As of this writing, the World Health Organization has just raised the threat level to Phase 5 which is described as "a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short."

Oh, joy. Of course the WHO Web site got sick as a result of this -- the rush of visitors just completely porked their servers.

Allow me to digress for a moment and note that the New York Times just published a piece that stated, "nine people -- ages 6 to 57 -- appeared to have swine" (worded that way, makes it sound like an outbreak of husbandry).

Anyway, by the time you read this we may all be staying away from public places (including work), hunkering down in our houses and waiting for the whole thing to go away. Kind of like the financial crisis except we know at least our 401ks won't get sick because they are already dead.

So now that we're facing this grim prospect, I'm wondering if you included global pandemics in your disaster planning? I'm guessing that's a "no." And that seems pretty reasonable. After all, unless you are of a serious survivalist mentality, you probably haven't included provisions for other catastrophes either, such as the earth being struck by a comet, atomic warfare wiping out humanity and bringing on a nuclear winter, or having your data center attacked by hordes of flesh-eating zombies lusting after the succulent flesh of Twinkies-fed support staff.