Dean Freytag

I received an e-mail on one of my lists stating he had passed away Christmas evening at the assisted living facility in which he had been for the past 11 months. It gave information on services to be held for Dean as well.

I met him at NMRA 2003 in Toronto - he wasn't afraid of SARS. ;-)

A real gentleman, answered my somewhat obtuse questions in a most friendly way. I admired his ability to makes credible mdoels out of what looked like almost nothing.

He will be missed.

Wolf K.

On 12/27/2010 7:19 AM Mark Mathu spake thus:

Shame. His steel mill models certainly set the gold standard (or should we say the iron standard?) for modelers everywhere in every media and venue.

Would that be:

• Severe acute respiratory syndrome, a pneumonia-like disease * The South African Revenue Service, the tax collection agency for South Africa * Sars, the Specialist Anti-Robbery Squad, an elite police unit in Nigeria * Sars, a common abbreviation for sarsaparilla in Australia

Having just eaten an anchovy pizza for lunch, I await your answer with baited breath.

~Pete

The above. The convention in Toronto took place not long after the outbreak in the Far East, and some Canadian cases of it had been reported. There was widespread fear of it turning into a pandemic; thankfully it didn't. Many NMRA members that had been planning to attend canceled, resulting in the National Train Show also being canceled as manufacturers and dealers pulled out. The convention itself was much smaller than normal that year.

Another one of the hyped up pandemic fear mongering scares of recent years. SARs, H1H1, Swine Flu et al. Al amounted to nothing.

Wonder what the 2011 version will be?

SARS had a fatality rate of nearly 10% in those infected. Over 700 people died from it. I sure wouldn't call that "nothing."

The World Health Organization advised postponing travel to Toronto (site of the NMRA 2003 convention) a few months before the NMRA meeting. The advisory was lifted well in advance of the NMRA show, but the damage had been done, and show attendance was down that year.

__________ Mark Mathu Whitefish Bay, Wis. The Green Bay Route:

Um, the *reason* they amounted to a lot less than they probably would have is precisely *because* the WHO got the word out early and often: allowing precautions to be taken that no doubt prevented much wider outbreaks than actually happened.

Doing this is part of the WHO's job.

Dunno.

But it's not a wise man who calls it "fear mongering" when experts the world 'round give fair warning of an upcoming problem.

~Pete

Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in the deaths of between 250,000 and 500,000 people every year.

No panic over that.

a)

Most of the victims were doctors and nurses, who were of course exposed to the disease before it was understood how evil it was. A major factor in the initial spread was the large number of part-time nurses, who worked different shifts in different hospitals. By the time of the NMRA Convention, the infection was completely contained.

Anchovies are an essential pizza topping IMO. But I only get it on home made pizza. Which is better than the boughten kind in many other ways, too. ;-)

Wolf K.

But it was a _great_ convention.

Wolf K.

That's because it's a known factor: the killer is "ordinary flu", to which most of us have acquired immunity. It's a generational thing: most of us have acquired immunity to the current flu virus families. Most of the deaths occur in the very young, who have not yet acquired immunity; and in the elderly, who have missed out on acquiring immunity to the new strain(s). It's a true pandemic, but's it not a "killer". If it were, there would tens of millions of deaths.

The fear with H1N1 was twofold: it was a strain out of the ordinary sequence, so to speak (in fact, it's related to the Spanish flu, which did kill millions.) That means it's in a family for which most of us have no immunity. Two things prevented a vicious killer pandemic: it was less virulent than estimated; and in the industrialised world vaccination reduced its effects. Even so, about 20% of the flu deaths in Canada were H1N1 that year.

A perspective statistic: In Canada, about as many people die of the flu every year as in highway accidents.

Have a good one, Wolf K.

And he was the "Dean of Styrene"!

On 12/28/2010 6:16 PM Lobby Dosser spake thus:

Yep. There are some pictures of his work in my 1991 Plastruct catalog. (Wonder if he had a relationship to that company like, say, Al Armitage had with Revell?)

Perhaps. Walthers published his book on steel mill modeling and he also wrote "The Cyclopedia of Industrial Modeling" which I have yet to see anywhere.

It _looks_ like it is available from Plastruct, right now:

Not a panic, but health professionals around the world are continually working to control strains of the flu. But back to your original phrase, I don't belive any normal person would call H1H1 or Swine Flu "nothing," either.

These scare campaigns are just to create market opportunities, to get research grants from gullible governments and ultimately gullible taxpayers, and to give politicians an excuse to divert public attention from other issues. Just like global warming.

Even given what I wrote, I still think that a strong warning, without all the panic and media hype, is a good thing. Better safe than sorry.