About
My name is Debi Brandon (yes, that is my real name as I gave up anonymity some time ago), and I have been blogging on PanFlu issues since the spring of 2006, having started with BirdFluJourney.typepad.com then deciding to make the switch to the more robust WordPress platform.
I am the daughter, sister, wife and mother of current or past police officers, as well as having been one myself for nine years. Much of my world-view, personality and PanFlu opinions/suppositions are shaded or inculcated with the Law Enforcement POV (Point of View). While it has been many years now since I, personally, wore the uniform, I still look upon the police community as an extension of my own. The LEO POV also colors my PanFlu approach. In my years as a police officer I saw people at both their finest hours and their worst. I learned that even “bad people” usually have a goodness in them, and that a mistake in judgement does not need to mean someone has no worth or human dignity. I learned that “legal” and “just” are not synonymous. But the most important lesson I learned was that when we choose to interact with people we “touch” them, sometimes so lightly that no effect is discernible, but sometimes the effect can be profound and lifelong, and many times we are not given to know which it will be in advance.
My “day job” is running the accounting department for a beach vacation rental company that answers to a corporate owner. We have ~650 homes and condominiums under management on three different local barrier islands and sometimes the task that “pays the bills” takes priority or all of my time and energy. There are days that I do not post given demands on my time or finding nothing that inspires me to write.
While I bring no scientific credentials to my opinions I do bring an understanding that has been gained by compulsively stalking the issues of pandemic influenza and H5N1. The opinions I express are solely my own and although I strive to be accurate in all I write I am confident that I do not always get everything 100% correct. As such I welcome anyone to correct an error and I am grateful when the time is taken to do so.
I do not believe it is guaranteed we will have a pandemic of H5N1, nor do I believe that if we do the only potential is for a severe pandemic. However, what I do believe is that the risks are not zero, the risks are real, and the consequences, if severe, are beyond hyperbole.
I am, by nature, an introvert with a natural propensity to ruminate. In other words, I am a thinker, and therefore I pretty much have an opinion on just about every thing under the sun. Sometimes an opinion is held with deep conviction and I make no apologies for expressing it “energetically”.
You will find me on a few of the online Flu Forums, always under the same alias, SophiaZoe.
