Posted on 09/16/2009 8:29:38 PM PDT by Born Conservative
How one virus spread from pigs and birds to humans around the globe. And why microbes like the H1N1 flu have become a growing threat.
Around Thanksgiving 2005 a teenage boy helped his brother-in-law butcher 31 pigs at a local Wisconsin slaughterhouse, and a week later the 17-year-old pinned down another pig while it was gutted. In the lead-up to the holidays the boy's family bought a chicken and kept the animal in their home, out of the harsh Sheboygan autumn. On Dec. 7, the teenager came down with the flu, suffering an illness that lasted three days. He visited a local clinic, then fully recovered, and nobody else in his family took ill.
This incident would hardly seem worth mentioning except that the influenza virus that infected the Wisconsin lad was unlike any previously seen. It appeared to be a mosaic of a wild-bird form of flu, a human type and a strain found in pigs.
It was an H1N1 swine influenza. Largely ignored at the time, the Wisconsin virus was a step along the evolutionary tree, leading to a virus that four years later would stun the world.
Flash-forward to April 2009, and young Édgar Enrique Hernández in faraway La Gloria, Mexico, suffers a bout of flu, found to be caused by a similar mosaic of swine/bird/human flu, also H1N1. And thousands of miles away in Cairo, the Egyptian government decides pigs are the source of disease, and orders 300,000 animals in the predominantly Muslim (therefore not pork-consuming) society slaughtered.
Each of these three incidents is related to the unfolding influenza crisis. It is the manner of human beings to seek blame during times of fear. Fingers are now pointing, either at the entire pig species Sus domestica, or at the nation of Mexico.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Article that says near Thanksgiving 2005 swineflu in Wisconsin.....
Wow... Thank you. That’s pretty interesting. Sounds like it was mild back then at least for no-one else in the family to have gotten sick.
I just hope I don’t get sick again this fall like in the Spring. That wasn’t much fun at all. (To put it mildly)
Has there been any talk about resistance once you’ve caught it? I suppose if it mutates like they say it has in India, then that would make it “new” again, in a way. What do you think?
Actually, it’s still mild. We are seeing TONS in the Pediatric clinic I work in. My teen-aged son most likely had Swine Flu 2 weeks ago, and his symptoms weren’t near as bad as mine when I had seasonal flu about 18 years ago.
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