The Pig Flu Problem

Egypt has killed some 300,000 pigs, the first death has occurred in the united state, the pandemic warning is now set to five and everyone is in a bit of a state. Ah, is it that time again? Yup, it’s animal influenza season! What brand flu vaccine are you hoping to get from old St Needle this year?

It would have to be the greatest irony if we all got killed by a pig’s disease. How long have we been eating them? Well now it’s their time for revenge! Ah, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Still, this is some serious shit, right? People are dying, pigs are dying, there’s definitely no cure and the virus shows some strong resistance to our common vaccines. The whole world is getting infected by a virus that carries across the air. Hell it’s gone as far as New Zealand and no one knows exactly what to do. Well actually that’s not true. There are some clever people out there who have got their priorities straight and they’re working on the problem. They think they’ve even come up with an answer and pretty soon we can have the issue addressed and move on to something important. Maybe an effective vaccine?

You’re confused. What problem were we trying to solve? Don’t worry, I’ll explain everything.

It’s too early to give exact details but here’s essentially what we have agreed upon: In Mexico a group of viruses (Avian influenza, human influenza and two types of swine influenza) got together for a kind of virus orgy. Now you’ll notice right away that there were two types of piggy flu there to begin with. Right! Our pork has been getting the flu for as long as we have. It doesn’t often happen that we get it although a very small amount of pig farmers have got it in the past. Usually it got purged from there body and everyone was okay. Proper cooking of pork products also killed the virus in the pig you ate so it was all groovy. Except in the fifties when this kind of thing happened but that’s not important.

Right, so we’ve got these four virus getting together and deciding to mess with everyone’s heads for a while. They did some virus procreating and we got a whole new strand that went from pig to human and then did what no one thought possible of swine influenza and went from human to human. Wow! Clever little virus, isn’t it?

Well it did as viruses often do and made someone sick then started to jump around. However our new born virus had a lot of energy and started jumping around the whole planet. Suddenly a lot of people in the Americas are getting sick. Then some low class, malnourished young people in Mexico started to die. Our new virus was kind of sadistic.

Now the media comes in and do what they do best and make a scene, blow everything out of proportion and tell us that there’s a new plague spreading all over the world. And here’s where the big important people step in and start to solve The Big Problem(tm).

What do we call our new virus? We started off with Swine Flu. Catchy, easy to remember, easier to say and it did, after all, come from pigs. But our Lords of Bacon (read: Pig Farmers) didn’t like what it would to to their business. So we started calling it New Flu and this was our solution to The Big Problem(tm). However that was too uninteresting and not at all informative so someone suggested Mexican Flu. Would this be the solution to The Big Problem(tm)? Nope. Mexican Flu is, of course, very politically incorrect. So we’ve already scratched our three ideas and it’s almost like the whole world will die of the News Media’s latest buzz before we’ve solved The Big Problem(tm).

Well some smarty-pants has since come along and decided on something dull, scientific sounding and difficult to remember and even harder to use in conversation. What is the solution to our The Big Problem(tm)? Well it’s called H1N1 flu now. Everyone, you may now rest your heads in peace at night because we’ve decided on what to call it.

Perhaps now, just maybe, we can move onto something else. I know it’s not important but maybe an effective vaccine? Or maybe we can solve the puzzle of why so many people respond to Ham Virus like it was a standard influenza but others die? It if is their lifestyle conditions then let’s help make them better. How about the young people who should be healthy but their immune system fails? We don’t really know a lot about our little homicidal baby virus but does anyone else agree with me that deciding what to name it isn’t quite as important?