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Hello and welcome to another episode of Kaizen. I’m your host, Aaron Schere, here to help guide you through the jump point to financial solvency by breaking down the latest economic developments in the Empire and beyond.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Neither Schere, Kaizen nor Farnes Media Partners guarantees any specific outcome or profit. Before acting on information in this program, you should strongly consider seeking advice from your own financial or investment adviser.

Before we introduce today’s guest, I’d like to take a moment to send out a happy birthday. One hundred and twenty-two years ago today, the Imperial Spectrum Commission unveiled the Spectrum ID system. The project was led by Dr. Yong Erroll in cooperation with scientists and engineers from Aciedo CommServices. The team devised a more much effective system to uniquely identifying corporations, organizations and even individuals across the various networks and comm relays positioned around the Empire. The Spectrum ID system was such a success that within six months (SET) of implementation, the previous system, CTTD, all but disappeared. So, to the memory of Dr. Erroll and the brilliant engineers who devised the Spectrum ID, happy birthday to your creation.

Ever since the malady known as Lynch’s Fever was identified almost a month ago, a series of additional inspection protocols were quickly implemented to contain the spread of the disease. While trade and commerce have taken a serious blow inside the borders of the UEE, members of the medical community are optimistic that a treatment will pass safety review in the very near future.

My guest today caused a bit of a stir when he appeared on Showdown shortly after the disease was first identified. Please welcome Garet Waldon of the Trade & Development Division.

Garet Waldon: Hi Aaron. I’m not sure if ‘bit of a stir’ covers it.

Fair enough. So I gather there was some pretty heavy fallout from that appearance?

Garet Waldon: I’d say so. People seemed to think that I didn’t care about those afflicted, but I was simply trying to be pragmatic about our options.

Has the origin, the patient zero if you will, of the disease been discovered?

Garet Waldon: No patient zero, to my knowledge at least. I believe Dr. Byrne held a press conference linking the virus to a contaminated batch of foodstuffs. One of our analysts did discover how the fever managed to appear in three systems at once. The licensed hauler that was carrying several crates of the contaminated food was attacked by pirates while on his run. Apparently, the two pirates were scared off by local law enforcement, but not before heisting a crate apiece and separating. Probably not one of their most successful scores, I would imagine.

So what is the status of Lynch’s Fever at the moment, specifically in the government’s customs and scanning protocols? Is it contained?

Garet Waldon: We’re working on it. The scientists over at the Medical Corps have managed to isolate … I’m not a doctor so I know I’m going to screw this up … genetic markers in the virus or something. Again, I apologize for not knowing, but in short, they’ve provided the TDD with these markers as updates for our scanners that will allow them to identify contaminated cargo.

Does that mean that our listeners can expect their shipments to return to their usual delivery schedule?

Garet Waldon: I wouldn’t say that. These scans still require time for any type of cargo that could conceivably carry the virus, so there is still a longer-than-usual scrutiny, but between these scans and the rumors of the treatment in clinical trials, it seems like things look promising. Officially though, it’s too early to tell.

Understood. Have you been able to calculate the economic damage done by Lynch’s Fever?

Garet Waldon: Not officially, but between contaminated cargo, shipping delays and lost workhours due to illness, I would imagine that it’s significant.

Thank you, Garet, for coming by and giving us the straight feed.

Garet Waldon: Anytime.

We’ll take a quick break for some words from our sponsors. When we come back it’s time for Breakdown, where we look at the systems you and your business should be eyeing next.

More Kaizen after the jump.