By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, Cole Petrochko , MedPage Today Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO -- A power outage shut down part of the Moscone Center this morning, forcing organizers of the IDWeek meeting to interrupt dozens of sessions and cancel or postpone others.
The lights went out at about 9:15 a.m. PDT, according to Diana Olson, a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA),one of the meeting sponsors.
Officials asked attendees, already engaged in the first session of the meeting's last full day, to leave the Moscone South building. Other parts of the complex were not affected.
"It's certainly unexpected," commented Tom Moore, MD, of the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita. "There's a couple of sessions I really wanted to see that were going on when the power went out, so hopefully they get rescheduled once the power comes back."
"If not, I'll have to check them out online," Moore told MedPage Today, adding that he was catching up on work and enjoying the California sunshine while he waited for the meeting to resume.
Two large sessions slated for the south building were moved to another building, but sessions that were under way when the power went out were interrupted.
Four morning oral abstract sessions with start times during the blackout were scrubbed, although Olson said a late-breaker session was rescheduled for the afternoon.
Regular afternoon programming was started shortly after the power went back on about 12:15 p.m., Olson said.
A spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric linked the outage to an emergency shutdown switch for the buildings elevators. Exactly why that caused the outage is "part of the investigation," the spokeswomen said.
Attendees were offered a free lunch in a neighboring building.
The outage coincided with a noisy protest by green T-shirted Lyme disease activists, upset that the IDSA does not credit the existence of a chronic form of the illness.
"It is a beautiful day, and frankly I wasn't looking forward to spending a beautiful day in San Francisco inside a convention center, but I was looking forward to learning the science," Moore told MedPage Today.
Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, Cole Petrochko
Posts: 7306 | From Martinsville,VA,USA | Registered: Oct 2004
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Second to last sentence...say what? Was anyone here at the protest? Are they trying to insinuate that the Lyme protest is connected to the power outage?
Posts: 428 | From Midwest | Registered: Dec 2012
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Yes, they still have the opportunity to go attend a giant bluegrass festival in GG Park or the Castro Street Fair with all the drag queens or get ready for a big football game tonite btwn TX and ?
Ha - Read second to last sentence - that was us! We chanted loudly, "Chronic Lyme exists!!"
Hold on, Daynise, I am typing a report here, slowly, with my left hand!
Posts: 13171 | From San Francisco | Registered: May 2006
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Ok, nobody answer that question - I'll behave myself here, and no, as part of set-up for the rally, we did not turn off the energy for Moscone Center, because we don't have enough energy anyway.
They must have fixed the problem by the time the rally started at 11. Wow, too bad the power outage didn't happen at 11am!! We would have had the audience we wanted! Can you imagine that? Hundreds of ID folks pouring out the doors then - whee!
There was the LymeDisease.org truck driving round and round, about the IDSA denying science.
There were about 100 of us in lively green everything, including lots of signs.
We chanted for awhile. Then speakers read their speeches, then we had open mike for patient testimonies, then an area rapper performed a Lyme rap song, then Jordan Fisher Smith reported in, including about his trip to Oslo, Norway this past spring.
Phyllis Mervine, pres of LymeDisease.org, told the humble beginning story of only meeting with one sick friend in the later 80s
and how the Lyme Times, a beautiful glossy quarterly Lyme magazine today with Yolanda Foster on the current cover, began as two legal size papers folded in half and stapled. See, there's hope for simple beginnings...
Andy Abrahams Wilson and crew filmed the rally! I think we're going to be in the upcoming UOS update! If so, I'll be sure to come back here and say, "That's me, with my sign!"
Posts: 13171 | From San Francisco | Registered: May 2006
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Awesome! I bet you'll be in UOS! I've been looking at some pics on my hubby's facebook of the protest. Looks like it was wonderful.
Posts: 428 | From Midwest | Registered: Dec 2012
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Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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Thank you Robin. I would have loved to been there, the drive is just too darn far, etc.
49'er game on here, I would have loved to see the protest on TV when they do the camera shots around town showing off
what the city looks like during the day. The game opened with a huge pink commemorative for breast cancer, the players wearing
some pink items- couldn't help but think: what if it was green for Lyme awareness one day?
Thank you for all you do, and everyone else able to participate.
-------------------- Lyme positive PCR blood, and positive Bartonella henselae Igenex, 2011. low positive Fry biofilm test, 2012. Update 7/16- After extensive treatments, doing okay! Posts: 2518 | From USA | Registered: Nov 2011
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Well, they used to commemorate AIDS, so one day, yes, there will be a Lyme green tribute and hopefully some fundraising for research/patient care!
Dorothy Leland, Touched by Lyme blogger with LymeDisease.org did a lot of the rally set-up work - if you want, you can email her a thank you at [email protected] -
Posts: 13171 | From San Francisco | Registered: May 2006
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