Is this how the plague begins?

A Singapore Airlines flight attendant was found dead in her hotel room in San Francisco Tuesday, after she reportedly told coworkers on her arriving flight that she was not feeling well. The Straits Times broke the news about the airline's "leading stewardess," saying that fellow crew members went to find her after she failed to meet them in the hotel lobby to head to their departing flight to Singapore, scheduled for 1 a.m. Wednesday at SFO.

As the Chronicle reports, the deceased woman has been identified as 38-year-old Vanessa Yeap, and she had arrived with the Singapore flight, SQ2, on January 28.

The SFPD say they are aware of the incident, and the Medical Examiner's Office is investigating Yeap's death.

Yeap's brother was apparently en route to SF to claim her body. The airline issued a statement about Yeap, who had worked for them for 16 years, saying, "Our immediate priority is to provide the necessary assistance to the family of the crew member. As the case is under the investigation of the local authorities, we are unable to share any further details."

The totally non-metaphorical plague of biting green bugs that descended on the Black Rock Desert last week — bringing with it a rash of negative press — has mostly disappeared. Those pests, the Burning Man blog proudly reports, couldn't survive the harsh desert conditions of the playa!

"Keep calm and burn on" is the basic message from photographer and blogger John Curley, who was super zen about this whole thing even when everybody was losing their cool.

"Yes," Curley confides, "it was true... unknown bugs of mysterious origin showed up by the thousands or millions in Black Rock City over the past week." Those, writes Gizmodo, were likely Nysius, or seed bugs, who "release a terrible smell" and poke their probiscises into people’s skin.

But not to worry, Burner class of 2015. It's so awful on the playa that even bugs can't survive. "[The] heat and the dryness have taken their toll. Larger insects came along, too, and there were plenty of smaller bugs for them to eat." Also, birds ate them, but fearing the next batch of headlines, Curley notes that they "were not massing in Hitchcock-ian numbers." The birds, like the bugs, are just part of the natural process. "The smaller get eaten by the larger. The heat ended the infestation as quickly as it appeared, and the inches-high mounds were blown away by the desert wind."

However, Curley admits that the bugs could return and haven't even dissipated completely. "Ok, not every last stinking one of them [is gone], but pretty much," he quips of the literally smelly insects. "The swarms have dried up and blown away. People are working unmolested. Nature has run its course."

It should be noted that unusual swarms of seed bugs and others are still being recorded in the nearby eastern Sierras, so who knows what might be left this insect season.

By the by, if the bugs do return and your destination is the Black Rock Desert, Wired has some advice on how to combat them. No, those natural bug-blockers will probably just get you eaten — try a vacuum cleaner?

On another note, Curley's original blog post was at the center of the real feeding frenzy, devoured by The Media as it was. In fact, you know what? Curley has a theory about the real plague on Burning Man. It's us, you guys.

Yep, Curley hated being identified by the likes of NBC as a "Burning Man organizer" so much that he bragged about it in his blog post. In fact, he's just a Burner blogger who proudly tells us that used to be a "lost soul" in the newspaper business. He seems to have been laid off by the Chronicle in 2007, as writes photographer Thomas Hawk, and now he seems much more at peace, citing his festival involvement and life on a houseboat in Alameda.

"We were soooooo happy not to be a part of the 24-hour news cycle, where the identical facts are hashed and rehashed and then regurgitated again," writes Curley with distinct sympathy. "We feel sorry for the lost souls who have to write and rewrite the sketchiest outlines of a story into headlines they hope will grab an eyeball or two."

Welp. Sorry to be a green bug in your ointment, Mr. Curley!

Previously: [Update] Plague Of Biting Green Bugs To Ruin Burning Man

BART spokespeople sent a rather alarming message to media Thursday afternoon, saying that East Bay passengers might have been exposed to the measles.

According to BART spokesman Jim Allison, "a person infected with the contagious disease traveled on BART in the East Bay last week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says measles has been virtually wiped out in the United States thanks to vaccinations but the disease still poses a risk to those who have not been vaccinated."

A KQED compilation of California Department of Health data suggests that Bay Area parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children against diseases like the measles in greater and greater numbers, making this a real concern for many BART riders.

Allison says that "the person infected with measles traveled between El Cerrito del Norte and Downtown Berkeley stations on Tuesday, February 4 through Friday, February 7 between 8 to 10 am and in the afternoon/evening commute hours."

Measles is an airborne virus that can remain in the air for as long as two hours. According to the CDC, "measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected with the measles virus."

Symptoms typically kick in between a week to two weeks after infection. If you think you might have been exposed, and you have any symptoms, which include:

Blotchy rash
Fever
Cough
Runny nose
Red, watery eyes
Feeling run down, achy
Tiny white spots with bluish-white centers found inside the mouth

...Then stop reading this and go to the doctor right now. We're not messing around here, this disease can be fatal.

Update: BCN/Danville.com reports that the infected person is a UC Berkeley student who "was not vaccinated and was likely infected with the disease during a recent trip abroad." The student also "spent time in the Berkeley community" and "attended classes on the UC Berkeley campus."

[CDC]
[Danville.com]