Thursday, April 30, 2009

Just wondering

Well, here's the latest article on the 'Swine Flu' pandemic:

WHO to stop using term 'swine flu' to protect pigs


GENEVA – The World Health Organization announced Thursday it will would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. The policy shift came a day after Egypt began slaughtering thousands of pigs in a misguided effort to prevent swine flu.

WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said the agriculture industry and the U.N. food agency had expressed concerns that the term "swine flu" was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to ban pork products and order the slaughter of pigs.

"Rather than calling this swine flu ... we're going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A," Thompson said.

Egypt began slaughtering its roughly 300,000 pigs Wednesday even though experts said swine flu is not linked to pigs and not spread by eating pork. Angry farmers protested the government degree.

article continued here if the link still works.

A handful of wonderments:

1. Egypt is a heavily Muslim country. As in, dietary regulations and everything. They don't do pig! What are they doing with 300,000 pigs anyway? Or is this just an excuse to dispose of those infidel porkers?

2. I'd advise people named "H1N1" to avoid Egypt for the time being.

3. Shouldn't government decisions be a little more rational than slaughtering the apparent namesake of an illness? What would do about Legionnaire's Disease? What about whooping cough? Kill the whooping cranes?

4. I'm thinking they're really dropping 'swine flu' because one too many Americans have decided to associate it with 'pork politics' and have made jokes about it. H1N1 influenza sounds a lot scarier anyway!

5. I'm still trying to find a way to link this University of Arkansas athletics, but haven't found it. Oh well...woo pig sooie!!



Doug

2 comments:

To deal with SPAM comments, all comments are moderated. I'm typically willing to post contrary views...but I also only check the list once a day, so if you posted within the last 24 hours, I may not be to it yet.

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