DoH declares public health emergency

[Mindgames]

Janet Napolitano's just confirmed a US national health emergency, courtesy of our Mexican pork-based friends. Probably time to check dates on your bunker food, as there's nuthin as fun as a national panic over the word 'emergency'.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

Nobody in the US has even died yet from the swine flu....

I'm not freakin' out yet...Although, I don't think I'll be going to ole' Mexico anytime soon, either.

[malcolm]

yeah, they were talking about that on the news out here last night.

Everyone's gonna panic though, I can just feel it.
Especially being as close to "ole mehicko" as we are and what with the whole drug war spilling over as far as tucson now out here.

I have been trying to get mom to cut out the pork altogether from our diets anyway, not so much because of the Piggy flu but because we really don't need to be eating it and also because of a woman out here who ended up with tape worms in her brain from eating pork she bought at a local grocer out here because someone did not properly wash their hands while handling it and the state does not require food handlers to wear gloves.

[Lady Alias]

It's good to be a vegetarian.

[VoltaireBlue]

you'll have to pry the bacon out of my cold dead hands.

[OliX]

you'll have to pry the bacon out of my cold dead hands.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...orst_polluters

[VoltaireBlue]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...orst_polluters

I don't eat that stuff. the only meat I eat is local grown, organic and free range or wild caught fish.

for what its worth the hormel company is just as bad as smithfield if not worse. neither of them will ever get even one penny from me. I'm really against pollution and animal cruelty.

[Morning Glory]

swine flu? isn't that what it's called when a police officer calls in sick?

[VoltaireBlue]

swine flu? isn't that what it's called when a police officer calls in sick?

haha! good one.

[Mindgames]

One assumes you all realize you can't get swine flu from eating bacon, chops, spleen, trotters, eyeballs or any other element of pig commonly found in mcFood.

Though there is a risk from consuming pork sword, depending on the choice of Mexican attached to it.

[Morning Glory]

well that's no fun.

I was looking forward to mczombies.

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

Swine flu doesn't come from the eating of pigs, but the raising of pigs, usually in poor conditions. Of course we wouldn't raise pigs if we didn't eat them.

If only the FDA were a little more serious about food manufacturing conditions.

And when I hear Janet Napolitano I cant help but wonder how the singer of concrete blond became head of homeland security.

[VoltaireBlue]

If only the FDA were a little more serious about food manufacturing conditions.

+1

[malcolm]

Swine flu doesn't come from the eating of pigs, but the raising of pigs, usually in poor conditions. Of course we wouldn't raise pigs if we didn't eat them.

If only the FDA were a little more serious about food manufacturing conditions.

And when I hear Janet Napolitano I cant help but wonder how the singer of concrete blond became head of homeland security.

well, i dunno about concrete blonde's frontman but i know janet got that position because she's good at what she does, she was one of the best governors we've had in the state of arizona, an avid supporter of the equal rights campaign and very dedicated to her work.

Not to mention she has former d.c experience working under the clinton administration and she helped obama get some major ground out here over McCain which is not an easy task in a red state like here.

that's a good quip though, normally when people make cracks at janet it's in questioning of her sexual orientation. .

[malcolm]

and yeah, i agree, the fda is total crap now with food inspections. it's retarded how many food recalls over such a broad spectrum of essential food products we've had over the last couple of years.

[keiko]

you'll have to pry the bacon out of my cold dead hands.

Ditto.

I didn't stop eating chicken during the "bird flu epidemic" and what pork I eat now is organic and local, just like my poultry. So essentially, this doesn't effect me.

THEY just want a new scare tactic to get everyone's mind off the economy. Damned rabble rousing fear mongers.

~K

[VoltaireBlue]

on the concrete blonde thing, they're not the same person. the singers name is johnette, not janet...... same last name though.

[malcolm]

I think another reason we're having a hard time with things like this or mo so it being blown out of proportions is there appears to be a major lack in journalistic integrity with televised news being as they have grown to take a shock and awe approach to things due to ratings rather than actually reporting news.

If they can figure out a way to make a puppy dog look like a fire breathing harborer of terrorist biological warfare, they will and if they can make something like the flu look like the new bubonic plague, they'll do that too.

[VoltaireBlue]

I think I'm going to make some bacon now........ twelve pieces, actually.

[KessM]

yay for veggies!

[malcolm]

If i could i would live on an all candy diet to be honest but i think i'd be dead within a year lol

[Mindgames]

Aside from the laudably Charlton-Hestonesque position on bacon held by Keiko and Voltaire, can someone explain why this thread is doing precisely what the press is being slated for, and turning into a food safety argument?

Swine flu is a health issue because it's a human infection. The virus may have started in pigs, but it jumped the species barrier and now it's spreading human-to-human, just like plague was originally just an infection of European hamsters. The fact animal welfare standards in Mexico may be lower than desirable is totally besides the point - the virus has been present in pigs, no matter how well they're kept, for centuries - it simply happened to randomly mutate into a strain which is transmissible, and it could just as easily have done that in an organic farm in the Hamptons.

Almost nobody who's died of it in Mexico, nor anyone outside Mexico who contracted it, has had any contact with pigs. Patient zero did, but after that it became a human problem. Eating an infected pig is safe. Having sexual relations with said pig is questionable, but frying a slice of it is totally, bacon-flavoredly, Voltaire-in-the-kitchen-wearing-only-an-apron safe.

Touching a door handle an hour after a flu patient touched it, THAT is not safe.

It matters not how Rancho Porko cares for its product if the guy sitting next to you on the 8:30 bus out of Fesno is infected, and although the mortality in US patients seems different to that in Mexico, it's just as virulent. There's a reason DoH has released several million antiviral doses from stockpile; they think it's possible we'll need them.

When I was still in a white coat, we had tabletop exercises where 10% of the US population was killed by flu in 12 months, using the virulence models from 1918. At no point did the exercise involve putting down our bacon sandwiches.

[VoltaireBlue]

I think I'm going to make some bacon now........ twelve pieces, actually.

and they were mindblowingly delicious.

[Aza]

*sigh* If these yearly pandemics-named-after-animals were as dangerous as the fear-worshiping press would have us believe, even I'd be afraid...

... and I'm not. It has nothing to do with the fact that my hyperactive immune system kills foreign invaders in under half the time it takes the average person. (I go through illnesses twice as quickly, can't keep any scar longer than six years; I'm ready for my adamantium skeleton, damn it!) It's just that I don't get a danger sense from this "swine flu" business; at least, no stronger a sense of danger than I get when I climb into an automobile, take a drag off a cigarette, or wear vinyl pants in front of K. The sense I do get is that, once the death tolls are in, we'll not only find them to be rather pathetic, but a significant number of the victims will be hypochondriacs... as usual.

Furthermore, if the death tolls from swine flu truly wind up being that much higher than that left in the bird flu wake, what will it prove? The country and world populations are both higher now than they were a year ago! Why do you think all this shit is happening anyway, people? Terrorists?!? How's this for a conspiracy theory? We're experiencing one new pandemic every year because Mother(fucking) Nature is doing everything she can to try to save herself from her choking human population, and despite her best efforts, we as a species continue to reproduce faster and live longer. Disease and illness are the white blood cells of the planet going to work on us! For as long as we refuse (perhaps rightfully, perhaps not) to keep our own numbers in-check, we'll need to accept that universal balance will be waiting in the wings to do it for us, as well as the execution methods it chooses.

North Korea openly manufacturing, testing, and threatening the world with nuclear (NOT "nuke-you-lar") weapons... now that raises the hair on the back of my neck a bit.

[TheDeathKnight]

We're experiencing one new pandemic every year because Mother(fucking) Nature is doing everything she can to try to save herself from her choking human population

+1

[OliX]

http://www.wethepeoplewillnotbechipp...?readmore=2341

I lold

[Morning Glory]

I say that we unleash the nukes, just to be safe.

[OliX]

ZURICH (Reuters) - A container of flu virus samples packed in dry ice exploded on a Swiss train, injuring one person but posing no other risks to humans, police said on Tuesday.
The box held vials of swine flu virus, although a different strain than the H1N1 variety that has caused about 150 deaths in Mexico and infected people in the United States, Canada, Spain and Britain.
A technician was transporting the container on Monday night to the Swiss national flu centre in Geneva, where scientists are developing a flu test for humans, police said.
One woman was hurt when the box exploded in reaction to the dry ice used to keep the samples cold.
After consulting virus specialists, the police decided to stop the St. Gallen to Geneva train before it entered the station in Lausanne.
The virus specialists confirmed that the samples being transported posed no risks to humans, police said.
(Reporting by Sven Egenter; Editing by Laura MacInnis)

[Ajax Knucklebones]

If i could i would live on an all candy diet to be honest but i think i'd be dead within a year lol

I always liked the Dennis Miller line. "Snickers is satisfying? Sure. Whatever. Stick a guy in a room for two weeks, just eating Snickers and he'll come out looking like Papillion."

[malcolm]

I always liked the Dennis Miller line. "Snickers is satisfying? Sure. Whatever. Stick a guy in a room for two weeks, just eating Snickers and he'll come out looking like Papillion."

I remember reading this article in maxim of all magazines years ago where a guy in college made a bet with hsi roommate that all he would eat for a month was red rope twizzlers and he quit within two weeks due to bad cramping and violent burning red colored diarhea that had gotten so bad he would actually cry at times lol.

it paints a pretty comical picture..