Those bacon posts don't seem so funny now, do they
April 27, 2009 8:35 AM   Subscribe

The paradox of this swine flu panic is that, while totally unexpected, it was accurately predicted. Six years ago, Science dedicated a major story to evidence that "after years of stability, the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fasttrack". ... Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a report on "industrial farm animal production" that underscored the acute danger that "the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission." ... Any amelioration of this new pathogen ecology would have to confront the monstrous power of livestock conglomerates such as Smithfield Farms (pork and beef) and Tyson (chickens). The commission reported systemic obstruction of their investigation by corporations, including blatant threats to withhold funding from cooperative researchers .
posted by Joe Beese (8 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: oh god swine flu post outbreak -- cortex



 


Ah, nuts... I see that the Grist article was linked in a discussion on Saturday.

Well, if this gets deleted, we'll have another casualty of the outbreak.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:45 AM on April 27, 2009


Pandemic preparedness is like volcano monitoring: completely anathema to the GOP
posted by DU at 8:46 AM on April 27, 2009


Pandemic preparedness is like volcano monitoring: completely anathema to the GOP

Actually, killing the pandemic preparedness funding was an act of idiocy that Congress could have only achieved through bipartisanship. Schumer called it a "bunch of porky stuff" and was glad to excise it from the House bill.
posted by billysumday at 8:51 AM on April 27, 2009


Swine flu map.
posted by milquetoast at 8:51 AM on April 27, 2009


Isn't that how grade schools work?

I'm having a hard time getting worked up over this years flu panic. It's the end of April for Pete's sake, flu panics are more of a winter thing for me. This time of year I prefer to worry about West Nile Virus. CNN is dropping the ball.
posted by fshgrl at 8:52 AM on April 27, 2009


Silly site, localhuman. It ignores the fact that the swine flu is a virulent and deadly strain of the disease, and it displays ignorance about the exponential growth which characterizes disease propagation. There could be ten thousand sufferers today and a million sufferers in a month.
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:56 AM on April 27, 2009


Jezebel remembers the swine flu panic of 1976. Snark ensues.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:57 AM on April 27, 2009


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