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ThatDamnedPanda -> Swine Flu Originated In United States (5/6/2009 8:54:12 PM)
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Interesting. Ever since this new strain was first identified in Mexico, thinly veiled and downright overt racist condemnations of Mexicans have been not uncommon. Not here on this forum, but throughout the country. I don't expect this will change the thinking of many, but for a few people, it might help illustrate the folly of such xenophobic overreactions.
quote:
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.
Here, I'll show you a trick. If you click this link, you can read the whole article!
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