I imagined doing a lot more at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Life such as it is, I drew a very short straw this weekend.
Instead of attending a hefty list of scientific sessions and blogging about them, I attended the porcelain god worshiping panel in my hotel bathroom.
This makes the second time in three years that I’ve contracted a vicious stomach bug during transcontinental travel, and in both cases my symptoms were the smoking gun for the norovirus, aka Norwalk virus (named after a town in my home state of Ohio, where a notable outbreak occurred).
Unless you’re very young or old, the critter isn’t typically deadly. Nevertheless, it’s a highly contagious kick in the guts: norovirus is thought to be responsible for 90 percent of all cases of the “stomach flu” and half of all “food poisoning” incidents.
How did I come to serve as the ungracious host for this lifeless* nanospeck of protein and nucleotides? (more…)
