OK - Tinhats - Let's here about this.....

[stavka]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/08/24/island.illness.ap/index.html

A Mid-West tourist site island, simultaneously infected with three dangerous, and occasionally deadly, stomach or digestive viruses that are individually rare, but certainly not unheard of and obviously debilitating.

PS. The idea of an "island retreat" near Ohio will need to be surmounted before I am actually scared.......

[nini]

1. bet it was in the water...

who knows? I don't know if I go as far as thinking it was planted - if so don't you think it would have been more of a deadly type virus?

[Snow]

2. Nothing rare about those bugs,

nor are they particularly deadly. Often as not, they're asymptomatic. Like West Nile virus, the only people really sickened/debilitated/killed by these three bugs are people already in compromised health. And the northern border of Ohio is Lake Erie, which does have the occassional island, some of which are very pleasant. I see nothing tinhat here at all. This is an unsurprising sort of thing in a summer tourist area with a lot of quick daytrip visitors. And, frankly, the "public health expert" quoted doesn't sound very competent. With that many sick people identified, it's pretty likely the source will be pinpointed.

So why the tinhat stuff?

[Nay]

5. Agree. Not rare, and nearly always transmitted by food or drink.

If so many are sick, it would suggest a really sloppy food wholesaler, or that several food servers are sick and have not been identified. Bet it's a food wholesaler who has hired a couple of sick, sloppy people to prepare salads/foods in bulk for sale to more than one restaurant.

[Snow]

8. Maybe the county doesn't have enough money to send

restaraunt inspectors out there often enough. Nothing like tax cuts to give quick results in the public health field!

[soothsayer]

3. Prolly just our govt testing the spread of viruses so they can weaponize

the agent they are using for dispersal. I doubt we've ever stopped using unwitting citizens as guinea pigs (tho we can do it on soldiers without their permission BY LAW).

STuff like this (tho you'll have to run down the real sources if you want to be doubly sure) http://www.rense.com/general18/mcc.htm

[Pallas180]

7. Yup, citizens have unwittingly been guinea pigs since the 60's

San Francisco subway - the CIA released a gas in the subways, got
caught and had to admit it.

O'Leary famous for LSD worked for the CIA - there the CIA used it on
some of their own guys who thought they could fly and jumped out of
windows....never mind the college kids O' Leary tested on, who are
vegetables to this day.

[Ouabache]

4. Put-In-Bay: A quaint drinking island with a big fishing problem

Its for real. A nice island out in Lake Erie. You can catch the Jet Express to it from Port CLINTON, Ohio.

I have been there. It is nice. A little bit of tourist trap in spots. Several hisitorical and geological sites on it to visit. Some nice restaurants, although a lot of these people might not agree. Party spots too. Think Parrotheads.

Actually it is called South Bass Island. It's on the map. You can look it up.

[enigmatic]

6. I've been there many, many times..

while growing up in Northeastern Ohio; it's a pretty cool place with a party-hardy crowd in the summer. Kelly's Island is much more relaxed, and Johnson's Island used to be a Civil War POW camp that's supposedly haunted..

[BiggJawn]

9. "It's not like 600 people all ate the cole slaw..."

Are they SURE about that?

I read the story, and got a mental image of panicky townies asking Roy Schneider "You're not gonna CLOSE the BEACH, are YOU!?!?!?!"

"Oh, sure, 600 people out there pukin' and shittin' themselves with the 24-hour belly bug, but WE have NO idea where they got it from! Come to put-in-bay for our Steak Tartare Festival this weekend!"