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Aporkalypse Now—Finding the Real Swine in the Pandemic Pandemonium
For the last eight years, there has been no shortage of things to worry about-- Bin Laden, Al Queda, Saddam Hussein, Anthrax, Bird Flu, Katrina, sub-prime mortgages, health care costs, gas pump prices, unemployment, stock price plunges and now we have H1N1, the non-Kosher virus formerly known as Swine Flu.
The news media is pigging out (sorry, I'll try to contain myself) with 24/7 coverage of the potential pandemic and breathless reports that this is the new Black Death and millions could die. According to MSNBC, "H1N1 swine flu is seen as the biggest risk since H5N1 avian flu re-emerged in 2003, killing 257 people of 421 infected in 15 countries. In 1968 a "Hong Kong" flu pandemic killed about 1 million people globally, and a 1957 pandemic killed about 2 million. Seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people in a normal year, including healthy children in rich countries." However, as I write this, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that, only 12 people have died so far of this outbreak of H1N1.
To put all of this in further perspective, it is useful to compare these numbers to the annual number of deaths from other causes. According to WHO:
1 million people die from malaria each year
2 million from AIDS
2 million from air pollution
7.4 million from cancer
17.5 million from cardiovascular disease
1.6 million from tuberculosis
In other words, we KNOW that 31.5 million people will die each year from causes that in large part could be prevented, but 7 deaths a pandemic makes? Have we, as Simon Jenkins suggests in The Guardian all gone demented? Perhaps. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that WHO knows what it is talking about and that a lot of people could get sick from this virus. The question then becomes whether it is the virus we should fear or our ability to react to it.
Like any other disease, the first question should always be what is causing it and how can we prevent it, not the pharmaceutical industry driven approach of how we can (profitably) treat it with drugs such as Tamiflu, which as I noted during the bird flu scare, is made by a company in which former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield has a significant financial stake.
Another critical point is that unlike birds that can fly pretty much anywhere, human and pig interaction is for the most part limited to farms, especially factory farms, and circumstantial evidence indicates that this outbreak may have originated at a Smithfield Foods facility in Perote, Mexico. Grist reports that, "Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Veracruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year." According to Grist, 30% of the population living near the plant have become ill with flu-like symptoms which they believe is due contamination from the hog factory.
But as Narco News points out, the real culprit in swine flu may be NAFTA, which went into effect the same year that Smithfield opened its Mexican facility in the aftermath of being hit with huge fines for environmental pollution in the U.S.: "The so-called 'swine flu' exploded because an environmental disaster simply moved to Mexico where environmental and worker safety laws, if they exist, are not enforced against powerful multinational corporations."
The issue of whether agri-business run factory farms are the source of the problem has been all but ignored by the U.S. media. Instead we are being told to stay home if sick and seek medical care if really sick. Nice advice presuming you have paid sick leave benefits and health insurance. And even for those able to seek medical care, there are real questions about the adequacy of whether our problem-plagued healthcare infrastructure to handle a massive additional medical incident. As John Nichols points out, we need to reinstate funding for pandemic response; disaster preparedness and infrastructure maintenance aren't luxuries, they are a necessity, something we surely should have learned from Hurricane Katrina.
So while we need to take this threat seriously, we need to do so in the context of the many existing health pandemics that already exist, we need to take steps to insure that our healthcare system itself is healthy and we need to address the root causes of what allowed the conditions in which the H1N1 virus manifested and take the necessary steps to correct policies that endanger public health.
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28 Comments so far
Show All[The issue of whether agri-business run factory farms are the source of the problem has been all but ignored by the U.S. media]
No doubt. The days when one large corporation would criticise another corporation are long gone. Even the auto companies don't slag each other like they used to. Of course, if the world actually did have a 1918 style flu pandemic there'd be about a billion dead. That would really cut into the bottom line of corporate profits, and that's why there's such a fuss in the media about flu.
Saturnalia wrote:
"Of course, if the world actually did have a 1918 style flu pandemic there'd be about a billion dead."
____________________________________________________________________________________
On what basis do you predict that a panddamic swine flu will cause about a billion
dead. The pandamic of 1918 killed about 50 millio. I don't know what was
the number of people in the world at that time. Do you know that figure and used
it as a basis for your calculations.
A larger population. (in 1918 the world's population was less than a billion, or just over that number)
One that has not had a major pandemic since the 60s. (All of the bugs that are killing millions of people a year are not that communicable; it's hard to get HIV, smallpox has been eradicated except for those samples in biowarfare labs, diptheria, TB and the other bacteriological illnesses have effective cures [although there are signs that the strains are developing a resistance to our antibiotics]) Moreover our 'modern' hyperclean homes don't give our immune systems any sort of workout. We don't have to fight off minor infections, because mom slathers on the antibiotic creams. We don't worry that much about viruses because the cleaning people spray can after can of lysol. We clean the home to such a degree that should some bug find a way to overcome those chemical products, we're fucked.
I'd also bet that the next sort of pandemic won't actually be a flu, it'll be something else for which none of us have an immunity of any sort. MOstly tho, I'm a bit of a cynic, if you plan for the worst (and the worst sort of epidemic would kill 1/6th of us) then you're going to be in a better position when the worst doesn't come.
There is a scientist from Texas who in a Public forum advocated the spraying of the Ebloa Virus worldwide so as to elimante 90 percent of the worlds population.
He pointed out that of those contracting Ebloa, 90 percent died.
Dr Pianka suggested most other viruses too slow and not efficient enough. He was applauded by his feloow Scientists when he gace this speech at some University in Texas.
It my belief that were there some Global Pandemic where millions and more killed, it will be set off by this type of thinking where someone rationalizes that it for the greater good.
You sure he wasn't having one of those fits, you know, the ones where the guy tries to pull that 'modest proposal' idea out of his/her arse and just can't carry the joke?
I assume that he didn't think any of his friends/family would be affected by losing 90% of the world's population... I doubt he'd think about how 10% of the people were going to deal with the health hazzard of 6 billion bodies rotting in the sun...
The only type of person who could think that intentionally setting off such a virus would be a conservative. Someone with the mental agility of a GW bush.
The amount of mercury(Thimersol, also linked to Rumsfeld) in one flu vaccine equals all the mercury that used to be found in the culumative of all pediatric vaccine series.
Rumsfeld et al must need money pretty badly to have a new pandemic with which to make money.
The "funny" bit is: Tamiflu is ineffective against H1N1.
and how is the "feminist peace network' going to help on this? Lobbying your friendly democrats (all corporate whores)?
sending emails to get more fed inspectors on line?
...and meanwhile supporting, by not fighting, the economics of capitalism? that somehow piecemeal reforms can stop the destruction, and stop the absolute deprivation of women all over the world outside the G8?
"feminists' indeed. NOW. indeed.
emma goldman would whack you with her cane.
This is not just factory farms, or western women with pay disparities. This is a worldwide economic system that relies on the death of millions of women a year. for profit. in so many ways.
check up on Iraqi women in jordan and iraqi itself lately?
....ohhh the 'flu'....boy better stop those factory farms. That will make things so much better.
Try overthrowing your own gov't and stopping its military. That would be a much more noble 'feminist' cause.
help a lot men and children along the way too.....these american one issue rants are so tired.
americans, myself included, are the real problem.
cuz we don't have the guts to stop our own military, and subsidized corporations, that are causing thousands of women in mexico, india etc to die.....and bombing weekly WOMEN in afghanistan and Iraq.
Well. I hate to say it, but the most toxic, disease infested, mega-factory pig farm in the world is Washington D.C.
If we could clean it up, we might have a chance.
A farm worker, who recently returned from Mexico, has infected a herd of pigs in Alberta, Canada. Both the worker and the pigs are said to be recovering.
The origins of the name "Wall StreeT" ar4e said to of come from a stone wall built to keep the hogs out of the fields that were once where wall street stands today.
It my belief they got it wrong and it was built to keep the Hogs inside that wall.
Tommy, While making no apologies for having been born a white American woman, have you actually you actually read the Feminist Peace Network blog or any of my other work, because if you had you would know that I address those topics and make those connections on a regular basis, it just isn't the focus of this particular piece. It is important to look at the overall picture but that doesn't preclude examining and addressing specific parts of the whole. And what specifically are you doing to stop these problems, or do feminists have to do all the work? Actually I suspect Emma and I would have been good friends.
British ecologist James Lovelock, he of the "Gaia Hypothesis", periodically emits a howl about the dire straits we're in as a species. He believes that at least 3 billion people will die as a result of our environmental crisis.
That number would approximate the death toll as a percentage of the total population from the Black Plague in the 14th Century.
The current flu outbreak might have originated with the Smithfield factory Farm in Mexico, which F. William Engdahl proposed in an article at Globalresearch.ca, and Ms. Marshall is now parroting (without attribution), but blaming another corporate malefactor is just too easy. The problem is way bigger than that....
The human herd is easily spooked for a good reason: the overall condition of humankind is perilous owing to the increasing instability of the global environment. There is such a thing as "ecological balance" within the great interactive natural system that one can intuit through the concept of Gaia, the great mother of us all.
We are not strictly rational creatures, but also capable of intuitional knowing, a mode of perception that allows us to see the Big Picture, so to speak, a kind of sixth sense that complements and enlarges the capabilities of our normal intellectual analysis. Indicators on the intuition scope are flashing red, which is why an eminence of science like Lovelock would cry doom as he does.
Each of us feels the angst, the survival anxiety, because we are intelligent and intuitive creatures. We know deep in our bones what is happening, whether we acknowledge it or not.
That is why there is generalized fear of global pandemics. Factory farming is merely one small element of the human assault on the planet's environmental integrity.
The overlarge human population itself is the largest element in this assault.
The survival angst will not go away until the causes of the mass neurosis are dealt with and we learn how to live on our planet without destroying it.
But, we can't really be proactive. We can't, as a matter of political reality, change our entire way of life quickly enough so that there's time to put all the evils back in Pandora's Box.
Consequently, there WILL be a great die off. As we see the culling going on in other species, we will also bear witness to the culling of our own.
The flu hysteria is legitimate. If it isn't this flu, it will be something else.
We are only beginning to discover the meaning of "ecological chaos".
The flu hysteria really isn't legitimate.
[ "We are not strictly rational creatures, but also capable of intuitional knowing, a mode of perception that allows us to see the Big Picture, so to speak, a kind of sixth sense that complements and enlarges the capabilities of our normal intellectual analysis. Indicators on the intuition scope are flashing red, which is why an eminence of science like Lovelock would cry doom as he does." ]
The problem here is that people buying into the flu hysteria are NOT seeing the big picture. The big picture is that there are other far more serious problems than the alleged hamdemic.
Also, just because someone is an eminence of science does not mean he is correct, or his motives are pure. Even eminences of science need to eat.
[ "The flu hysteria is legitimate. If it isn't this flu, it will be something else." ]
Like the war on terror? I suggest you read the article by Jenkins that the author has linked here. The problem with the hysteria over the flu, is that the people buying into it seem to have absolutely no ability to judge risk. They buy into the hysteria over some weird strain of flu that has killed only a small number of people, but not "normal" flu, to use one example.
Not to foment a conspiracy theory here, but we should recall that the conservative, corporation-friendly government of Mexican president Felipe Calderon was installed in office in 2006 following a controversial and close election over progressive Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which included two million angry Obrador supporters taking to the streets of Mexico City during the recount. Let's just say the Obrador people had many of the same complaints about the voting and recount as the Gore and Kerry supporters in Florida and Ohio after our 2000 and 2004 elections.
We should also keep in mind the story emerging out of Mexico just before this 'pandemic' arose -- open armed revolt against Calderon's government, including the Federales losing control of some areas of the country. Although the corporately-owned US Big Media has reliably characterized this armed rebellion down south as staged by scary 'Drug Lords' and 'Crime Families,' those closer to the situation say that conditions for the poor and middle-class have only worsened under Calderon and concede that the disadvantaged are indeed selling drugs for arms -- drugs being the only means to make the kind of money they need to rebel against the wealthy and well-armed Calderone Regime. What better way to keep Mexicans off the streets, and out of the rebellion, than to declare a deadly contagious pandemic is sweeping the nation?
Also prominent in the news before this non-existent 'pandemic' panic took over the news channels in the US was the release of the White House torture memos which clearly established the foundation for prosecuting the Bush Gang for war crimes.
I can't prove that this mutated H1N1 strain of Swine Flu wasn't just an accident, but the two major stories it supplanted in the news is a tad suspicious, kind of like the DHS raising the terrorist threat level whenever things got too hot for King Junior.
Funny how the only deaths were Mexicans. Rumsfelds PNAC stated biological weapons that could target certain genome types would be a politically useful tool. Interesting how this H1N1 is not resistant to Tamiflu, while the seasonal variety is. Rumsfelds Gilead Science must be smiling.
There certainly is something fishy about this. We have motives, swing the election by reducing voter turnout, create a diversion from bigger stories like the economy, put WHO back in the spotlight to push for global governance (in this case health), get people used to government pushing you around for public health (like quarantining those in a hotel in HK), etc. It's sickening really, no pun intended.
Next thing we should be hearing is mandatory flu vaccination shots for next flu season. Those without a valid vaccination certificate will be unable to fly. Hopefully Baxter can keep these vaccines free of the live H5N1 that were sent to some Eastern European countries.
Great post and great insight Green-is-Red.
Also the poster before, RSJ, who noticed this "crisis" hit when calls were being made to indite Rummy and other Bushies for torture.
Baxter and Gilead Sciences need to be investigated. Accidental "escapes" of lab-cultured virus into the biosphere is a crime against humanity and CEO's that do this for profit need to be swinging from a rope.
Could it be that the Neocon elite who have the antidote don't care what happens to the rest of us? What they fail to understand is that bird flu schemes like this rarely mutate in a predictable fashion; These Frankenstien viruses created by DOD and Big Pharma are a hazard to everybody, not just the intended targets, if that is the case.
Vote third party and help break up these big corps/power structures.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Might I also point out that President Obama visited President Calderone and Mexico the very week before this whole thing hit. The germination period is . . . about . . . 6-7 days?
Things that make you go hmmm . . .
His Mexican guide supposedly did get sick the day after he left, or at least it was suspiciously mentioned that way …
Namaste
H1N1 - R2D2 - C3P0 - EGAD
There isn't any 'news' any more, only propaganda from the Ministry of Truth.
Thank you, Lucinda. I've just added your website to my 'favourites'. N.M.
When a pandemic develops- you don't know if it is really going to be happening-- certainly over 50 people dead in Mexico is alarming and I am glad that Obama decided to call it a pandemic.
Now we can all say that it does not amount to a lot of concern- but that was not so clear a week ago.
I am glad that the CDC called it a possible problem even if this means that Mexico will loose a lot of tourist dollars.
We need to be vigilant and we can also learn from this possble false alarm.
I also agree with the person who said that we are living in dangerous environmental times were scientists are discussing such concepts as "tipping point" were the light is switched from off to on and nothing can be done to reverse the damage cascading down.
It is a grave time when 45 species are extinct every day--- that is counting all the bugs and plants --- but too much is becoming extinct and people are continuing to multiply too much.
Lots of problems --- glad this flu epidemic seems to be a dud.
Just a quick question . . .
Does the CDC stand for "Center for Disease CONTROL" or "Center for Disease CREATION"?
control. The creator's are the ones who work for the 'defense' dept...
Yeah, right -- the CDC :
C e n t e r _ for _ D i s e a s e … ( and )
C _ o n t a g i o n s, __ for
O _ f f e n s i v e
N _ o i s e y
T _ r o u b l e d
R _ e c a l c i t r a n t
O _ b j e c t o r s __ of
L _ a w l e s s n e s s
Namaste
There seems to be a pretty simple take home lesson here, not necessarily easy but definitely simple:
1) "farm" our food in healthy, local, and accountable ways - and eliminating "too big to fail" would be an excellent first step. It's been clear for a very long time that "factory farming" is cruel to those being farmed, dangerous for those living near the farm, and impossible to do without polluting the "sh*t" (sorry, couldn't resist) out of the local environment
2) "Homeland Security" might be better served if the Administration forced the FDA, the USDA, the EPA, and the CDC to share data and regulatory enforcement in something remotely resembling the kind of model we need in the 21st century. Actually, we needed it last century as well. There are too many gaps in both the causal and correlational links across a perpetual series of crises that keep taking us by surprise.
3) Consider adopting the Precautionary Principle as a national operating philosophy. Wouldn't it be refreshing to find out "after the fact" that our prudent decision to move slowly into new areas of technology had prevented us from suffering, as opposed to the situation in which we waste millions of lives and billions of dollars cleaning up messes? I give you plastic water bottles and cell phones/WiFi as possible places at which to begin this meditation.
4) And then let's stuff a sock in the mouths of the experts and the media who derive their large salaries from keeping us all on high alert. We already know that swimming in that much cortisol isn't good for any of us.
All excellent suggestions, swkidder May 4th, 2009 11:27 am, and I'd include an addendum to Item 4 that every expert or analyst on TV should have their major-funding/corporate connections displayed on the screen as they speak. For instance, Dr. Hugh Pompousass, an alleged expert on contagious illnesses, speculating on all of the scary dangers of a Swine Flu outbreak killing millions, would have on the screen below or beside him, in easily-readable text, the fact that he received funding from the makers of a vaccine that stands to profit from a flu panic.
It also would be nice if the news networks had an 'ombudsman' (or woman) armed with a good computer who would track the statements of politicians, experts and other riff-raff and correct them when they make a factual error. When Mitch McConnell insists Republicans have never raised taxes, the ombudsman can check and then interrupt and say "Excuse me, Senator, but the fact is the Republicans under Ronald Reagan raised payroll taxes in the 1980s, as well as raising taxes on..." Well, you get the idea.
I'd like world peace and harmony to break out tomorrow as well, which has about the same chance as the Big Media news outlets hiring people to police the facts of the endless stream of politicians, analysts and experts they have on as guests. The BM thrive on conflict and inaccuracy, and few lose money acting stupid.