I am an environemental health scientist so I appreciate you science-based approach. Please continue to keep us updated on the origins of this flu even after the flashy headlines are gone. Maybe you could also write a piece about the 1998 outbreak in hog farms to educate and refresh the readers (especially the younger ones) which originated in North Carolina, the land of more pigs than people.

And in this dialogue, let us not forget about the largely poor, communities of color living adjacent to U.S. industrial hog farms who have been trying to warn us of the public health repercurssions of these operations for years (if not decades)

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK

Mexican Government
Lying About Swine Flu

by Fintan Dunne, BreakForNews.com, 29th April, 2009, 07:00 EST

Amid a growing international focus on a suspicious mass flu outbreak around intensive pig production facilities in Mexico, government officials there have resorted to lying about the type of flu which struck hundreds of locals.

At a press conference on Monday, Mexican Health Minister José Ángel Córdova assured the media that a flu outbreak in the town of La Gloria was not Swine Flu, but an already-known and different flu strain. The town is set among 72 industrial pig production facilities part-owned by the multinational Smithfield Foods,

He said that of 35 mucous samples taken from flu victims, only one sample matched the Swine Flu strain which is causing international concern. That sample was taken from Edgar Hernandez Hernandez, a 4-year-old local boy who fell ill and has now recovered.

Local Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera echoed his Health Minister's comments on Tuesday, stating that: "there is not a single indicator" to suggest La Gloria was the epicenter of Mexico's Swine Flu outbreak.

The government position is that barring this single boy, the rest of the samples indicate locals fell foul of the known flu strain H2N3, not the new variant A/H1N1 strain.

AGAINST THE ODDS

But there is a serious flaw in the Mexican government's public position. After hundreds of mucous samples had been collected from flu victims across Mexico, health officials took a small subset of those samples and in mid-April sent them out of Mexico to US laboratories for further scientific analysis. Of the 35 samples they had secured from the inhabitants of La Gloria, only one sample was included in that smaller subset sent to the US. That sample was the one taken from 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez Hernandez.

So the Mexican Government wants us to believe that by sheer chance they happened to pick the only A/H1N1 sample in La Gloria, and that the other 34 samples still in the custody of Mexican health authorities are the known H2N3 strain!

A trivial calculation show that the odds of that serendipitous sample selection are 35 to 1.

Those odds against the Mexican government increase when we consider that residents of La Gloria say that they had symptoms which were identical to those reported by Swine Flu victims across Mexico.

READ ON: http://breakfornews.com/Mexican-Government-Lying-About-Swine-Flu.htm

The data showing that the swine cassette is coupled with avian and human genes shows this flu does have the potential to be truly devastating.  The country-wide mass movement of pigs from birthplaces to rearing houses to slaughter does pose a major vector for breeding viri and spreading potential infectious diseases.

It is also interesting how many of the few 500 hog enterprises can be pulled out of obscurity to illustrate the terrible negative impact on hog farmers. I didn't know there were any hog farms of that size left in Iowa. No one seems to be worried about the negative impact of rock bottom pork prices on those same poor farmers. I would place bets that the competition from Smithfield and cheap pork has put more of them out of business than any flu pandemic.