There is a great
lesson for journalists in the Florida "nanny cam" case that prosecutors recently dropped. The
entire case was built around a secret video that seemed to show a nanny
abusing a baby. The nanny was vilified; the tape aired over and over.
But two and a half
years after the nanny was sent to jail, she is free because an expert
finally explained to the court that the camera only snapped still
frames -- not actual, real-time video. The still frames run as a movie can
make even a gentle motion appear to be violent. See the video in coverage from Miami-Fort Lauderdale's CBS-4 in.
About.com offers some resources on the "nanny cam" phenomenon.
Do Hand Sanitizers Work?
A new study says
it all depends on how much alcohol is in the sanitizer. Less than 60 percent
alcohol apparently won't kill harmful bacteria and viruses.
Women Packing Heat
ABC News says women are showing up in increasingly large numbers at gun ranges and gun-sales counters. In fact, the president of the NRA is a woman, only the second woman to head the organization in the roughly 130 years of its existence. The gun-toting gals even have their own magazine and the NRA is dedicating an entire section of its Web site to women.
Bird Flu's Cost
If the bird flu ever reached pandemic levels, how could businesses respond?
The Age (Australia) included this sobering assessment and advice:
Travel, tourism, hospitality and retail have been singled out among industries a pandemic is most likely to affect.
Mercer Human Resource Consulting has warned
that companies need to start looking at such areas as caregivers'
leave, sick leave and bereavement leave in the event of a pandemic.
Company health, disability, salary
continuance and business travel insurance policies would also need to
be reviewed, as would life insurance.
Crisis support, well beyond the support that standard employee-assistance programs provide, would need to be addressed.
Mercer warned that companies needed to look
closely at setting up operations in ways designed to limit the spread
of the disease.
This would include greater use of telephony
and video conferencing, avoiding unnecessary travel, which could
include meetings, workshops and training sessions, encouraging
employees to work from home and developing more flexible work
arrangements to avoid workplace crowding, and setting up work
arrangements to avoid public transport in peak hours. [...]
Some authorities have predicted a death toll of more than 100 million.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have some resources for businesses:
- Business Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist: In the event of a pandemic, businesses will play a key role in protecting employees' health and safety.
- Pandemic Flu Business Letter and PDF: Secretaries
Michael O. Leavitt (Secretary of Health and Human Services), Michael
Chertoff (Secretary of Homeland Security), and Carlos M. Gutierrez
(Secretary of Commerce) provide a letter to business leaders about the potential of pandemic influenza.
- Pandemic Preparedness: People, Plans, Products and Practice: New, February 22 -- A presentation by Dr. Julie Gerberding, describing pandemic influenza
basics, the CDC's plans for saving lives, counter-measures such as vaccines
and antivirals and checklists to help businesses and other
organizations prepare.
As early as last year, fast-food restaurant chains were on the offensive, trying to reassure customers.
Forbes recently
covered McDonald's approach.
Who Would Get Care?
There is a lot of conversation going on in medical circles about how the health-care community would parse out treatment. Just look at this story from ABC News' special bird flu coverage as an example:
A "medium-level" flu pandemic
would likely cause between 89,000 to 207,000 deaths and about 314,000
to 734,000 people to be hospitalized in the United States, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A large percentage of
these hospitalized patients could be critically ill and require a
ventilator.
With that in mind,
doctors throughout the country are debating how to parse out a limited
supply of ventilators in the event of an outbreak.
Dr. John Hick, an emergency physician at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis,
has been working on a plan where the limited number of ventilators
would be used for healthier patients, while the sickest patients would
not receive them unless one became available.
His plan attempts to
do the "greatest good for the greatest number" because the healthier
patients would be more likely to benefit from ventilation and
ultimately have a better outcome, he said. His proposal was published
in the February issue of the journal Academic Emergency Medicine.
The CDC offers these planning checklists:
- School District (K-12) Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist: (Does your school system take this seriously?) The CDC says, "Local
educational agencies (LEAs) play an integral role in protecting the
health and safety of their district's staff, students and their
families."
And some other, related resources:
- The White House: U.S. National Strategy: The
United States' approach to prepare, detect, and respond to a pandemic;
roles of federal, state and local governments, private industry,
international partners and individual citizens
- WHO Current Situation Guidance:
The World Health Oganization's current alert level, advice to the
public, current avian influenza situation, basic facts, and more
- PandemicFlu.gov: The official U.S. government Web site for pandemic and avian influenza information
- Ready.gov: Practical
planning steps, templates, and links to resources providing more
detailed business continuity and disaster preparedness information
TV Station Spots Tornado Live
It's spring and Oklahoma City's KOCO-TV is twister-tracking.
Here are some tornado resources from CBS News' excellent Disaster Links page:
Trunk Monkey
Okay, I admit it; this has nothing to do with news. It is something to make you laugh. These Oregon auto dealership commercials are the funniest things I have seen in a long time.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a
compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a
variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When
the information comes directly from another source, it will be
attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is
fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the
original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
I'm the author of Blown Away: American Women and Guns...
