ominous

[foxtongue]

Riding through Crackton this morning, there was no one on the street. It was suspicious, so suspicious, even the Theives Market was gone. The corner of Pigeon Parked looked like an abandoned movie set. Benches were not huddles of homeless, forts of shopping carts and tattered blankets, shouting about drugs, threats, or Jesus. I could see police farther down one street, bunched at the mouth of an alley, clapping their dark gloved hands together against the chill, but no other evidence of anything that could have happened. My bus went by too fast. Yesterday our regular junk strip was our regular junk strip, all howling, dirty, and dangerous for tourists. Where did everyone go?

Comments

[cloud-atlas.livejournal.com]

Could be due to this: http://www.straight.com/article-197388/vancouver-police-plan-downtown-eastside-crackdown-ahead-olympics

I've noticed less of a presence in pigeon park since December. There seems to be more going on in the Alley between Powell and Hastings at Carrall than there used to be. I know Oppenheimer Park is still full of peeps most days...

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

There was NO ONE for five blocks. Creepiest thing I've ever seen down there, really, and it's a fairly creepy place.

[cloud-atlas.livejournal.com]

Yeah... seeing as it was a really cold night that night, depending on how early in the morning you were heading through, it could also be because of the new zero barrier shelters.

They actually are getting used, quite a bit, especially because they allow carts, pets, drunks, and drug users which many shelters previously did not allow. The numbers on how much they are being used is phenomenal.

[icecreamemperor.livejournal.com]

Maybe they got tired of keeping us alive all these years and finally went back to their island on the moon.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

My peeps wouldn't leave without me! Would they?

[breklor.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was an Ebola outbreak.

That would suck, though.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

That would. That's our bus-route. Isn't the speed of outbreak for Ebola something obscene, like 97%?

[breklor.livejournal.com]

Gods no. Well, sort of no. In terms of contagion, it's not nearly as nasty as you might think; its designation as a Class 4 virus is mostly due to its lethality (around 90%, even with treatment) and the fact that there is no vaccine.

It's mostly spread by bodily fluids. The major problem there is that:

a) as a "haemorrhagic fever" it can cause release of a variety of bodily fluids, and

b) in the Ebola river region, the cultural practice is that the whole family treats the sick and the dead, so everyone has lots of chances to catch it.

Education is taking care of that latter issue. Ebola outbreaks are getting smaller and shorter as a result.

If you infected someone with Ebola in the DTES, chances are they would infect a great many of their close friends, and the infection might go out a generation or two from there, but the speed with which it drops people is such that it takes carriers out of circulation very quickly. Plus, such an infection in a modern city would be caught and (hopefully) contained very quickly. Of course, if you really wanted to make a mess, you'd infect a sex worker... I wouldn't like to think what the spread would look like from there, considering how many johns are basically random middle class men who don't live in the DTES.

An interesting bit of trivia is that each successive generation of the disease is less lethal. For example, if I catch it I'm 90% likely to die. If I give it to you, and you give it to Duncan, and he gives it to his friends, by the time you get several steps down the chain, that can drop as low as 50%. I don't know why that is, but it's kinda cool.