Oink Oink

I must say this swine flu thing is hilarious, it also shows exactly how crazy the media can be. For starters my biggest beef (not pork), comes from the attributed US death. Several people over here in London have asked me "aren't you concerned now that an American has died", clearly everyone reads the headlines and not the small print at the veeery end of the article. The boy who died in America was flown from Mexico, he was Mexican as far as I understand it (someone claimed he had dual citizenship or something which is why I say as far as I understand it). The point is not a single death has happened in a fully developed country with a sound health care system. In fact I am willing to bet if we did a study on the socio-economic class that each death comes from we would find that most of them were poor, didn't eat well, and had limited access to health care. Some have responded that I am silly and it is perhaps instead the virus has mutated more in Mexico making it more deadly. This could be true expect for two counts against it: one the infections in Mexico have leveled, two there have been no reports of worse cases in the US where enough people have it to the point where I think it is safe to say if it was going to mutate it had the chance. One person says they are not scared right now but what about this fall when it becomes flu season and they are at a higher risk of getting it. By then it is believed that a vaccine will be available for this particular strain- o and the drug tammyflu is proving to work as well.

While I think all this hype is unnecessary there are two major benefits to this outbreak.
1) Maybe viruses in general will stop spreading. Suddenly there is a massive campaign telling people to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough (I thought this was just common sense). I have always washed my hands directly after using public transport simply because uncouth people sneeze on the handrail without regard to anyone else. Perhaps if people start taking these extra steps less germs will spread in general which would be very nice for those of us bound to the cesspool of germs that is the London tube system.

2) While no one is actually getting this "swine" flu from pigs once again the media confuses people and pig consumption is going down at least for the time being. Pigs are smart creatures, the perform as well on computer tasks as monkeys and can be trained just as easily as dogs. They are aware of what is happening- it is for these reasons I do not eat them. I mean if people think it is weird to eat a monkey or dog why do they make exception for the pig?

So if it saves the adorable pigs and makes people sneeze in a tissue and not on me then thank you swine flu for making this world a better place.