires blew out on the way here. Maybe she was in the lab until 3am troubleshooting an experiment! Where does she get her smack? That Lena, she must swing both ways. Do you think she'd know what to do if my milk cow's calf was coming out breach?

But no, sadly, my weariness stems solely from an extended period of idleness and isolation. My cat is still alive, my car is fine, I haven't done a stitch of labwork, I can't find any [cheap] heroin, I don't fancy women [with the exception of Mackenzie Firer-Sherwood, of course], I DO know what to do if a calf is breach-- I'm just tired of not having a job to go to every day. To quote myself in an e-mail recently sent off to the Association of Public Health Labs "I didn't come to Atlanta for the grits and sunny days."

This painting entitled "unemployed girl" sums things up nicely:

Ahyup.

I'd like if it just one other Fellow had half as much trouble getting started as I'm currently having. It'll make sitting through everyone else's Tales of Productivity slightly more bearable.

How's work, Lena?

Completely inaccessable to me, forever.

This is the logical conclusion of the day:

1. In order to get put in The System, I need to be fingerprinted.
2. In order to be fingerprinted, I need to be in the System.

These statements cancel each other out and therefore I am forever outside of The System.

Welcome to the Future where Nothing is Possible.

I totally vented at a lab mate.

Big Russ is in South Korea and apparently left little instruction as to "what to do with the Fellow" because there's NOTHING for me to do. I've been harrassing this blonde girl Russ suggested that I follow around the lab. I can walk AROUND in the labs, but I can't work. If I wanted to steal something I probably could, but I have to get an FBI background check first. Anyway, the blonde girl has so far let me watch her load up the DNA extraction robot and then fill a 98-well RT-PCR plate. I was supposed to go in yesterday to go over the results with her, but she screwed up the PCR reactions [probably because I was watching her] and there was nothing to analyze. So I called again today.

I must have sounded a bit like a crazy person, because when I asked what was going on and the blonde, Christy, said "Oh, well, I was just going to read papers today and it turns out all my results were negative soooo I could show you those... uh, it's really up to you!" UP TO ME? YAARGH! Is it also up to me to personally call The Bureau and ask them to speed it up over there? Really, I would just love if someone told me WHAT TO DO, because this is THEIR show. They know what needs to be done to get researchers up and working in the lab, they know what their research projects are, and THEY need to explain these things to GUESTS. I responded to Christy's "it's up to you" with a slightly shaky "WELL, I don't really know quite what to do here. SHOULD I be coming in even if there's nothing for me to do? Or see?" Christy told me that it's pretty much up to Russ and the terms we discussed. Terms? Russ hasn't given me any terms. Russ seems to be of the mind that I need to hunker down and wait for the clearance to go through, but how am I supposed to keep from going ABSOLUTELY INSANE in the meantime?

I guess I'm going to keep feverishly Pub-Medding poxvirus journal articles, and then go in and watch Christy some more. Maybe it would be easier to be there and have nothing to do if I had a desk. Or a designated chair.

My New Lab

Today I actually went to the CDC! Thursday is the day on which lab meetings are held, and it's a good thing Big Russ [pictured above] called me at 11am to remind me. I woke up at 10:38, ever-so-slightly hung over. Well, what ELSE am I supposed to do while my brain gets soft and I lose the ability to spell words I once knew and loved?? Make friends? Read journal articles? Write my grad school essay?

Anyway, things are looking up. Big Russ agreed to write me a recommendation, and he got so excited over my project that he said "it's going to be so fucking cool!" Look at his picture again. I nearly tipped over when I heard the F-word spring so easily from those beard-swathed lips! Also, I will be presenting the summer research I did with Pat Hilleren to the Poxvirus Program on the 27th-- and Pat will NOT be able to attend! AhaHAHAHA! Technically, I could be like "The spliceosome is like a big wad of functional ground beef" and she wouldn't know. Think about Mozart's relationship with his father in the movie "Amadeus" and you'll understand my relationship with Pat. Sort of.

Tomorrow I will go back to the lab to shadow a perky blonde graduate student while she does some Real-Time PCR, and get some protocols to study. Hopefully now my brain will start to firm up a bit.

The Shuttle Lady at the CDC hates me.

Today was my third day going to the CDC, and I've managed to substantially irk the woman that drives visitors to the building they need to go to. It's not really my fault, though. The entire campus is undergoing huge renovations-- a new building is born practically every week! Apparently, everyone is really confused and I certainly don't know what the heck is going on so I tend to make assumptions. For instance, on my first day, I assumed the shuttle driver would know that I needed to return to "Building 19" at the end of the day to get my car from the visitor lot. Nope. She drove me to the OLD visitor center ["Building 11"], and then said that she was going to "wring my neck" after I peeped out the correction. Of course she was the shuttle driver I got on my second day, and again today. She seems to be softening up, although she groans when she sees me standing ever-so-coyly at the "shuttle stop" signs.

Dr. "Big Russ" Regnery, my new mentor and friend, is wonderful. Imagine if Santa Claus loved the mountains, dogs, and smallpox and you'll be imagining Russ. He's very soft spoken, but when he talks about the CIA funding the program's purchase of a pyrosequencer or how he REALLY believes that recombination events and NOT clonal selection are responsible for the genetic diversity seen in vaccinia virus stocks, he talks louder and faster. I can't wait for my security clearance to go through so that I can start a project, and also so that I can actually walk to my building instead of taking the Cranky Shuttle.

Today is also the second day I've rejected a hot cocoa offer. Partially because hot cocoa makes slightly nauseous and awkward flirting also makes me slightly nauseous. I'm not good at "smooth" and I'm even worse at reacting to "smooth." Besides, what's with the cocoa thing? Shouldn't he like tea? Clearly, if there's one thing this developing saga has taught me, it's that I'm more picky and snobby than a British man. We'll see what ye olde weekend brings... Probably Swiss Miss.

Also on the Today List:

I made chicken soup

I ran out of Ambien

The leaking in my bathroom was fixed, once and for all

I woke up and it was raining, I'm going to bed and it's raining, and it's REALLY humid here.

Can I go to work yet?

I'm in Atlanta now, and there are construction workers banging on the other side of my apartment because the house I'm living in is OLD and FALLING APART. My yuppie landlords' eyes were apparently too blocked by dollar signs to see this, and decided to start renting it out to whatever poor sap wasn't savvy enough to question the integrity of the structure. Oops.

I don't get to start work until the 3rd of October, and I really can't wait. I need structure in my life. Otherwise I just sit around and watch horrible things like "A Baby Story" on TLC. Something about seeing overweight southern women huffing and puffing with their skinny weird husbands lurking around the stirrups always seems to direct my day in the miserable direction. Also, once I start working I will not be able to go shopping. Constantly. I have to go again today, in fact. Why? Because no matter how hard I try, I can't get the things I need in one trip. For instance, I need Q-tips. I also need wine, rather desperately. I'm pretty sure here and now are the place and time for me to become a bonafide alcoholic. It's hot, the women stay home to "handle the investments," and they just built an IKEA nearby.

Ikea is just about the most depressing place I've been in my entire life [aside from Atlanta]. It's full of screaming babies, crazy people, and STUFF EVERYWHERE. You can only meander in one direction because the aisle is too narrow and crowded to oppose the flow of shoppers, and the floor plan is nonsensical in terms of organization. I was told they make it confusing so that you'll get lost and buy more things, but I think they've made a terrible mistake. Ikea's structured chaos didn't make me want to buy more things, it made me want to:

a) Cry [which I actually did do, once I found myself in the WAREHOUSE section]
b) Throw up
c) Fall to the ground and assume the fetal position
d) Set all my money on fire and never buy anything AGAIN
e) Move to the woods and shun society

So while Ikea did ellicit a strong and multifaceted emotional/physiological response, it failed to make me want to buy more things. In fact, I desperately wanted to stop buying things so that I could claw my way OUT. Additionally, I was filled with a strong sense of guilt for NEEDING things. I felt like I really didn't NEED a chair to sit in or a place to set my towels in the bathroom, simply because I was nose to nose with one of the most disgusting displays of consumerism one could imagine.

I felt much better after a little cry in the warehouse where they force you to find the items you want, drag them out, and assemble them in your home. Putting the items together wasn't so bad, but I was drunk at the time.

With that, I have to go buy wine.

Oh, and Q-tips too.

Hello Atlanta, Hello CDC.

I'm just about ready for bed, thanks to the Ambien. I have to get up early so that I can stuff myself and my cat and my mother into my little deuce coupe. You KNOW what I've got though, not like those Beach Boys. They had pink slips and competition clutches (with four on the floor!), but I just have a lot of CRAP!

I don't know when I'll get around to luring the internet installers into my apartment, but boy when I do...