Swine Flu

Thursday, May 07, 2009

From my correspondent in Prince Rupert British Columbia: “Check this one out.  It seems that the cause of the swine flu is not being talked about on the news.  Oops!  American agribusiness.  Can't slam that one.”.

“”Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to giant factory pig farms that are dirty, dangerous, and inhumane. Sign the petition to the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization to investigate and regulate these threats to our health.””

Thanks, but No Thanks.

This screed (or diatribe) is identical to thousands that now circulate the Internet.

Swine Flu (or "Mexican Flu" or "Yilgarn Flu " or "Prince Rupert Flu") is NOT caused by swine, Mexicans, or people who sit on the curb watching Indian dancers in bright red and black costumes with feathers each May.

"Flu" is an abbreviation of "Influenza Virus"; it is a virus, and thank you very much, viruses are alive and well and doing what they've done well for many millions of years - reproducing and mutating faster than the organisms (pigs, chickens, humans, mosquitoes and giant pandas) on which they prey.

That is pretty well the definition of a virus - a small living creature with DNA and a high rates of reproduction and mutation.

We humans would be a virus if we didn't take 16 years to reach healthy reproductive status, and if successful mutations came along more than once every 200,000 years.

Idiots are so eager to slam an innocent business (innocent, that is, of the illogical charges) that as soon as each (press-instigated) "pandemic" breaks out, the idiots use it to tag whatever is bugging them.

"Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to the people in 501, who are anonymously noisy, and have a small child. Sign the petition and get the landlord to stop them moving furniture at 10:34 at night time when I am trying to sleep."

"Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to the people in 301, who are anonymously complaining that I was talking noisily on the office telephone at 1:00 a.m. and then that I was using a circular saw in my office the other day. (Not true: I was using it outside on the balcony).

THERE WERE NO GIANT FACTORY PIG FARMS A THOUSAND YEARS AGO and my money is on a bet that 'flu was around then. Not THIS YEAR'S flu, but flu. It has since then mutated past layman's recognition (another bet!).

THERE WERE NO HYUNDAI ASSEMBLY LINES NORTH OF TORONTO 11,000 years ago (there was a 2-mile thick sheet of ice), but we still had carbon dioxide in pretty well the same amount, in the atmosphere. 387/1,000,000 as at March 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide).

That's 0.000387 or 0.0387%.

It is STILL classed as a trace element.

And tomorrow there will be another petition telling us that unless we all get together on this one, we'll lose the dinosaurs, the ginger cats, or the dodo, or Taswegian natives.

Or something.

Come on everybody! Rally downtown!!

Reminds me of 1968, but wastes more energy.

Finally, I am not suggesting that swine flu has NOT been found on a giant pig farm at El Trompillo; I dare to say that it has. But it got there from somewhere else, perhaps a giant chicken farm in Portachuelo, or perhaps a giant ginger cat in the Mato Grosso, or from the back of the plastic slide rule I purchased in Singapore in 1982.

Truth is, if the first knowledge of this today's strain of flu is found on a passenger recently arrived from Mexico, then it is labeled "Mexican flu", and everyone scrabbles through the pile of paper on their desk looking for any giant business in Mexico.

By the time the virus had become common enough to be recognized off a flight from Mexico, it was well-established there. Of course, the first touch of it in Mexico was sparked from a flight that landed in Cancun on a flight from Germany. That German got it by handling baggage at Frankfurt from a railway train that arrived from Istanbul, and THEY got it from ..... and so on back for millions of years, mutating almost as quickly as it reproduced.

I know, I know - they didn't HAVE railway trains in Istanbul millions of years ago ...

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