Swine flu

[serene]

I love Harper's Weekly. I think someotherguy will especially like the first sentence of this week's (he studies the popular misrepresentation of risk statistics):

Swine flu, renamed under pork-lobby pressure to "influenza
A (H1N1) virus, human," and referred to as "killer Mexican
flu" by anti-immigration activists, had infected 985
people, or 0.0000145 percent of the world's
population. Twenty countries reported infections; one
death from the flu was confirmed in the United States; and
25 people had died in Mexico, where a cute five-year-old
boy named Edgar Hernandez was presented to the media as
"patient zero." Mexico shut down for five days to contain
the illness, China began to quarantine Mexicans, and Vice
President Joe Biden appeared on television and counseled
U.S. citizens to avoid airplanes, subways, and classrooms,
which led to protests by the travel industry. "I think the
vice president misrepresented what the vice president
wanted to say," explained Press Secretary Robert
Gibbs. Egypt, which has no cases of the flu, ordered all
its pigs killed, especially slum pigs; police at Manshiyat
Nasr slum fired tear gas and rubber bullets at rioting
Coptic Christian pig farmers. Geneticists continued to
sequence the flu's genes. "Atgaaggcaa tactagtagt
tctgctatat," read the opening line of the segment-four
hemagglutinin gene. "Acatttgcaa ccgcaaatgc agacacatta."


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Comments

[boxofdelights]

Ha! Thanks.

[lumpyone.livejournal.com]

Great article, thanks! It's good to hear the number of people infected worldwide.

On the local news last night (KTVU out of Oakland) they reported that the typical number of people who have died from "typical" flu ever year is so much greater than this "version" and it never makes the news. I'm still looking for the exact number of Americans who die each year from the flu but it's eluding me.

[sogwife.livejournal.com]

I think we should call influenze A(H1N1) virus, human, the A Hiney Flu.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Hee! Perfect.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Ah, so I'm not the only one who had that thought.

re: Swine flu

[betonica.livejournal.com]

CDC says that 36,000 die each year in the US from complications of the flu. So far we've got 29 confirmed deaths in Mexico and 2 in the US from this strain.