And you believe everything the government and the press say.
What scared me was a picture from a Japanize airport. They were using infrared camera's to view all the people getting off airplanes. Anyone with a fever was stoped and checked. That kind of big brother watching scares me.
Looking at the family in Schurtz Tx (no travel to MX). They have a media op. But they also shut down a whole school district of 14 schools. Media hype or are they not telling us everything.
And you believe everything the government and the press say.
What scared me was a picture from a Japanize airport. They were using infrared camera's to view all the people getting off airplanes. Anyone with a fever was stoped and checked. That kind of big brother watching scares me.
Looking at the family in Schurtz Tx (no travel to MX). They have a media op. But they also shut down a whole school district of 14 schools. Media hype or are they not telling us everything.
In Asia apparently that type of thing is common due to SARS, so they are probably already equipped to deal with it one way or another. Another interesting thing is that while we are focused on Mexico, Europeans are saying to not go to North America at all.
I too don't think we're getting the full story, but I think it's due to disorganization and incompetence, not a conspiracy. Still, I can see why both here and in Mexico people think there is a conspiracy.
Im no expert but from what I have read there is a big difference between pandemic swine flu and the regular flu.
I get what we generally call the "flu" just about every year. Its more like a seasonal mid winter thing where I live. It has basically the same symptoms except you dont die.. Its uncomfortable for a few days or a week but its in no way life threatening as the strain the are talking about...
I used to hear stories from my grandparents of the flu outbreak in 1918 that killed 20-100 Million worldwide, and the cemeteries in these parts are loaded with children that died during 1918-1919.
It was no joke.
That started with one case in Fort Riley, Kansas and spread around the world in weeks.
Im not an alarmist but i will take the necessary precautions. I hope that it turns out to be nothing more than it already is and it gets contained--until then I'd rather be safe than sorry
I used to hear stories from my grandparents of the flu outbreak in 1918 that killed 20-100 Million worldwide, and the cemeteries in these parts are loaded with children that died during 1918-1919.
It was no joke.
I use to have a hunting lease near Burnet TX. There was an area there where they buried all the dead. There were no grave stones. It killed that many that fast.
What they show for Mexico is that 10% of those in hospitals die. 1600 people hospitalized and 156 dead. Of course in Mexico people don't go to the hospital as fast as they do here.
Im no expert but from what I have read there is a big difference between pandemic swine flu and the regular flu.
I get what we generally call the "flu" just about every year. Its more like a seasonal mid winter thing where I live. It has basically the same symptoms except you dont die.. Its uncomfortable for a few days or a week but its in no way life threatening as the strain the are talking about...
I've had the flu before, but generally don't get it. The thing I had was really, really bad. I seriously thought I was going to need the hospital, but toughed it out instead and waited until I could go to the doctor. I was running a temperature of around 103, I was shaking, I was wheezing, my head felt both horribly dizzy and achy, and I could not get out of bed. It started as a headache and sore throat and my throat got so clogged that even with Vicks, a humidifier, and Formula 44D I couldn't cough anything up. I was able to cough stuff up after a few days, but the cough lasted a few weeks. Then when my daughter, wife, and in-laws got it, some like my daughter were mostly ok except at night, my wife's grandmother never got sick, but everyone else was horribly sick and bedridden for days.
Oh, and myself and my coworkers all got flu shots, and my wife got one as well, yet it offered no protection against this thing we had. That doesn't mean I know for sure that I had it, but I was seriously ill in a way that no normal flu had made me feel.
Another interesting note is that there was a case of H1N1 confirmed by the CDC in Texas back in September 2008. I don't know why this hasn't been in the news as well, but it leads credence to the theory that like the 1918 flu, this one could be going around in waves, and only now in Mexico did it mutate into a stronger form that is causing deaths.
This is probably about the fourth virus this decade which "threatens to become a pandemic."
I think it's good that people are made aware of these things early, so that they DON'T get out of hand; but early media reports always seem to exaggerate the problem.
I don't think anyone is with-holding anything from you. It is prudent to close the schools so that the potential for spread is reduced and those who are ill, especially those who are infected but not showing symptoms yet can have the disease run it's course.
When the incubation period [estimated to be between 2 and 7 days] is factored in, any information which is correct today is already almost a week out of date.
The thing is, there are so many strains of "flu" and they impact people differently, so it's hard to pin it all down into a neat little package.
Many of us get sick in the winter but trust me, when you get the FLU, you know it... you are really ill.
Swine flu is called that simply because it started as a virus that pigs caught easily. Then it morphed into something that humans could catch, too. Then people started passing it around amongst ourselves.
The reason for all the panic is that we have no way to predict the final outcomes on things like Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and even Ebola... these things flare up and die down on their own all the time, and viruses often morph into a new strain, and all we can do is play catch-up to try to contain an outbreak or find a way to treat the symptoms.
By telling us there is the potential for an outbreak, they are hoping people will use some common sense and the virus WON'T become an epidemic. The problem with that is it's like the boy crying "wolf" ... look at all the folks still traveling down to Mexico yesterday saying, "Yeah, well, I'm just not all that worried about it."
It is apparently an airborne illness, i.e. coughing, sneezing, breathing, spitting (be glad you don't have to sit in a teaching or after meal discussion of the Great Spitter). The President was reiterating common sense prevention activities, i.e. wash your hands, don't go out if you are sick, keep your kids home if they are sick, go to a doctor if your temperature is elevated over 101.5, wash your hands, cover your cough (with inside of your elbow, NOT your hand), etc.
Prayerfully this will pass in a few few weeks.
Mr. P I think you had it, or something similarly ugly. Glad you and yours are okay.
Flu shots are a crap shoot anyway, trying to guess the virus that will prevail that winter and then inoculating against it.
By telling us there is the potential for an outbreak, they are hoping people will use some common sense and the virus WON'T become an epidemic. The problem with that is it's like the boy crying "wolf" ... look at all the folks still traveling down to Mexico yesterday saying, "Yeah, well, I'm just not all that worried about it."
The problem with this is that the vast majority of the country (this could apply to the U.S. or Mexico) don't have it. The second largest city in Mexico is Guadalajara, and there have been no reported cases at this time. In fact, I think only a couple of the states in Mexico have had it, with the highest concentration being in Mexico City itself. If I were taking a vacation to Mexico right now, I'd probably be ok providing I wasn't going to or transferring flights in Mexico City.
I've been thinking about it, and the air is so polluted in Mexico City that it's possible that this flu is extra deadly there because of how bad the air quality is. I imagine if you give this flu to someone with asthma, for example, they are more likely to die than anyone else.
Well I`m trying not to be scared. All of the schools in the city of huntsville and madison county ala. are closed because of two probable cases :(
My kiddo babysat a kid and I spent time with her as well that had all of these symptoms. I know the odds are against it being swine flue, but crimeny it is so hard not to obsess. My whole family is traveling to nc for my brothers homecoming from afgahnistan/promotion...I keep thinking about all of the people that we will have contact with and what if we have it and spread it or catch it and bring it back....O I know it is silly....but I haven`t been sleeping. I wish I could just hide on the farm.
Pmosh that sounds pretty suspicious. I am glad that you and your family are well whatever the illness was that struck.
Well I`m trying not to be scared. All of the schools in the city of huntsville and madison county ala. are closed because of two probable cases :(
My kiddo babysat a kid and I spent time with her as well that had all of these symptoms. I know the odds are against it being swine flue, but crimeny it is so hard not to obsess. My whole family is traveling to nc for my brothers homecoming from afgahnistan/promotion...I keep thinking about all of the people that we will have contact with and what if we have it and spread it or catch it and bring it back....O I know it is silly....but I haven`t been sleeping. I wish I could just hide on the farm.
Pmosh that sounds pretty suspicious. I am glad that you and your family are well whatever the illness was that struck.
Rascal and others, if you're scared of swine flu, then you should be REALLY scared of getting in your car and driving to work (or wherever) each day. Take a look at those statistics and swine flu will seem like a bubble bath.
There are so many unknowns about this flu, that I'm not surprised if people are building up fear about it. NLL-ing - - "bubble bath" - - I love it!
I believe the WHO has changed its name to H1N1, which is it's scientific name. Too many who call it "swine flu" are getting all mixed up over what this disease is, and what it isn't. Egypt ordered all the pigs in the country slaughtered and there is no reason for it. Actually, earlier this evening I found this flu was never suspected to be in any swine anyway. It is a human flu with a few peculiar genes.
If you're really tempted to be afraid of this flu....ask yourself - - - would I be a-f-r-a-i-d if I caught a mild case of ordinary winter flu? I doubt it! Pretty annoyed maybe. I wouldn't be happy if everything but my hair hurt for a few days and I ran a high fever! But it doesn't seem that this flu is that bad here. Nobody knows why it has killed so many in Mexico. Ordinary flu kills too! But this flu seems to only last a few days.
It's NOT Ebola! Ebola kills almost everybody it catches. This is a flu.
You're not crazy if you're uneasy about this flu thing. That's normal because it's almost totally unknown. But - - fear is really another story.....I think!
CAIRO — Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.
The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.
According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”
The outbreak has been dubbed swine flu — now officially called influenza A(H1N1) — because scientists believe it started in pigs, but they do not know if that was recently or years ago. The name change was designed to allay fears about pigs and eating pork.
Egypt has not reported any cases of the new virus that has hit 11 other nations, but the country has been hard hit by avian flu.
The great majority of Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions, but about 10 percent of the population is Coptic Christian. As a result, Egyptian pig farmers are overwhelmingly Christian. And although some of the country’s Christians are middle class or wealthy, the Christian farmers are generally poor.
On Thursday, several urban pig farmers in Cairo said they see the government’s decision as just another expression of Egyptian Muslims’ resentment against Christians. Last year, there were several violent incidents that some believed were aimed at Christians, including the kidnapping and beating of monks. The Egyptian government denied the incidents had sectarian overtones, saying they were each part of other disputes, including a fight over land.
Barsoum Girgis, a 26-year-old pig farmer, lives in a poor neighborhood, Manshiet Nasser, built along the Mukatam cliffs on the eastern end of the city where most of the ramshackle, red-brick buildings were built illegally.
Mr. Girgis makes his living through a combination of raising pigs and collecting garbage — two professions that are often tied together in a city where garbage collection can be an informal affair and where poor farmers rely on food scraps to feed their livestock.
He wakes up every morning around 4 a.m. to collect garbage around the city. When he gets back to Manshiet Nasser, at around 9 a.m., he sorts the trash, putting aside what can be sold at the city’s booming scrap markets and what he can use as pig feed.
“The government here is going after our livelihood,” he said, nervously playing with a wooden cross he wears around his neck. “These pigs are perfectly healthy. How am I going to feed my children and send them to school without my livestock?”
Mr. Girgis lives with his extended family, about 30 people, in the first two floors of a building that leans against a cliff. His 60 small pigs live on the ground floor. They have dark, furry skin, and their squeals can be heard a block away from Mr. Girgis’ home.
Many of Cairo’s pig farmers live in similar conditions, sharing their small spaces in the teeming city with their animals.
After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse.
"It is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish," the agency quoted him as saying.
“We will build new farms in special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms."
It remains unclear if the government will compensate the farmers for their losses. The Health Ministry originally said the farmers would be paid, but after many in Parliament disagreed, the ministry appeared to back down.
Some in Cairo, anxious over the reports of swine flu agree, with the government’s move. “Now we know there is a reason God bans pigs: they spread sickness” said Mohsen Hamady, a 50-year-old accountant who was sipping tea after work in a Cairo tea house.
But many pig farmers say they do a valuable service for the rest of Cairo that will be recognized only if they stop picking up the trash.
“If they take away our pigs, why would we go collect their garbage every morning?” said Marcos Shalab, a 40-year-old pig farmer in Manshiet Nasser.
Mr. Girgis echoed this feeling. “We are Christian, and we are the underclass, so it’s very easy to go after us. But this city relies on us to process its waste. It relies on the pigs.”
Ride a bike in heavy traffic. Without a helmet, if you really like to live dangerously.
Lots of things are "risky" but keep things in proportion. Be realistic.
Keep your immune system working the best by eating sufficient fresh fruit and veges.
Go to bed and rest if you are ill.
Flu really is horrible. It's not just a heavy cold.
But let's face it, most of us don't get "flu" very often, we just get colds and call them flu.
And most of us won't get this current ailment, either.
Slaughtering pigs (WordWolf's item) is just as sensible as slaughtering every Mexican as being a potential carrier. I'm sorry for the underclass of Christians who is suffering most from this unnecessary cull.
Flu really is horrible. It's not just a heavy cold.
But let's face it, most of us don't get "flu" very often, we just get colds and call them flu.
And most of us won't get this current ailment, either.
Actually this flu is mild but.............
It is very viralant. It spreads very easily and if you are exposed you will get it.
A Dr. in New Braunfels Tx who works in a downtown San Antonio hospital sent out an e-mail to friends telling them what the health department and CDC are saying. They came down on this guy hard. It was in the Express News(mysa.com).
Either this flu is nasty or the news is real slow.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
The CDC is responsible to alert the public of any health threats that they see emerging. I get that. If they didn't warn us and the worst case scenario unfolded, then everyone would be screaming, "Why didn't you warn us?" It's one of those damned if they do, damned if they don't situations.
I admit that I get tired of the constant coverage of this latest threat on the news and the panic caused by the barrage of doom-saying. But it's good to know the threat is out there so that if you get the symptoms, you know to get yourself checked. In some of the more vulnerable among us, that could make the difference between life and death because complications of the flu, any flu, can be very serious.
It's a two-edged sword. I don't think there's any way to convey the potential seriousness of the spread of such an illness without causing people to feel a little jittery.
Avian flu didn't turn into as big a deal in the USA as some predicted, and thank God for that. I'm hoping that public awareness will keep the spread of this latest bug at a minimum.
The bottom line is that I'd rather be warned that there's a tornado heading my way, even if it veers off in another direction, than not be warned and be out sunning myself on the roof when a big swirly black cloud sucks up my house!
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ex70sHouston
And you believe everything the government and the press say.
What scared me was a picture from a Japanize airport. They were using infrared camera's to view all the people getting off airplanes. Anyone with a fever was stoped and checked. That kind of big brother watching scares me.
Looking at the family in Schurtz Tx (no travel to MX). They have a media op. But they also shut down a whole school district of 14 schools. Media hype or are they not telling us everything.
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Mister P-Mosh
In Asia apparently that type of thing is common due to SARS, so they are probably already equipped to deal with it one way or another. Another interesting thing is that while we are focused on Mexico, Europeans are saying to not go to North America at all.
I too don't think we're getting the full story, but I think it's due to disorganization and incompetence, not a conspiracy. Still, I can see why both here and in Mexico people think there is a conspiracy.
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mstar1
Im no expert but from what I have read there is a big difference between pandemic swine flu and the regular flu.
I get what we generally call the "flu" just about every year. Its more like a seasonal mid winter thing where I live. It has basically the same symptoms except you dont die.. Its uncomfortable for a few days or a week but its in no way life threatening as the strain the are talking about...
I used to hear stories from my grandparents of the flu outbreak in 1918 that killed 20-100 Million worldwide, and the cemeteries in these parts are loaded with children that died during 1918-1919.
It was no joke.
That started with one case in Fort Riley, Kansas and spread around the world in weeks.
Im not an alarmist but i will take the necessary precautions. I hope that it turns out to be nothing more than it already is and it gets contained--until then I'd rather be safe than sorry
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ex70sHouston
I use to have a hunting lease near Burnet TX. There was an area there where they buried all the dead. There were no grave stones. It killed that many that fast.
What they show for Mexico is that 10% of those in hospitals die. 1600 people hospitalized and 156 dead. Of course in Mexico people don't go to the hospital as fast as they do here.
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WordWolf
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Mister P-Mosh
I've had the flu before, but generally don't get it. The thing I had was really, really bad. I seriously thought I was going to need the hospital, but toughed it out instead and waited until I could go to the doctor. I was running a temperature of around 103, I was shaking, I was wheezing, my head felt both horribly dizzy and achy, and I could not get out of bed. It started as a headache and sore throat and my throat got so clogged that even with Vicks, a humidifier, and Formula 44D I couldn't cough anything up. I was able to cough stuff up after a few days, but the cough lasted a few weeks. Then when my daughter, wife, and in-laws got it, some like my daughter were mostly ok except at night, my wife's grandmother never got sick, but everyone else was horribly sick and bedridden for days.
Oh, and myself and my coworkers all got flu shots, and my wife got one as well, yet it offered no protection against this thing we had. That doesn't mean I know for sure that I had it, but I was seriously ill in a way that no normal flu had made me feel.
Another interesting note is that there was a case of H1N1 confirmed by the CDC in Texas back in September 2008. I don't know why this hasn't been in the news as well, but it leads credence to the theory that like the 1918 flu, this one could be going around in waves, and only now in Mexico did it mutate into a stronger form that is causing deaths.
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GeorgeStGeorge
This is probably about the fourth virus this decade which "threatens to become a pandemic."
I think it's good that people are made aware of these things early, so that they DON'T get out of hand; but early media reports always seem to exaggerate the problem.
George
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mstar1
Hopefully it will be all contained and never happen
But unnecessary preparation usually beats being caught unprepared
MANUAL
It sure beats this scenario:
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waysider
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excathedra
i just don't understand, but it makes me worry of course
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dmiller
I heard it's being passed between humans and not from pig to people,
as the people who have it here in the US haven't been around any pigs.
Don't kiss anyone that looks like this.
:P
:P
(edited to add - - - - >>> Click the Pic.)
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ex70sHouston
In area just to the north east of San Antonio they have 3 complete school districts closed.
What are we not being told.
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krys
I don't think anyone is with-holding anything from you. It is prudent to close the schools so that the potential for spread is reduced and those who are ill, especially those who are infected but not showing symptoms yet can have the disease run it's course.
When the incubation period [estimated to be between 2 and 7 days] is factored in, any information which is correct today is already almost a week out of date.
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TheHighWay
The thing is, there are so many strains of "flu" and they impact people differently, so it's hard to pin it all down into a neat little package.
Many of us get sick in the winter but trust me, when you get the FLU, you know it... you are really ill.
Swine flu is called that simply because it started as a virus that pigs caught easily. Then it morphed into something that humans could catch, too. Then people started passing it around amongst ourselves.
The reason for all the panic is that we have no way to predict the final outcomes on things like Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and even Ebola... these things flare up and die down on their own all the time, and viruses often morph into a new strain, and all we can do is play catch-up to try to contain an outbreak or find a way to treat the symptoms.
By telling us there is the potential for an outbreak, they are hoping people will use some common sense and the virus WON'T become an epidemic. The problem with that is it's like the boy crying "wolf" ... look at all the folks still traveling down to Mexico yesterday saying, "Yeah, well, I'm just not all that worried about it."
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Watered Garden
It is apparently an airborne illness, i.e. coughing, sneezing, breathing, spitting (be glad you don't have to sit in a teaching or after meal discussion of the Great Spitter). The President was reiterating common sense prevention activities, i.e. wash your hands, don't go out if you are sick, keep your kids home if they are sick, go to a doctor if your temperature is elevated over 101.5, wash your hands, cover your cough (with inside of your elbow, NOT your hand), etc.
Prayerfully this will pass in a few few weeks.
Mr. P I think you had it, or something similarly ugly. Glad you and yours are okay.
Flu shots are a crap shoot anyway, trying to guess the virus that will prevail that winter and then inoculating against it.
WG
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Mister P-Mosh
The problem with this is that the vast majority of the country (this could apply to the U.S. or Mexico) don't have it. The second largest city in Mexico is Guadalajara, and there have been no reported cases at this time. In fact, I think only a couple of the states in Mexico have had it, with the highest concentration being in Mexico City itself. If I were taking a vacation to Mexico right now, I'd probably be ok providing I wasn't going to or transferring flights in Mexico City.
I've been thinking about it, and the air is so polluted in Mexico City that it's possible that this flu is extra deadly there because of how bad the air quality is. I imagine if you give this flu to someone with asthma, for example, they are more likely to die than anyone else.
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rascal
Well I`m trying not to be scared. All of the schools in the city of huntsville and madison county ala. are closed because of two probable cases :(
My kiddo babysat a kid and I spent time with her as well that had all of these symptoms. I know the odds are against it being swine flue, but crimeny it is so hard not to obsess. My whole family is traveling to nc for my brothers homecoming from afgahnistan/promotion...I keep thinking about all of the people that we will have contact with and what if we have it and spread it or catch it and bring it back....O I know it is silly....but I haven`t been sleeping. I wish I could just hide on the farm.
Pmosh that sounds pretty suspicious. I am glad that you and your family are well whatever the illness was that struck.
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nolongerlurking
Rascal and others, if you're scared of swine flu, then you should be REALLY scared of getting in your car and driving to work (or wherever) each day. Take a look at those statistics and swine flu will seem like a bubble bath.
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krys
There are so many unknowns about this flu, that I'm not surprised if people are building up fear about it. NLL-ing - - "bubble bath" - - I love it!
I believe the WHO has changed its name to H1N1, which is it's scientific name. Too many who call it "swine flu" are getting all mixed up over what this disease is, and what it isn't. Egypt ordered all the pigs in the country slaughtered and there is no reason for it. Actually, earlier this evening I found this flu was never suspected to be in any swine anyway. It is a human flu with a few peculiar genes.
If you're really tempted to be afraid of this flu....ask yourself - - - would I be a-f-r-a-i-d if I caught a mild case of ordinary winter flu? I doubt it! Pretty annoyed maybe. I wouldn't be happy if everything but my hair hurt for a few days and I ran a high fever! But it doesn't seem that this flu is that bad here. Nobody knows why it has killed so many in Mexico. Ordinary flu kills too! But this flu seems to only last a few days.
It's NOT Ebola! Ebola kills almost everybody it catches. This is a flu.
You're not crazy if you're uneasy about this flu thing. That's normal because it's almost totally unknown. But - - fear is really another story.....I think!
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WordWolf
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/health/0...html?ref=health
CAIRO — Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.
The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.
According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”
The outbreak has been dubbed swine flu — now officially called influenza A(H1N1) — because scientists believe it started in pigs, but they do not know if that was recently or years ago. The name change was designed to allay fears about pigs and eating pork.
Egypt has not reported any cases of the new virus that has hit 11 other nations, but the country has been hard hit by avian flu.
The great majority of Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions, but about 10 percent of the population is Coptic Christian. As a result, Egyptian pig farmers are overwhelmingly Christian. And although some of the country’s Christians are middle class or wealthy, the Christian farmers are generally poor.
On Thursday, several urban pig farmers in Cairo said they see the government’s decision as just another expression of Egyptian Muslims’ resentment against Christians. Last year, there were several violent incidents that some believed were aimed at Christians, including the kidnapping and beating of monks. The Egyptian government denied the incidents had sectarian overtones, saying they were each part of other disputes, including a fight over land.
Barsoum Girgis, a 26-year-old pig farmer, lives in a poor neighborhood, Manshiet Nasser, built along the Mukatam cliffs on the eastern end of the city where most of the ramshackle, red-brick buildings were built illegally.
Mr. Girgis makes his living through a combination of raising pigs and collecting garbage — two professions that are often tied together in a city where garbage collection can be an informal affair and where poor farmers rely on food scraps to feed their livestock.
He wakes up every morning around 4 a.m. to collect garbage around the city. When he gets back to Manshiet Nasser, at around 9 a.m., he sorts the trash, putting aside what can be sold at the city’s booming scrap markets and what he can use as pig feed.
“The government here is going after our livelihood,” he said, nervously playing with a wooden cross he wears around his neck. “These pigs are perfectly healthy. How am I going to feed my children and send them to school without my livestock?”
Mr. Girgis lives with his extended family, about 30 people, in the first two floors of a building that leans against a cliff. His 60 small pigs live on the ground floor. They have dark, furry skin, and their squeals can be heard a block away from Mr. Girgis’ home.
Many of Cairo’s pig farmers live in similar conditions, sharing their small spaces in the teeming city with their animals.
After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse.
"It is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish," the agency quoted him as saying.
“We will build new farms in special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms."
It remains unclear if the government will compensate the farmers for their losses. The Health Ministry originally said the farmers would be paid, but after many in Parliament disagreed, the ministry appeared to back down.
Some in Cairo, anxious over the reports of swine flu agree, with the government’s move. “Now we know there is a reason God bans pigs: they spread sickness” said Mohsen Hamady, a 50-year-old accountant who was sipping tea after work in a Cairo tea house.
But many pig farmers say they do a valuable service for the rest of Cairo that will be recognized only if they stop picking up the trash.
“If they take away our pigs, why would we go collect their garbage every morning?” said Marcos Shalab, a 40-year-old pig farmer in Manshiet Nasser.
Mr. Girgis echoed this feeling. “We are Christian, and we are the underclass, so it’s very easy to go after us. But this city relies on us to process its waste. It relies on the pigs.”
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Twinky
"Don't panic, don't panic!!"
SARS, bird flu, swine flu...
And next year's panic will be...?
Ride a bike in heavy traffic. Without a helmet, if you really like to live dangerously.
Lots of things are "risky" but keep things in proportion. Be realistic.
Keep your immune system working the best by eating sufficient fresh fruit and veges.
Go to bed and rest if you are ill.
Flu really is horrible. It's not just a heavy cold.
But let's face it, most of us don't get "flu" very often, we just get colds and call them flu.
And most of us won't get this current ailment, either.
Slaughtering pigs (WordWolf's item) is just as sensible as slaughtering every Mexican as being a potential carrier. I'm sorry for the underclass of Christians who is suffering most from this unnecessary cull.
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ex70sHouston
Actually this flu is mild but.............
It is very viralant. It spreads very easily and if you are exposed you will get it.
A Dr. in New Braunfels Tx who works in a downtown San Antonio hospital sent out an e-mail to friends telling them what the health department and CDC are saying. They came down on this guy hard. It was in the Express News(mysa.com).
Either this flu is nasty or the news is real slow.
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George Aar
I'm reminded of a quote from one of my heros:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
H.L. Mencken
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Linda Z
The CDC is responsible to alert the public of any health threats that they see emerging. I get that. If they didn't warn us and the worst case scenario unfolded, then everyone would be screaming, "Why didn't you warn us?" It's one of those damned if they do, damned if they don't situations.
I admit that I get tired of the constant coverage of this latest threat on the news and the panic caused by the barrage of doom-saying. But it's good to know the threat is out there so that if you get the symptoms, you know to get yourself checked. In some of the more vulnerable among us, that could make the difference between life and death because complications of the flu, any flu, can be very serious.
It's a two-edged sword. I don't think there's any way to convey the potential seriousness of the spread of such an illness without causing people to feel a little jittery.
Avian flu didn't turn into as big a deal in the USA as some predicted, and thank God for that. I'm hoping that public awareness will keep the spread of this latest bug at a minimum.
The bottom line is that I'd rather be warned that there's a tornado heading my way, even if it veers off in another direction, than not be warned and be out sunning myself on the roof when a big swirly black cloud sucks up my house!
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