Flu concerns

summed up a parallel that many health officials and journalists had noted: " Disturbing echoes of the great 1918 flu pandemic. " " The main danger of a new flu virus emerging from pigs is that it would not be recognised by the human immune system and so would result in severe infections that could quickly spread from one person to another, " The Independent noted. And there was no denying that we were possibly headed in that direction. Less often noted was that, in 1918, the disease was spread in part through the appalling conditions of World War I. Also too often left unsaid was that, since 1918, we have invented not only antibiotics and effective flu vaccines, but antiviral drugs, intensive care, and some notion of how to slow the pace of an epidemic. Newsweek magazine showed a pig-snout on its cover to illustrate " Fear & The Flu — The New Age of Pandemics. " That article pondered the hazards of factory farming and concluded ominously, " if we don't do something about it, this ecology will one day spawn a severe epidemic that will dwarf that of 1918. " That's quite possibly true in terms of a global body count — considering that so much of the world lacks access to decent medicine — but far less likely to be the case for the relatively affluent readers of Newsweek. And speaking of pig snouts, one of the most curious sub-plots revolved around the name of the disease. After pig farmers complained that " swine flu " was besmirching their livelihood and scaring people away from their wares, the medical Powers That Be made the rather dubious decision to rename the potential pandemic strain '2009 H1N1'. That's a ridiculous moniker, considering that one of the prime strains of flu that's already in wide circulation is also called H1N1, so now we have two strains named H1N1 to keep straight (nobody bothered with the 2009 part of the name — too much baggage). Other attempted names died quickly. " Government officials in Thailand, one of the world's largest meat exporters, have started referring to the disease as 'Mexican flu', " the New York Times reported. " An Israeli deputy health minister — an ultra-Orthodox Jew — said his country would do the same, to keep Jews from having to say the word 'swine'. However, his call seemed to …