SwineFluential

I saw this picture of a guy who looked sort of like a peacock and thought it was funny so now I am sharing it with all those who haven't caught the swine flu yet - 99.999999999999% of the world's population. They are the ones who might find this amusing. Of course, the drug companies absolutely adore the new flu - it means millions of extra dollars in their accounts by next Fall. Does anyone remember Bernie Madoff? Or Governor Spitzer? Or the Russian war against Georgia? This swine flu thing is a blessing for anyone caught up in a scandal. Too bad that by next month it will be a thing of the past. We must wait until next Fall for the next installment. Please.

Pig

From a Yahoo! News story: “WASHINGTON – No matter what you call it, leading experts say the virus that is scaring the world is pretty much all pig. So while the U.S. government and now the World Health Organization are taking the swine out of "swine flu," the experts who track the genetic heritage of the virus say this: If it is genetically mostly porcine and its parents are pig viruses, it smells like swine flu to them. Six of the eight genetic segments of this virus strain are purely swine flu and the other two segments are bird and human, but have lived in swine for the past decade, says Dr. Raul Rabadan, a professor of computational biology at Columbia University. A preliminary analysis shows that the closest genetic parents are swine flu strains from North America and Eurasia, Rabadan wrote in a scientific posting in a European surveillance network. "Scientifically this is a swine virus," said top virologist Dr. Richard Webby, a researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Webby is director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds. He documented the spread a decade ago of one of the parent viruses of this strain in scientific papers.” I must say that the pig lobby must be pretty powerful if they can get the curly tail to wag the pig. The man at left does not care either way. As for me, I'll call it swine flu as much as I want - it's still a free speech country, no?