Say It Ain't So Already

Pandemic

September 26, 2011 at 11:50 AM Leave a comment

A friend sent me an article this morning (here it is) about H5N1 “bird flu.”

That got me thinking about pandemics generally so I Googled “pandemic” and got this.

Pretty disconcerting to see that amongst the top three articles are these two:

UCLA researchers find that H1N1 has spread to pigs in Africa

UCLA researchers have made an intriguing discovery. They’ve found swine flu in North African pigs. They stumbled upon the H1N1 virus while studying swine in Cameroon. The scientists think the pigs caught the virus from humans. They say the strain is almost identical to the one that many Southlanders contracted.

It’s something like a global game of viral ping-pong.

Scientists say the H1N1 virus originally spread from pigs to humans in Mexico, then traveled to Southern California and across the globe before finding its way to pigs in Africa.

Along the way the contagion sickened around 60 million people and killed more than 12,000.

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Budget cuts threaten pandemic response

The nation may be more vulnerable to a pandemic because of budget cuts that have slashed funding for emergency preparedness and downsized the force of public health workers.

Nashville has been part of that trend, and so has the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The physicians who head the local health department and the CDC worry about responding to a pandemic with fewer resources. Their diminished funding faces the likelihood of more cuts as the federal government looks for ways to reduce the deficit.

Thanks Tea Party.

Entry filed under: Financial Crisis, Health - Physical and Psychological, Nature. Tags: .