You can rest easy.
The CDC is on top of any possible swine flu epidemic, according to NPR.
They are encouraging sick people not to go to work and issuing bulletins.
The Obama administration is handling the situation calmly, albeit with a dash of security theater.
Liberal bloggers are surmising that universal healthcare would somehow make a difference.
In other words, everything is proceeding normally.
Yet when looking at the CDC’s health advisory and FAQ regarding the swine flu, it’s painfully obvious that the obvious just isn’t being stated: that the whole thing has come about due to humans eating pigs for food. Waaaay at the bottom of the CDC’s FAQ, the very last question reads:
Can I get swine influenza from eating or preparing pork?
No. Swine influenza viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork products is safe.
This is like saying, “Your car crash was caused by a drunk driver, not alcohol.” It’s skirting the issue. The pigs wouldn’t have gotten flu or even existed if people weren’t eating them for food in the first place.
How did humans get flu from pigs? Most likely it was through the air, but the CDC can’t know that with 100% certainty at this point, when we don’t even know all the parameters of what we’re facing. Would you really eat pork from the original farm in Mexico where the four-year-old started this whole thing? Would the head of the CDC or the head of the USDA eat that pork? Maybe there’s no risk at all, but why keep eating porkchops in the meantime?
Indeed, another agency, the USDA, has rushed to say, as summed up by the Associated Press, “Fear of swine flu is a good reason to wash your hands, but not to take pork off the menu.” Raising pigs as food can kill the farmers and you, but no, for heaven’s sake, don’t stop eating it. Don’t hurt our pig farming lobbies!
Alex Avery at The Corner writes, “True to liberal form, NPR News just reported that ’some’ are pointing the finger at Mexican ‘factory pig farming’ as a likely culprit. You’d never know that during the past half-decade the World Health Organization has been doing its utmost to get third-world farmers to abandon traditional mixed-livestock farming and to adopt modern confinement systems where animals are seperated by species and kept from interacting with wild animals. Too politically incorrect.”
Avery provides no evidence against the assertion that the first case of swine flu originated near a Smithfield mass pork production facility. He implies that the WHO’s preferred methods of containment would prevent infectious diseases such as the swine flu by keeping different species apart, but that’s hogwash. Avery, just how- in your expert opinion- should Smithfield Foods keep flies away from its massive, million-pig manure lagoons?
Pigs raised as food by farmers, by definition, cannot be separated from those farmers. Even if they never interact with any other species, the pigs will be interacting with a very important species to you and me: humans. We now know that swine flu is what we can get as a result, along with manure lagoons and bacon.
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Ann
April 28th, 2009
So…….what…we all become vegetarians? If it’s not swine flu, the retreating glaciers will kill us. If not that, then old age will get us every time.
windyridge
April 28th, 2009
Maybe not, if some people have anything to say about it. Look up the Methuselah Mouse Prize.
libertariangirl
April 30th, 2009
[...] response to my earlier swine flu post, I was asked if my solution to the problem of livestock-bred influenza is for everyone to become [...]
Libertarian Girl » Blog Archive » A Solution to Swine Flu: In Vitro Meat
April 30th, 2009
I did ….yikes…. LOL
windyridge
May 1st, 2009
Well, I guess when life is lengthened and you don’t want to partake in it, you can always opt out
libertariangirl
May 2nd, 2009
[...] columnist Ben Macintyre agrees with my previous posts on swine flu and its origins [link]: “I once worked on a chicken farm. [...]
Libertarian Girl » Blog Archive » “Man Created Swine Flu”
May 2nd, 2009
the spread of AH1N1 or Swine Flu is really scary. It is a good thing that this virus is not very deadly. We are advised to take Vitamin-C and to wear face masks.
Detox Diet Recipes
July 10th, 2009
the use of face masks and boosting your immune system by taking lots of vitamin-C is still an effective way of preventing the spread of the Swine Flu virus.
~Melatonin Effects
July 14th, 2009
i always advice my kids to wear face masks when going into crowded areas. swine flu is really scary and i dont want my kids getting infected by it.
arthritisremedy
July 17th, 2009
I have a relative who got the Swine Flu in Mexico. It is a good thing that he already recovered from this disease.
| cystic acne treatment
July 24th, 2009
the H1N1 or Swine Flu Virus is very scary at first but now it is well controlled by vaccines and prevention by avoiding going into places with incidence of swine flu.
Acne Treatments Site
September 7th, 2009
Flu strains are common in both swine and in fowl. Generally, the strains of influenza that affect those animals don’t have the right receptors to be able to infect humans, but as a result of the close proximity of both pigs and fowl to humans and the virus’s inborn errors in copying its genome, it is occasionally able to recombine and transmit to humans. It is extremely unlikely that eating pigs was the origin of transmission to humans because (1) the virus is concentrated in respiratory tissues and found much less in other tissues (i.e. more appetizing tissues) and (2) the virus is killed by cooking, the stomach’s acidic environment, and other less than hospitable conditions generally found in the chain of events between the animal’s slaughter and the table. So your assertion that the swine flu should cause us to eat less pork is silly. Also, it is extremely unlikely that the swine flu originated where it was first discovered in Mexico. Based on DNA sequencing and our understanding of flu transmission (which is very very well understood), it looks like swine flu (more properly called 2009 novel H1N1 influenza A) originated in Asia, like virtually all other flu strains of clinical concern. It is the close proximity of swine, fowl, and humans all cohabitating in Asia which, like it or not, promotes transmission to humans.
But don’t believe me, read about it in the literature. Here’s a good start:
Morens et al. The Persistent Legacy of the 1918 Influenza Virus. 2009. New England Journal of Medicine.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/361/3/225
E-Kills
October 5th, 2009
| H1N1 or Swine Flu is a bit scary but it a good thing to note that this virus is not that very deadly
depressionboy
October 16th, 2009
For E-Kills-
The point is that in nature, we wouldn’t be in close proximity to so many pigs, or they to us. That only happens because, in this case, Mexican village farmers were raising so many pigs crowded in one place. Pigs naturally wouldn’t be so crowded together, either, which increases the risks of transmission and creation of new strains of diseases by a *lot*. The problem simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. Vegetables and fruits don’t acquire new strains of influenza.
The virus may not be deadly on the whole, but people have certainly died of it; a professor recently died near me, and he was in pretty good health otherwise. The sad thing is that the whole thing could have been prevented by a healthier and tastier lifestyle choice.
libertariangirl
October 28th, 2009