Flights are bad for your health

Time for a rant. Pretty much everytime I travel on a plane I end up
with a cold of one severity or another. So, I'm back from the Web
Services on Wall Street conference and guess what: I'm hold up in bed
with a flu. Without going into any of the gorey details, suffice it to
say that I'm sure there are tiny creatures in my head playing with
pneumatic drills.

I've been travelling for more years than I care to remember, but it
wasn't until Twelve Monkeys came out that I really thought about
this. (BTW, it's a great movie IMO.) What a fantastic way for viruses
to spread around the globe! Now is it just me or does this not seem
like an opportunity waiting to be exploited? You can take your
missile-shields, missile-detectors, early warning systems etc. Where's
the equivalent for a viral attack? I've never been asked to prove that
my aerosol contains deoderant and not some virulent strain of
botulinum bacteria. As the film shows, the perpetrators don't even need to be
on the same continent!

BTW, this isn't something I'm going to worry about any more than I do
other threats. It's just that I'm lying here in bed and the mind tends
to wander.