31 May 2003

Severe Acute Retirement Syndrome

It cleared yesterday, the skies suddenly deep and blue and the clouds reverted to soft cotton balls instead of the pervasion damp wool that has blanketed us for a month. I had the top down on the car and the golf clubs at the ready. It is astonishing what a little sunshine can do for the spirit. This morning returned to form. It is threatening to rain and I have the usual Saturday errands to run. I'd love to stay here and peck away but the day and the chores call. I'd take a day off during the week and do all that, take advantage of the brief sunshine and play golf, but I am now retired and thus have to work. Oxymoron, sort of, but that is the way it is. Severe Acute Retirement Syndrome.

The sullen gray sky met the mood of the news. The President toured two Nazi death camps in our new best friend Poland, and is headed for a rendezvous with our newly-conciliatory pal Vladmir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russians only European city. The President is either healing rifts by saying, in passable French, "Vive a France!" or he is busting chops by treating the Poles like they were the pivotal power that the Germans used to be. They have got to be seething, the Deutchers, and they can't even dream of marching east to shut up the Poles anymore.

The news reported a blip from North America that relates to my line of business. It is funny hearing the office stuff on the radio. Not that it was any different in the Intelligence Business, it was just a day later. It is make-or-break in Canada. In Toronto the number of SARS cases jumped from 29 to 43, with five more dead. There is good news contained here, though you have to drill down fairly far to get it. The new cases are confined to health care workers, patients in hospital, or family members who visited them. This is a key point to the epidemiologists. They can trace all the contacts, tell everyone to go home and wait for ten days to see if they get sick. When two ten-day periods have passed without additional outbreak, the virus is presumed to have ceased to be communicative.

Which is why the new cases were so startling. It had been twenty days since a new case had been reported. Then a 96-year old who was having hip surgery got the symptoms, elevated temperature, respiratory distress. The Virus was back. Where had it hidden over the weeks? The hospital where the surgery was conducted had cases before and a mental ward was in the same wing. Had some confinee had a mild case, created a reservoir of the disease to be spread later? Was the air handling system? Thousands were quarantined. James Young, Commissioner of Public Safety said they were watching very carefully. They cannot even accurately characterize it as SARS until 21 days after onset of symptoms, when the blood seriology is complete. So officially, even if they get this outbreak, it will be weeks before they can say that they defeated SARS.

There are some funny things about the outbreak at the West York Hospital. I am no Doctor, though they do call me one at the office sometimes, either seeking to curry favor or oblivious. But I can understand things when the Director of the Center for Disease Control tells it to me in simple one or two syllable words.

Not that she does anymore. Not since the Vogue spread in the Chanel suit and the elegantly done hair with the one white streak that arcs back over her forehead. She is exotic looking and tough and relentlessly competent. She is a star in her own right and chafes at reporting to our office. I don't blame her a bit. She is a renowned medical doctor, credentials and honors out the gazoo, and a first rate epidemiologist. My Boss is a Master of Public Health who used to work in the wards, not even a nurse, and then got caught up with the Fire and Rescue Department. You can feel the tension on her end and that just raises it on this end. It is bad enough that Julie has to report to the Secretary, but that is the Law and the Constitution. My Boss is just an irritant. You should see her when she deals with me.

The Boss was gone this week to St. Bart's and he got down to only calling a few times a day. Hong Kong was gnawing at Julie for a biscuit, something to turn the economic situation around. A word from the Center that it was OK to travel there, something to stoke the engine of commence. Hong Kong's lobbying office here in Washington called me up about a video-conference they wanted to have with Julie. He told me it was about economics, and a plea to downgrade the Center's travel advisory. That would be a political policy, not a medical decision. But when we talked to Julie's office they demurred and said it was about setting up a Center like hers in the former Crown Colony. It will be interesting to find out which is correct, and which agenda is being worked. Either Julie as Queen of Infectious Disease and arbiter of Travel Warnings, or just a hard-working physician doing her best despite all sorts of interference from those bozos in Washington.

The Times E-edition this morning had a direct quote about this. I'll pretend, like Jayson Blair, that I was there instead of lifting the quote verbatim from the Gray Lady: "Effects of the continued sluggishness are being felt well beyond Hong Kong. Electronics manufacturers complain that the development of new consumer products has been badly delayed because engineers were barred from traveling among the United States, Taiwan and China after the SARS outbreak. That means stores around the world will have fewer innovative computer printers, scanners and wireless network devices on the shelves this Christmas." The Times claims to have actually talked to Frank Huang, chairman of both the Taipei Computer Association and Power Chip, one of the largest computer chip manufacturers on Formosa. The Times further claims he said "There will be, because of SARS, a reduced number of products on the market…during the crucial Christmas selling season."

Or so the Times reporter claims he said and while it seems plausible I am just not confident that I am stealing accurate quotes since the big Jayson Blair scandal. But the Christmas thing troubles me, since the flu season comes back starting in the Fall when the kids go back to school, and there is no real way to tell the flu from the SARS until your lungs fail. It will be a mess and definately impact my shopping plans.

So I am watching SARS from the vantage of my SARS and I am getting used to the feeling of being retired. No saber at my hip, no threat of imminent deployment. It is strange and liberating at the same time.

But you wouldn't think I am retired this week, if you watched me at my fake mahogany desk. I am waiting to see if they will offer me a senior executive position. Maybe they will and maybe they won't. The process has to be fair and has to be validated through the Office of Personnel Management. In the meantime, they have sworn me as a Federal employee to be paid at an hourly rate equivalent to the position to which I may be hired. There are no benefits, just pay for the hours I work, though of course we work more. I figured it out based on the official rate. There are 2,040 working hours in a year, calculated at 52 weeks times 40 hours. The net salary, divided by the hours, comes out to a rate of $67.15, almost as good as some car mechanics. That is a heck of a lot better what I was getting before, though the net wasn't that much different. We were on call all the time, 7X24, so the hourly rate was only $9.61. Of course, the plus side of that was that I made it even when I was asleep.

Which is not a bad, for a government worker. Which they say is an oxymoron, but you better smile when you say that, Pardner.