Those network guys.. sheesh!
This will be my last post for a week or so. I'll explain more in a bit... First:
Ecoli 101.
*It doesn't take much bacteria to get sick.. maybe 10 microscopic particles. One gram of your poop can shed millions upon millions of particles. I know, that's SUPER gross to all of us.. but to doctors and food detectives that's just the reality of it.
*It turns up on all kind of stuff: spinach, sprouts, unpastuerized milk, at daycares, undercooked meat, swimming pools, you get the idea.
*Most people won't get really sick. About 2% to 7% of people will develop one of the most serious complications which is basically kidney failure. Of those cases.. for the people who get the intensive care they need the death rate is about 3% to 5%. Effects can linger lon after a person is out of the hospital.
*Not all Ecoli is bad. In fact, most of the hundreds of strains are benign. THIS Ecoli (O157:H7) is the bad stuff for people.
*Infection typically shows up about 2 to 10 days after contamination. Most people get better within a week and don't need hospitalization.
That's all.
As for those network guys.. we teamed up with Nightly News and got an interview with that Salem woman you probably saw on the news today. We got to her house at 11:10am. I was live at noon. Not much time and it had to look clean for the network boys. 11:15am another crew from a different national newscast showed up. The guy came in and told me his desk scheduled his appointment for 11:30am and I'd have to hustle. We were told noon, and I was working for Nightly and wasn't about to be rushed out. I told him if I got out of there at 11:45 I'd be doing him a favor since his appointment wasn't until noon. He said he had east coast deadlines. I told him so did I. We got out of there at 11:45am.. I picked a soundbite on the fly and ad-libbed my noon liveshot. We flew back to KGW and fed the raw video to Burbank.
The guy wasn't rude or anything, he was just under the same crushing deadlines as the rest of us. I wonder how his stuff turned out. Heck, I wonder how Nightly will use our stuff tonite. Too bad I can't get home in time to record it.
I'm off for a week. See you the week after next!
