Word: pigged
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...Still, a little more than a week after the WHO first swung into high alert, it's easy to wonder whether H1N1 might turn out to be much ado about not that much. Certainly the actions of some countries - like Egypt's impulsive move to cull some 300,000 pigs and China's apparent decision to preemptively quarantine hundreds of Mexican nationals - smack of panic. In the U.S., too, hundreds of schools have temporarily closed down because of suspected or confirmed swine flu cases, with Fort Worth, Texas, making the decision to shut down all city schools until...
...much closer than we were a week ago" to determining the geographical, animal and human origins of the swine-flu outbreak - which may not even be in Mexico. (Until late last week, most media reports speculated that Hernandez's village in Veracruz, La Gloria de Perote, where large pig farms are located, was ground zero, but many Mexican and international health officials now say it could be in California or even Asia.) But it could take weeks if not months for a final answer...
...Another concern about panic is declining sales in industries associated with the outbreak. For instance, U.S. hog markets have been hurt recently as consumers scared about the flu are avoiding pig products. This behavior is irrational: Unlike mad cow disease, which involves prions that can stick around after death, viruses need their host to be alive and cannot survive cooking, so there’s no danger in eating cooked meat of a pig that was sick before it died. The Feds have tried to explain this to Americans and have even started calling the virus “H1N1?...
...biggest question is, 'How severe will a pandemic be?'" Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, said in Switzerland. So politicians have to make like they're doing something. Gabon and Ghana have banned the import of pork, even though the flu virus cannot be contracted through eating dead pig. Kenya, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe say they are checking arriving passengers at borders and airports and have response plans of varying sophistication should an outbreak occur. In some places, they've gone much further: Authorities in Egypt, which was affected by bird flu last year, have begun slaughtering...
Birds are the natural reservoirs of the common flu strains that strike in winter - and those strains reassort themselves to hit humans particularly hard. But while humans are not susceptible to every strain of avian flu, pigs definitely are. When bird flu viruses replicate in pigs, they pick up the viral machinery that gives more selective flu strains the power to spread to other mammals, like us. That's what makes pigs such potent mixing bowls for flu. The roundabout bird-pig-human route may be less common than the straight bird-human jump, but it may be more problematic...