In 2007 when there was a lot of panic over avian flu, millions of birds were killed in Asian because there was a worry that the family farming tendency to live with your chickens could spread disease to humans. Breathing in the respiratory secretions of an infected bird or pig can infect you.

Yes, contaminated water could be part of the disease path, but small farming comes with its own set of risks.

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In college I took a course about the psychology of inhumanity and the holocaust, and we learned that in times of difficult change (i.e. serious economic downturns) populations have a hard time adjusting and end up scapegoating--and killing--a minority population. There's so much hatred here in the US toward Mexicans and Latinos in general, I've wondered for a long time what would happen if things in this country got really bad, and with the economy, and now this "Mexican flu" on top of it...it may become very dangerous to be a Mexican or Hispanic in this country.

We need to not let that happen.

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Maybe following news outlets was not a smart idea.

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(Also, it is totally divine punishment for allowing that abortion-monger Obama to speak at our commencement. I'm taking bets as to how long it will be before the right-wing crazies in and around Notre Dame say this in public.)

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(I'm not a doctor or a health professional, but I like clear information for laypeople, and the blogger, Jim MacDonald, is pretty good at this.)

From the article:

"Now, your influenza virus is a simple one. It doesn't even have DNA in it. It has strands of RNA in its center. RNA mutates pretty fast. But here's the really tricky part about the flu: it has a sneaky way of getting past the immune system, even if you've had the flu before. The shell or capsule that surrounds that RNA is made of two proteins, hemagglutinin and neuramidinase. Hemagglutinin and neuramidinase can move like the tiles in a sliding-block puzzle, presenting different protein shapes to your antibodies. Hemagglutinin and neuramidinase are the H and N that you see when people talk about Influenza H5N1 or H1N1 or H3N2 or what-may-have-you. There are fifteen known types of hemagglutinin and nine known types of neuramidinase, and they have subtypes below that. Those two substances keep moving around, so that antibodies don't recognize them. This is called 'antigen drift.'"

Like I said, I'm not in the health care industry at all, but I find this stuff interesting and I like pointing it out to other folks who might find it interesting (that and I sort of secretly love Jim Macdonald.)

Here's more information from the CDC website:

Is the H1N1 swine flu virus the same as human H1N1 viruses?

No. The H1N1 swine flu viruses are antigenically very different from human H1N1 viruses and, therefore, vaccines for human seasonal flu would not provide protection from H1N1 swine flu viruses.

So no, it's unlikely that you would have some sort of immunity to this new brand of H1N1 just because you've had some other brand of flu before. It takes time for your body to cook up the right type of antibodies to kill off a novel strain. The flu virus itself isn't even really a living thing--it's some dumb RNA strands that need a host to even replicate!--but even something that's dumb as a box of hair can mutate rapidly and cause bad shit.

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Just doing my part to place the blame on everyone.

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*And yes, I am omitting the cases outside of the US for the purpose of this argument, because I am already hearing people screaming about how the death toll has hit our shores and we will all follow suit.

In Mexico, the residents exposed are exposed primarily because of the extraordinarily unsanitary measures put forth by the COMPANIES that raise pigs. Pig farming is already atrocious and dangerous to begin with, both for the animals and their keepers. Couple this close proximity with an area that doesn't have the widest access to healthcare, and major cases are what happens. It's not because pope are dirty, or inferior, and I swear to God I'm telling off any human being to tries to ascertain otherwise.

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That would be companies like Smithfield, whose toxins have been killing people in NC for quite a while.

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