Interesting stuff though, as usual. Keep up the largely good work, Maggie!

First, Napolitano has a history of “taking control” when confronted with a very public situation. As AZ governor in 2004, she prevented SWAT team members from storming a prison hostage situation for 15 days ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110108,00.html ). In 2003, she ordered fuel trucks to carry gas from Tucson to Phoenix to work around a pipeline break — too bad there were no trucks left to deliver gas to the stations! ( http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2008/06/18/20080618biz-pipeline0619side-ON.html ).

Lately, Baxter accidently dropped some bird flu into swedish vaccines ( http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/02/27/8560781.html ).

The WH to Big Pharma connection has happened before: http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/rumsfeld.htm.

Finally, compare these few tragic deaths with historical numbers: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5715a4.htm. Figure 4 at the bottom, indicates 6-8% (or more) of ALL deaths 2003-2008 are due to influenza and pneumonia.

Thank you for all of the detailed information
explained in a scientific manner. I admit I
will refer to it often, and read it more than
once.

All recent references to stop the person-to-person
spread of the virus have been from the potential
carrier/holder of the flu virus.

Please tell me about the conduct of the potential reciepient/victim of the flu virus while in public. Can the flu virus survive outside the
human body for any length of time? Can it survive on money (coins/bills)? On a door handle? On hot or cold food handled (sneezed on)
by a carrier/holder? Can the virus survive indoors suspended in the air from a cough or a sneeze?

Thank you again for your work.

If there is a dietary alternative that, if adopted generally, would lessens the risk of a global pandemic then that is a reason to adopt and promote that alternative. In short, we here have another reason to become vegan today.

Pigs eat anything, including thier own fecies. Dead bird matter = more food.

Factory farm pigs get infections (not so isolated(many hosts toghether)) so they are preventitively treated with antibotics(potential resistance/no competition).

virus are apparently able to combine

bird virus (B) + pig(P) virus = differnet virus BP.

People may decontaminate coming in do they decon thier lungs coming out?

BP + human virus = different virus BPH

The virus doesn’t contain pig genes, but the genes of swine-adapted flu virus. I have no idea what the does for clean or unclean, though.

****

13Strong,

My sympathy very much is with those families. I definitely do not mean this post to suggest otherwise. I also sympathize with the fear a lot of people in the U.S. feeling about this. I just happen to find that knowledge and humor are the best medicine for fear.

True, a deadly virus could emerge from a small farm, but I’m going to hazard a guess that our fifty year experiment with things like concentrated animal feed operations could have some unintended and unforeseen consequences such as giving novel viruses a giant petri dish in which to mutate. Of course, this is wild speculation on my part, I’m happy to admit.

Incidentally the “H” and the “N” in H1N1 are enzymes not genes–hemagglutinin and neuraminidase.

some yearly death statistics from some of the biggest killers in the US:

Heart disease: 652,091
Cancer: 559,312

Just these two diseases add up to 1.2 million deaths in the us alone.

Even if this becomes a huge pandemic (which is stil uncertain) going on past pandemic statistics this will only ever kill 2-7.4 million people (according to WHO) and that is globally.

Add up all the people who die from cancer, heart disease and AIDS globally and this puts swine flu in perspective, yes swine flu is more scary because it seems to be able to affect anyone but people really dont need to be freaking out to this extent.

Throughout history flu has always killed and always will. The media does not help with all this scaremongering – although I realise they are just trying to sell newspapers

http://www.slate.com/id/2217019/

It seems that creating animals with weaker immune systems to farm them in factories would create a scenario much more amenable to a super-virus. Just a small mistake and the you’ve got a major issue when it comes to that type of swine-farming. This American Life did a great piece on factory pig farming on their TV show. Clip here.

http://faculty.washington.edu/kerrb/biol481/reading481/Boots_et_al2007.pdf

I think it’s kind of funny in a sad way that I haven’t read a single article to date about perspectives from actual biologist who studies evolutionary ecology. Carl Bergstrom at UW Seattle studies how epidemics occur using mathematical models.

The “Experimental Evolutionary Ecology” class at UW Seattle is a really good class.

http://faculty.washington.edu/kerrb/biol481/

But I’m trying not to jump to conclusions.

Other than the observation that if this *is* a serious outbreak, it’s coming at a time when the international “immune system” may have more trouble responding.

(Yeah, I’ve got a cough and sniffles today. Spring allergies. Not quite bad enough that I’m willing to medicate, and if that’s the price for enjoying Spring I’ll gladly pay it.)

It’s logically irresponsible to take the known problems of small farm practice (keeping birds and pigs together) and transpose them onto the practices of factory farms (impaired immune systems of genetically modified pigs) where it would create a problem. There’s a lot of ‘what if?’ happening there.