I haven't been following the deaths of people in Mexico (and in the U.S., primarily in the Southwest) closely, but Tyler Cowen says:
What worries me, personally, is that many of their cousins keep chickens in their backyards here in the densely populated San Fernando Valley. I don't know how many keep pigs, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Some people are puzzled as to how human, pig, and bird strains of the flu have mixed together, but if you have spent any time in rural Mexico the answer is obvious: these creatures all live together in close quarters.
What worries me, personally, is that many of their cousins keep chickens in their backyards here in the densely populated San Fernando Valley. I don't know how many keep pigs, but I wouldn't be surprised.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
69 comments:
Chickens are SWPL, very common here in Portland.
Racist.
"---Some people are puzzled as to how human, pig, and bird strains of the flu have mixed together, but if you have spent any time in rural Mexico the answer is obvious: these creatures all live together in close quarters.---"
Sounds like a more accurate term would be "Mestizo flu" instead.
Does this have an immigration angle?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/americas/26flu.html?hp
"Officials were also suspicious since some St. Francis students had been to Mexico recently."
Why? To visit relatives?
1/ Another reason to become vegetarian. Never heard of the tomato flu (so far).
2/ I thought paleos preferred small family farms to large corporate agribusinesses. Its in the former where people live far closer to the animals.
3/ Don't think those awful Rubashkins in Postville ever got swine flu, do you? Its such a shame that not everyone is Jewish (or Muslim or Buddhist) isn't it?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aEsNownABJ6Q&refer=worldwide
"Obama’s Visit
The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not."
Just coincidence or...
Sorry, but now I can't stop thinking of the Muppet Show episode where Kermit mentions "swine flu" ... and then Miss Piggy lets him have it, right in the chops!
Ah, life was so much simpler, "back in the day"....
"hiii-ya!!"
Some people are puzzled as to how human, pig, and bird strains of the flu have mixed together....The really puzzling thing is that this virus is a mix of two swine influenzas -- one North American and the other Eurasian -- plus the human and bird strains.
Nothing like a little horizontal gene transfer to make evolution even more interesting.
Scrub stock?
Some people are puzzled as to how human, pig, and bird strains of the flu have mixed together
Last month Baxter International Inc was caught shipping “experimental virus material” to various subcontractors.
google = baxter virus
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=baxter+virus&aq=f&oq=
Yesterday's tinfoil is today's reality. Yes, the military industrial complex (includes pharma companies) is using the world's population for testing of bioweapons. Is that so damn hard to believe?
Many of the wealthiest people in the world are on record saying the human population of the earth is way too large. Do you really think the ultra elites are not going to try to micro manage the world population but micro manage everything else?
The future is nuclear false flag attacks. And bioweapon false flag attacks. And shadowy terrorists making videotapes from cave hideouts in "unreachable" areas of the world. And a constant increase in the Power of the State over the people. Total Information Awareness i.e. Total Control is possible if the population is frightened to the maximum degree.
Now go get in line for a digital body scan and a mandatory "anti-viral injection".
One thing is for sure: No way in hell will the United States border with Mexico be closed over this.
Millions could die in a pandemic and the United States government would still refuse to close the border. The commissars will spend tomorrow and next week telling us that it would be "unhelpful and counter productive" to quarantine the virus in Mexico "even if it were possible".
Of course the question "why isn't it possible?" will never be asked. And the required changes to United States border policies will not be made to make it possible to stop any such hazard in the future.
They already flashed a BS story across the wires that the virus from Mexico was breaking out at a prep school in NYC. But I doubt very much it's the same swine flu. The point of that particular story was to make the people of America say to ourselves "it's too late to close the Mexican border because the swine flu is already here and there's just no point closing the door because the horse is out of the barn blah blah blah".
Read between the lines. The American media is totally corrupt and the grim reality of that corruption means real world consequences for all Americans.
Drudge has already dutifully posted a link to a Reuter's story that hammers home the verdict that this outbreak is "impossible to control".
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aoGUVYG8hWLs
Yes that's right. The key phrase is "impossible to control". Let's count the number of times we hear that in this news cycle.
Sounds like absolutely no one in the government will get fired over this no matter what happens.
Will Al Qaeda take credit? Or maybe an M-16 owning "white supremacist" in a lab coat? Or both!
Stay tuned to find out the juicy details.
Sorry here is the correct link from Drudge:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25472826.htm
"impossible to contain"
"impossible to control"
Might as well stop worrying. People in China often live in the same house as their pigs, chickens and ducks (multilevel houses -- at least the people are on top), and there are daily flights from China to California. Outhouses are often located above pigsties so that pigs can consume what humans have passed. Evidently, it makes the pork tastier. I am not kidding -- I've seen it myself.
Mexico can't compare, I don't think.
Another reason to become vegetarian. Never heard of the tomato flu (so far)Yep, just like all those agriculturalist skeletons that show fine, robust health and lack of infections. Greater population density is a factor, but the effect remains even when you look at similar-sized groups.
Just about everyone is such a society is de facto vegetarian, and usually not even something halfway decent like spinach or avocado, but corn or rice or potato.
From the New Scientist article:
"Our standard model of evolution is under enormous pressure. We're clearly going to see evolution as much more about mergers and collaboration than change within isolated lineages."I smell a new diversitarian theory in the making.
When I visit Los Angeles, I stay in the Motel 6 in North Hills on Roscoe Boulevard.
It's right in the heart of the San Fernando Valley and across the street from the Budweiser brewery that you can easily see from the freeway -- so this is not exactly a remote rural part of the Los Angeles area.
Somehow, somewhere from the motel, I can often hear a rooster crowing from one of the neighboring residences -- not just at sunrise but any time of the day or evening.
It's a weak sort of crowing -- not enough to really disturb my rest. I'm amazed that the animal is still alive really.
But it's a small but telling anecdotal indicator of the area's vibrancy.
Let's keep them honest... this is the Mexican Flu.
btw, border control enthusiasts should be howling over this. I don't hear it though... cowards?
Steve Sailer knows that it pays to be skeptical of these big bio-terror events. He did the homework on the notorious Anthrax Scare that happened after 9/11.
Too bad 99%+ of the population didn't bother to pay attention to the Anthrax Scare story as it developed over the years just like the first World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing and so many other major events.
The United States government cover stories on the Anthrax episode are about as ludicrous and despicable as the bogus Richard Jewel did the Atlanta Olympics bombing episode.
We the People are currently going through a painful transition phase and as we go deeper into it the American people will reduced to the same rock bottom level of cynicism and skepticism as the Russian people were under the USSR propaganda blanket.
LOL--In the Sailer-esqe hatefact sense.
Men out perform women in "Battle of Sexes" marathon in Nasvhille, depsite 18 minute head start.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090426/SPORTS12/904260378
Sorry thats unrelated to the Mexican swine flu and its origins and speed of spread (or is it?!?). Thought you guys would find it funny though. Imagine....men actually better at something innately like running. It must be the sexism inherent in learning how to put one foot-in-front of another while jogging and the barriers the females face when being taught and other overwhelming cultural burndens like how treadmills at the gym automatically treat them like second-class occupants....or, or, or...
In all my cruelty, m
Chickens are SWPLNo. Hippies and/or farmers aren't WP in the SWPL sense. Having friends or relatives who raise chickens is very SWPL, actually doing the hard work of raising chickens is not SWPL.
I wonder if the Obama administration will blame us for this, too. Hillary: "We fully recognize that United States citizens love to eat chicken. Therefore we must shoulder some of the blame for this outbreak."
Also, to the poster who brought up Postville: I'm sure that even if an outbreak did happen there, a fistful of cash would be offered to make it "go away," just like traffic accidents.
I am no expert but I have read that the great majority of infectious diseases in humans are associated with domestic animals. It is ,perhaps, the reason why the Americas with only two species of domestic animal were so vulnerable in the post columbian era to the eurasian diseases from a continent possessing 21 species of domestic animals.
However to get back to the point, all strains of human influenza are the result of viruses that have passed between humans, pigs and fowl.
The worry with this strain is that is the H1N1 type that has been responsable for all of the great pandemics. The virulence of this strain remains to be seen.
The American media is totally corrupt....No, they're not. The media haven't been corrupted by the enemy -- they are the enemy.
It's the evolution of virulence through horizontal transmission. Immigration policy is designed to foster such increased virulence.
Ho hum, a mix of strains which as far as we know should not naturally (key word there bubba) occur in our world, hmmm, nothing to see here...
2/ I thought paleos preferred small family farms to large corporate agribusinesses. Its in the former where people live far closer to the animals.
Hmmm.
Makes me think the Amish would be highly susceptible to equine flu.
Of course they are German.
So hygiene on their farms is probably very important to them.
That and the Amish believe in modern medicine and don't rely on brujeras to cure their ills.
"Obama’s Visit
The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not."
So the distinguished archeologist was sick with the flu when he met with the POTUS??
Hey Steve, I just perused the TPM site to see what all the ruckus was about it, and found out about the few bloggers over there who've been leading the attacks against you.
One of these people, a rather hysterical sort, seriously writes the following kind of stuff, apparently in all seriously, after going through the TPM archive to count how many blacks and minorities have been on the site:
"The rest of TPM -- judging by the numbers -- is a bit of a different story. That has to change. and not with just more black writers. I didn't do a tally for other ethnicities, but it did stand out that I didn't see any Latino/a authors or issues, or Native Americans and just a few (less than five?) Asians. Something is terribly wrong with that in country that's supposed to be "post-," you know, "post-racial," "post-ethnic," et cetera.
We are all affected by the economy, by war, by the lack of healthcare, by our foreign policy, by education and other domestic policy issues. To not have a wider variety of ideas and opinions represented is disappointing. And whether TPM's editors want to admit it or not, it does affect their editorial coverage. It's hard to be "fair and balanced," so to speak, when there is no one to speak for those who are, well, overlooked.
Thankfully, all of us "All Readers" bring our own diversity with the posts we write and the opinions we share. I will continue to press for TPM to expand and diversity its staff, its invitations to authors, its choice of books and other features. In the meantime, thanks to you all for being so different, for being so diverse."
Beyond parody.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/jade7243/2009/04/change-is-gonna-come.php#comment-3448962
It's silly to look at this from an immigration angle. I'm in favor of greatly reducing our immigration levels and would be considered an immigration restrictionist. But it's not like it took massive immigration to drive previous worldwide flu epidemics. All it takes is one person flying business class from country A to country B for the virus to spread across nations and continents. As an example, the Spanish Flu epidemic spread via shipping lanes, which is why it struck Massachusetts and Sierra Leone at approximately the same time.
In the event of a pandemic, the only nations that could conceivably insulate themselves are island nations like Australia or New Zealand, and they would have to act very, very quickly and completely close their borders to EVERYONE.
Oh, and the guy who's been the most aggressive critic of you over at TPM, or should I say the guy who's been pointing and sputtering the most, has made what he calls his "parting shot" at you.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/24/the_big_sort/index.php#comment-3448835
He quotes a law firm that researched the CRA, the San Fran Fed Bank President, an editorial in the Kansas City Star by a woman named Mary Sanchez who argues that minorities (blacks & hispanics) receive higher cost loans than whites and that it's due to racism (I believe you've addressed this issue before). And he also quotes the lyrics from a song by 90s hard rock band "Tool".
Over the course of his attacks on you this guy has revealed that he's a big reader of you by the way. He quotes entire passages of your work from years ago. Or he just read your entire archive over the course of a few days in order to find quotes to attack you.
"It's the evolution of virulence through horizontal transmission."
Insight of the day.
I would like to know more about germs beyond "The New Germ Theory" which is why I would love to hear what Cochran and Ewald have to say. Ewald said in his book that he expected future virulent pandemics to come from boring, well-known diseases that had evolved to become more virulent in precisely the way Tillman alluded to in his comment. He also said diseases that mainly reside in animals rarely do well in the human population: affected the people in close proximity to the animals, but not lasting much beyond that.
That was an introductory book and I'm ignorant about a virus like this and I also don't understand exactly what the experts mean when they say they've never seen a virus like this.
"Chickens are SWPL, very common here in Portland."
More like having a 12 year old daughter who raises abandoned chipmunks or something like that. I don't thing SWPLers raising chickens is "very common."
What worries me, personally, is that many of their cousins keep chickens in their backyards here in the densely populated San Fernando Valley. I don't know how many keep pigs, but I wouldn't be surprised.Steve, I hope this was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. The virus has already evolved and spread to humans. Whether there are pigs in Pacoima is pretty much irrelevant now.
Similarly,
One thing is for sure: No way in hell will the United States border with Mexico be closed over this. It would be like locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. Influenza is extraordinarily contagious. Once the disease has broken out in several parts of the US, trying to prevent it from spreading all over the country is pretty much a losing battle.
Also, the fact that an argument is used by pro-immigration officials doesn't automatically make it wrong. It would be hard to close such a long, busy border that passes through so much remote country. It would be even harder to do so quickly, which is the only thing that might help, although in reality it's probably too late already. There is no precedent for such an action; I'd be surprised if any US government had even developed an emergency protocol for closing either the Mexican or Canadian border because of the difficult of doing it quickly. (By the way, we didn't close the border with Canada during the SARS epidemic. Was that political correctness, too?)
"Officials were also suspicious since some St. Francis students had been to Mexico recently."
Why? To visit relatives?Jeez, you guys love to jump to conclusions, don't you?
St Francis Prep is a prestigious school in a fairly affluent part of Queens. Although it's a big school and might well have a few Mexican students, a much more likely explanation is that these students went to Mexico on spring break.
anony-mouse said
"Another reason to become vegetarian. Never heard of the tomato flu (so far)."
Heard about spinach last year? And strawberries before that? And, yes, tomatoes at one point? Toilet paper and 2-dollar-a-day mestizos have not made each other's acquaintance. No Port-a-Potties where you get your lettuce from. Thanks, Mexico!
"Don't think those awful Rubashkins in Postville ever got swine flu, do you?"
Well, they probably wash their hands.
Anonymous said
"Hillary: We fully recognize that United States citizens love to eat chicken."
Better not say that standing next to Obama. You're racist.
That certainly is a "sexist" headline over the marathon story, Anonymous.
What the headline SHOULD read is "Women impressive in marathon competition".
Then the body of the story should be written as to give the impression that the women outperformed the men in straight-up competition.
Only at the bottom of the page is it permissible to mention -- very briefly and casually, if at all -- the handicap and the actual results of the competition.
Finally, given enough time, someone is sure to remark that Tatiana Pushkareva can run a marathon faster than you or I can.
This proves that women run faster than men.
Quarantine Mexico!
Some of the newspaper stories on this are invoking the 1918 influenza, which they claim "targeted" healthy young and middle-aged adults.
How would that even be possible? It seems that any virus would always be more dangerous to the old, the very young, the weak, and the already ill, and that these people would always suffer proportionately higher mortality.
Unless that is, it is a question of the route of transmission. If the transmission pathways favored some behavior or circumstance that only pertained to young (20 - 45) people, and it otherwise wasn't that virulent, then it might be selective in that way. This is the case for venereal diseases.
Any ideas on this? How could an influenza virus preferentially attack the young and healthy? Doesn't make sense.
Oh please Smith. The reality is that we live in a Science Fiction world. One where technology is a commodity. Pakistan is falling to the Taliban, rapidly, and could be in their control in weeks if not days. Already the zone the government controls ends 60 miles out from the capital.
Take polygamous, tribal people. Add nukes and globalization. Watch cities die.
Your problem Smith is like Nicholson said, you can't handle the truth. Which is that once tech becomes a cheap (relatively) thing, even failed states/people can use it. For their own ends. ["Whatever happens, they have got, the nuclear bomb, and we have not ... the will."]
Tribal Polygamists from Pakistan may wear funny clothes, have four wives, a ton of children (Osama has 22 kids and counting) but that doesn't make them any less human and wanting to kill for profit and power. [AQ had since 1988 a Directorate devoted to bio, chem, and nuclear weapons, with mixed results.]
That being said, PC is clearly affecting our ability to close the border. Napolitano ruled it out. More SWPL Yuppie politics ("the border must remain open") running smack into public health reality.
The NYC Prep School = Mexican servants, that easy. Or eating at cheap places employing Mexican nationals.
The Spanish/WWI Pandemic that killed millions seems to have started among pigs/chickens as well, in and around Fort Sill OK, though there were always suspicions, probably unfounded, of German action. Germans under the Kaiser did use biowarfare against horses, but there is unfortunately a long tradition of pigs being a flu reservoir. Germans probably did not have the knowledge then to do such a thing.
Nor do I hold AQ, "evil Government" or any other conspirator starting such a disease pandemic, any more than GWB caused Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian earthquakes. Stuff happens.
What this does point out is how unable SWPL Yuppies (who elected Obama along with single women) are in governing when hard choices: close the border or PC, come about.
The BEST health effort would be to close the border. Not let the disease wash over us. But Yuppie politics gets in the way.
After reading much of the output of the controversial and seemingly popular blogger Roissy over the weekend, and learning about the Mexican "swine flu, and reading about the demographic trends in the US as well as the next gen war robot tech, it's become quite clear that our near future is going to look like a really bad Philip K. Dick novel mixed with Mike Judge's "Idiocracy."
Mr. Anon, google flu cytokine storm.
People in vigorous early adulthood can kill themselves with their own immune systems in response to infection.
Mr.Anon wrote:
"Some of the newspaper stories on this are invoking the 1918 influenza, which they claim "targeted" healthy young and middle-aged adults.
How would that even be possible? It seems that any virus would always be more dangerous to the old, the very young, the weak, and the already ill, and that these people would always suffer proportionately higher mortality."
I've heard that it was the young people who died because they were the ones with the strongest immune systems, and it was the extreme immune response that killed people. I think SARS was the same.
Mr. Anon said: "Some of the newspaper stories on this are invoking the 1918 influenza, which they claim "targeted" healthy young and middle-aged adults. How would that even be possible?"
I don't understand the mechanisms fully, but it actually has something to do with the fact that young people have healthy immune systems that for some reason 'overreact' to certain influenza viruses (like the one that caused the 1918 pandemic and possibly the one coming out of Mexico at the moment). A "cytokine storm" is triggered when the immune system overreacts and this can prove to be fatal.
"Officials were also suspicious since some St. Francis students had been to Mexico recently."
Why? To visit relatives?Jeez, you guys love to jump to conclusions, don't you?
St Francis Prep is a prestigious school in a fairly affluent part of Queens. Although it's a big school and might well have a few Mexican students, a much more likely explanation is that these students went to Mexico on spring break.
4/26/2009I saw a clip on Fox News last night. Four St. John's students were interviewed. All four looked and sounded like Mexicans or maybe Puerto Ricans.
I dunno, maybe Fox selected those four out of the "prep school" student body with prejudice.
The main thing we were watching was "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" on another channel. Pretty good, in some ways better than "Bored of the Rings."
Steve, did you review "The Lion ..." back in 2005 when the movie was new? Lots of story elements to appeal to iSteve-niks: Christian allegory, female villain, timeless Aryan fairyland setting ( no modern architecture! )...
We the People are currently going through a painful transition phase and as we go deeper into it the American people will reduced to the same rock bottom level of cynicism and skepticism as the Russian people were under the USSR propaganda blanket.So true. My other favorite analogy to the U.S.S.R. is support for the regime (Communism/Diversity); there were and are negative consequences to dissent, so how can we trust metrics of public opinion?
Beyond parody.
Yeah, and as far as I can tell she wasn't trolling.
That's just creepy.
Maybe she's a paid shill or something. Yeah, that's what I'll tell myself...
It seems quite apparent that the cause of the [current outbreak of swine flu] can be traced directly to the misguided policies of George W. Bush.
Anton
Any ideas on this? How could an influenza virus preferentially attack the young and healthy? Doesn't make sense.Perhaps they were living outdoors, in mud and excrement, in trenches?
The NYC Prep School = Mexican servants, that easy. Or eating at cheap places employing Mexican nationals. The school is in QUEENS, it's not in Manhattan. And even in Manhattan, people who send their children to expensive private schools have servants from Jamaica, not Mexico, you doofus.
don't know if it's completely original but a good sailerism is 'political correctness makes you stupid' and from that maxim we can infer that yes 'political correctness can get you killed'.......
arguments in this thread that claim we can't close the borders because 'it's too complex' are asinine.......a 1918-style pandemic will kill many more today than it did last century.....cities are much larger and more compact......should we not attempt to save a million plus American lives because closing the borders would disturb transborder 'commerce'? because it would be 'too complicated' a task? epidemics come in waves and closing the borders will help no matter how many idiots scream that it won't help.....
border closings are a form of quarantine.......
duuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
open borders push comes from radical nation wrecking leftists in cynical partnership with the business interests and both need to be hit hard in the mouth and tossed overboard in an emergency situation.......borders of any nation on the planet can be shut tight as soon as the government wants them shut tight......
major dilemma for open borders lobby is any demonstration by the government that shows the borders can actually be controlled.....it is official american mythology that the borders are too complex to control.....any evidence contrary to that mythology must be quashed or suppressed.......tight borders for even a few days would create a major political headache.....we don't want to give the sheep any ideas!
but good luck to the potus and administration that keeps borders open during any future genuine pandemic......this world is a boiling cauldron now and detached elites just do not understand......a few quasi-elite commentators have seen it coming....but throughout history the pattern is that the elites themselves rarely see their own end coming.........elites are usually shouting '99 bottles of beer on the wall' as they fly over the cliff in their station wagon......
1918-style pandemic will kill many more today than it did last century.....cities are much larger and more compactCities are larger and LESS compact. The generation who suffered the last pandemic lived 10 to a room. Plus our hygeine is better, plus we didn't just fight WWI.
Politically there is no way that Hillary/Obama/Napolitano can allow the border be closed even though it will make public health and the safety of the nation much stronger.
Because then people would ask why not close it all the time. And we can't have that.
SWPL Yuppies must have their servants. Dems their new voters to replace White ones. Women the economic cleansing of Blue collar men. [There is nothing White women detest more than Blue collar White men, and yeah, it's just in the same manner that SWPL yuppies endorse the economic cleansing of Blacks from historically black neighborhoods like South Central.]
Closing the Border would mean conceding Amnesty is dead. I fully expect Obama to push that soon, perhaps even in the teeth of the pandemic.
"Your problem Smith is like Nicholson said, you can't handle the truth. Which is that once tech becomes a cheap (relatively) thing, even failed states/people can use it. For their own ends. ["Whatever happens, they have got, the nuclear bomb, and we have not ... the will."]"
t99, your condescension toward Steve and the others here shows, and is a real put-off. If this is your attitude towards women its no wonder you’re not finding a decent wife. Nukes need to be delivered. Pakistan has so far only tested rockets, mostly built with designs from NKorea, whioch again came from China, which again came from Russia, which again came from WWII Germany. They have not demonstrably delivered the payloads which nuking Europe, the US or Russia would imply. Even if they delivered 1 nuke, the result would be obliteration of the country by either the US, Russia or even Europe (France and the UK have enough firepower for this purpose).
Same with other weaponry. You can buy Leopard I tanks, older Russian and maybe some older US tanks on the black market. What's the point though when the cutting edge gear, Leopard II, Abrams or Merkava have far larger ranges both in stationary and mobile fire? They just pick off the enemy at long range, just like the US did in Iraq.
The gov't won't even test travellers coming from Mexico for the flu. What's the point of declaring an "emergency"?
http://lite.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26491120.htm
testy almost made it through - and then, wham, old reliable "SWPL" makes it appearance.
To Anonymous, Anonymous from Canada, and Jun:
A cytokine storm - that makes good sense - sounds very similar to the mechanism which causes the severe skin outbreak after exposure to Poison Oak.
I have learned something. My thanks to all of you for the explanation.
Regards, Mr. Anon
"Nukes need to be delivered. Pakistan has so far only tested rockets, mostly built with designs from NKorea, whioch again came from China, which again came from Russia, which again came from WWII Germany. They have not demonstrably delivered the payloads which nuking Europe, the US or Russia would imply. Even if they delivered 1 nuke, the result would be obliteration of the country by either the US, Russia or even Europe (France and the UK have enough firepower for this purpose)."
The nuclear weapons that will detonate in a US or European city(s) will probably not be delivered by rocket. They will be smuggled in through porous borders that are "too complex to secure" and "slip by" security authorities who are too PC to actually do anything useful.
This way places like Iran, North Korea (both who work together with rocket and nuclear technology)) and Pakistan (soon to be Talibanistan) will have plausable deniability, no rocket launch to trace and no rocket flight to track. Then again, one of these rockets with a nuclear warhead could be launched from a container ship. Satellites will pick up the launch off the coast and alert the President in time to take cover under his desk. The ship will then be scuttled. Plausable deniability again.
I used to think that the US or England would turn any country to glass if we thought a nuclear attack came from them. Now, I'm not so sure. We may have the most powerful military in the world, but our will is weak and getting weaker. The US is decaying internally, I can smell it and you had better believe our enemies can. Look who runs the nation. Islam has been a "religion of peace" for the last 8 years. Our enemies may feel that attacking the US is worth the risk.
Probably only the Russians would respond, maybe. But if the attack wsn't against them they may not. And besides, why would Russia come to the aid of the US? Assholes from Harvard tried to trash their economy. Don't bank on the French, too much of their army is muslim (They are scared about that and I don't blame them).
---Any ideas on this? How could an influenza virus preferentially attack the young and healthy?---
"Doesn't make sense.Perhaps they were living outdoors, in mud and excrement, in trenches?"
This is PROPAGANDA on the part of the 'authorities' to intimidate people into 'following' their dictates.
Remember a couple of years ago they used the same li(e)ne/schtick about 'the young and healthy' supposedly being suseptable to whatever bug was supposedly going around at the time???
The legal border crossings are not what need to be secured. Those can be handled simply by screening for symptoms and passing around a rumor that sick people are being detained and quarantined and possibly experimented on. It's the thousands of illegal crossers that are the real risk, because those folks hail from the sector of their society who don't believe in things like germs and are also likely to go ahead and find work and intermingle with many others even if they are sick.
A clamp down on illegal crossers would go a long way towards keeping this pandemic from spreading at lightning speed. There is also an incidental side benefit; if the clamp down lasted a significant period of time, it would generate statistics showing a dramatic drop in crime rates and jobless claims. A missed opportunity.
Are you "Whiskey" at Roissy?It's odd to me that people are just now making the connection. The first time I followed links from here to Half Sigma's blog I spotted Whiskey and figured he was Evil Neocon. I've read all of two posts at Roissy's and Whiskey is impossible to miss.
I used to think that the US or England would turn any country to glass if we thought a nuclear attack came from them. Now, I'm not so sure.Makes you wonder about the odds of the military pulling a General Ripper move if some cretin like Obama refuses to retaliate in kind + order of magnitude. I wonder, because I figure our military has the balls to pull that trigger.
So far no Mexican flu cases have been reported in Washington state. This is salient because we have about 100k Mexican migrants traveling back and forth each spring to pick the apple crop. These would presumably be the same class of people who have lots of contact with pigs and chickens in Mexico. With so much interchange, you'd expect more cases.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/apr/27/no-cases-swine-flu-reported-wash/
"I wonder, because I figure our military has the balls to pull that trigger."
Svigor,
I hope so. As I said, I have serious doubts that our civilian
"leadership" does.
It is possible the lethal Mexican cases are from a different virus or mutation than the benign cases we've seen in America. If so, maybe there's still time to protect ourselves by closing the border.
As far as naming this outbreak, "swine flu" isn't specific enough. So I propose that along the lines of the previous Spanish Flu and Asian Flu, the media refer to Mexican Flu.
Has anyone read WHO's reasoning for not advising people to close the borders? I know epidemiologists do a lot of historical research and simulation to work out how to contain outbreaks of diseases, so it's possible that they've got good reasons to believe that closing the borders won't stop the epidemic. On the other hand, they may be trying to balance health with economic or political considerations. Someone needs to do that, else we'd all be wearing ruber gloves and masks year-round, but it would be nice if that someone were not also claiming to offer objective advice based on science.
I think "objective scientific" committees and such routinely stick policy preferences into their "science based" recommendations, probably because everyone can see that our politicians aren't up to the job of making any kind of sensible tradeoffs.
Is it possible that the high death rate in Mexico vs. the (so far) "mild" response in the US is somehow related to the DNA of the victims?
Mexican flu is the best description so far for the flu sweeping the United States but the term absolves open borders fanatics. Nafta flu is a good name for the flu. Isteve readers need to come up with a colorful name that implicates open borders fanatics in the spread of the flu in the US.
Post a Comment