Swine flu redux
Lost in the still unreconstructed Needlenose ‘middle years’ archive is a rant of mine about the ridiculous wrong-wing fear mongering about 3rd world terrorists using bioweapons and germ warfare – I consider it very unlikely because any such weapon would require high-technology and be very expensive to produce, and would have a disasterous ‘blow back’ on whatever hell-hole the terrorist and his family hailed from.
What we should be worried is the all-natural, all-organic kind of germ warfare – from Mother Nature! Case in point – the recent outbreak of a ‘killer’ swine flu in Mexico. Obama and the Euroweenie leaders need to return to the Status Quo Ante where developed nations lead (and finance) the charge to aggressively combat infectious diseases in the developing world because viruses don’t respect national boundaries – and we are getting dangerously close to “The Big One” of killer pandemics. This is the real and present danger presented by disease.
*Update* Speaking of stoopid wrong wingers, guess who stripped out dollars allocated for pandemic preparadness from the stimulus package? Yep, the same assholes who criticized money allocated for volcano monitoring on the eve of a major eruption near a populated area. Dumbasses.
*Update* See it spread on Google Earth
Tags: biological warfare, germ warfare, pandemic, swine flu
April 26th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
You may find this interesting. Any thoughts?
April 27th, 2009 at 8:02 am
CMike,
Giant commercial pig farms just tend to concentrate what has already been the case for centuries – the link between people, birds and pigs in the spread of influenza. Wild, migrating birds spread the latest virus over major areas. Some of the viruses leap over into a population of livestock, like pigs. Then some of the viruses leap over to a population of farmers, who then spread it around to the rest of us.
Check out the genetic lineage of the current flu.
April 27th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I guess my question would be, does the concentration of livestock overwhelm an environment making a petri dish of a factory farm thereby giving viruses unique opportunities to thrive these days or do viruses have their own agenda and, from time to time, will they find a way to flourish in human populations?
Any thoughts as to whether, when the tails of some comets intersected earth’s path, they left behind the biological materials that are the source of [some] viruses and, therefore, are the origins of [some] viruses independent of mainstream evolution?
April 27th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
CMike,
To the first question, concentrating all the pigs would potentially breed more virulent pig diseases. The crossover events stem more contact between humans and pigs. I’d think traditional farming would be more likely to encourage a viral cross-over. The big crime of the factory farms is the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, breeding antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria – a serious problem in it’s own right.
As far as comets spreading viral materials – I seriously doubt it.