Word: swine
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...that Mexico City had been recalled to life wasn't a public religious ceremony or a political rally but a traffic jam. After a weeklong shutdown in response to the H1N1 flu outbreak, on May 5--Cinco de Mayo--Mexico City began to stir again. The spread of the swine flu had slowed, leading Mexican officials to hope that the worst had passed. "Our strategy is working," said Mexican President Felipe Calderón. "We are now in a position to gradually resume our everyday activities...
...missed H1N1 when it was still just swine flu because we weren't looking for it. There's only scattered surveillance for pig diseases in the U.S. and Canada; in Mexico, there's even less. According to the American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV), there were few reports of unusual sickness in the months leading up to the H1N1 outbreaks--not that vets would have necessarily noticed, since flu in swine is common and rarely serious. "We haven't seen anything that would have tipped us off," says Dr. Tom Burkgren, AASV's executive director...
...spend scarce medical resources swabbing the inside of pigs' nostrils, looking for viruses? Because new pathogens--including H5N1 bird flu, SARS, even HIV--incubated in animal populations before eventually crossing over to human beings. In the ecology of influenza, pigs are particularly key. They can be infected with avian, swine and human flu viruses, making them virological blenders. While it's still not clear exactly where the H1N1 virus originated or when it first infected humans, if we had half as clear a picture of the flu viruses circulating in pigs and other animals as we do of human...
...outbreaks have been a minor catastrophe for pork producers. Though international health officials were quick to assure the public that the disease initially known as swine flu could not be contracted by eating pork, consumption of pig products dropped rapidly in the wake of the virus's spread. "That is our biggest concern - the economic impact of people shying away from eating our product over fear," C. Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch on May 5. The National Pork Producers Council estimated that between April 24 and May 1 - the most frenzied days...
...originated or how long it may have been circulating in pigs or people (the first human outbreak is thought to have occurred in February). So far, no pigs have been found to be infected with the virus, other than at one farm in Canada on May 2, where the swine were actually infected by a human worker. And on May 14, Smithfield announced that Mexican authorities had completed tests of the company's pigs in Perote and found no evidence of the virus in the swine. (It's not clear what test Mexican authorities used; only blood tests for antibodies...