jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) (06/27/91)
carl@sol1.gps.caltech.edu (Carl J Lydick) writes: > So far, everybody I know who's read the new edition of _The_Stand_ has come > down with a severe flu-like illness within a week of buying the book. Here's another one; I'd be curious to know if it's a one-off or more generally distributed. A friend of mine had a temporary job moving law books from old stacks to a new library building at the University of Auckland around 1970. He came down with a vicious case of flu. He claimed it had been diagnosed by his doctor as the same strain as the 1918-19 pandemic, and had doubtless been lying dormant in some leather-bound volume in the interim. This sounds to me EXTREMELY improbable; virus strain identification is not a routine test now, let alone twenty years ago, and I wouldn't have thought the virus had any chance of remaining viable that long in the Auckland climate. Comments? Other sightings? [ followups to alt.folklore.urban ] -- -- Jack Campin Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland 041 339 8855 x6854 work 041 556 1878 home JANET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk BANG!net: via mcsun and ukc FAX: 041 330 4913 INTERNET: via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk BITNET: via UKACRL UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp