Swinefighter -- The Swine Flu Game.

The World Health Organization seems to be softening people up for a move to Level 6, that is, calling H1N1  a pandemic.

Let's review:

Endemic means that a disease is native to a particular region. So what does pandemic mean?

Right. It's not a reference to the death count or severity of the outbreak. It's a reference to where H1N1 can be found. WHO is ( Read more... )

Swine Flu Starts a Trend in Mexico: Face Masks (LA Times)

Newspapers here have carried graphics showing how to turn a piece of scrap cloth into a mask. Some people have tried to add a splash of personality by painting their masks with skeleton faces or colorful butterflies...The tapaboca phenomenon in Mexico has yielded some incongruous images: the ( Read more... )

Pig Herd Contracts H1N1 from Farmhand

I'll be on The Uptake, live, at 2pm-ish tomoorw (Sunday, May3) talking about The Patron Saint of Plagues and H1N1 swine flu. Huge hat tip to the Irish-Jewish-Lesbian mafia (seanmmurphy and, especially, lyda222 ) for the hook up.

If you miss it, don't sweat. The Uptake will no doubt archive it. I'll keep you apprised.

Meanwhile, it seems like some others are starting ( Read more... )

Via darinbradley 

Texas cancels all school competitions through May 11.

Of note in this article, the 23-month-old boy who died in Houston was from Mexico City and had underlying health problems. Terrible as that is, those circumstances make the case seem rather unusual and incidental for a "US confirmed death" and has to be of some relief to public health ( Read more... )

First US death attributed to H1N1.

Mexico and the World Health Organization better get on the same page about the number of H1N1-related deaths in Mexico, pronto. Here's what the Mexican federal government is saying (from the Sydney Morning Herald):

Mexico's Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, told reporters that the probable death toll from swine flu in his country had risen from ( Read more... )

It's a nightmare trying to Google decent information on swine flu right now. SO. I beseech thee, holy intarwebs! Hear my query!

In avian flu, the key "antigenic shift" that can rearrange a poultry-to-poultry flu virus into a poultry-to-human virus (or human-to-human flu virus)  occurs, typically, when there is prolonged contact between birds and ( Read more... )