The Storage Economist

I recall clearly traveling a few years ago amid the SARS outbreak, and the preventative techniques in place throughout Asia. The airports in Taipei and Hong Kong all had infra-red cameras, and if your body temperature was suspicious they would pull you aside for additional testing. Each day in the Singapore and Hong Kong offices of HDS we had to take our temperatures, and record them in the lobby’s log book. Hotels had precautions, including the requirement of medical disclosures as I would check in.

I also recall global and national calls for information archive related to the SARS virus, flight information (China to Toronto in the early days) for the first passengers coming into North America with the virus. SARS patient record data, research and imaging data all consumes tremendous amount of data and information. I don’t know if I can fully understand the data retention, indexing, search and data management efforts in-play this week at CDC or WHO.

I can only hope they did not skimp in their storage and data retrieval investments over the past few years. I recall an oft quoted concern from the early days of NASA, and one of their astronauts, climbing on top of a rocket – “Would you want to put your life on the top of two million parts, each designed and manufactured by the lowest bidder?”