Swine Flu: Fear vs. Knowledge
Infographic: Raj Kamal
Raj Kamal of MintLife has a pretty nifty infographic about swine flu. Eye candy aside, I’m not going to take it completely at face value. For one, the graph lists graphjam.com (LOL!) and squidoo.com as source. This particular portion show above, however, looks logical enough to me 
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I Can Has Swine Flu: H1N1 Virus Infected Pet Cat
Can your pet get sick from swine flu? The answer turns out to be yes. Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine has found a cat that contracted the H1N1 virus and got sick with swine flu:
On Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Public Health reported the first confirmed case of H1N1 in a house pet, a 13-year-old domestic shorthaired cat. The animal likely contracted the virus from its owners, veterinarians say, since two of the three family members living in the cat’s household had recently suffered from influenza-like illness. Late last week, when the cat came down with flu-like symptoms — malaise, loss of appetite — its owners brought it to Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine for treatment. The family mentioned to the vet that they had also recently battled illness, which led to testing the pet for H1N1.
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H1N1 Swine Flu Giant Microbe Plush Toy
Swine Flu / H1N1 Virus Giant Microbes – $7.95
With all the commotion over swine flu, who knew that the culprit – H1N1 Influenza Virus – could be so … cute? Here’s the popular Giant Microbe plush toy based on cause of the global flu pandemic. Get yours before the second wave of the pandemic hits!
Featured Item: every order will get a Free Mystery Bonus. It’s for a limited time only, so get yours today!
From the Neatorama Shop: H1N1 Swine Flue Virus Plush Toy | Other Giant Microbes | Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge T-Shirt
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Fashionable Swine Flu Masks
If you’re going to wear a mask to prevent catching the flu, why not make it something worth looking at? Now That’s Nifty has a roundup of interesting face masks from all over. Link
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"Swan Flu" and Other Commonly Misspelled Search Terms of the Month
All of you Neatoramanauts know that we love tpyos here at Neatorama, but even we know how to spell Susan Boyle, MySpace and Swine Flu – those are just three of the most commonly misspelled (or perhaps mistyped) searches in Yahoo!
Vera H-C Chan of Yahoo! Buzz’ The Buzz Log has the list:
Recent Orthographic Abuses of the English Language on Yahoo!, Past 30 Days
* Swan Flu (for Swine Flu)
* Susan Boil (for "Britain’s Got Talent" contender Susan Boyle)
* Brack Obama (for U.S. President Barack Obama)
* Sonia Sotomeyer (for Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor)
* Rachel Ray (for Food Network host Rachael Ray)
* Paperview boxing (for cable programming pay-per-view boxing)
* Amtrack (for train system Amtrak)
* Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart)
* Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett)
* Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart)
* Arlene Specter (for Senator Arlen Specter)
* “Dancing With the Starts” (for ABC reality competition Dancing With the Stars)
* Bea Author” (for the late comedian Bea Arthur)
* Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears)
* Chris Allen (for “American Idol” winner Kris Allen)
* Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm)
* Mysapce (for MySpace)
Previously on Neatorama: Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge
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Keep Calm and Don't Sneeze
Is the swine flu hysteria over yet? Here’s a clever poster by Work for Food reminding you to keep calm and carry on: Link – via BB-Blog
Similarly, in Neatorama’s Online Shop: Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge T-shirt
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Lonely Pig in Quarantine
Due to fear of swine flu, Afghanistan has quarantined its pig. Yes, the nation’s only pig, normally on display along with other exotic wildlife at the Kabul Zoo.
The pig is a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain.
“For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza,” Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. “We’ve done this because people are worried about getting the flu.”
Link -via YesButNoButYes
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Farmers Fearful Swine Flu Will Infect Pigs
Forget people! The real concern for farmers is not that humans get swine flu from pigs … it’s the other way around!
Humans have it. Pigs don’t. At least not yet, and U.S. pork producers are doing everything they can to make sure that the new H1N1 virus, known around the world as the "swine flu," stays out of their herds.
"That is the biggest concern, that your herd could somehow contract this illness from an infected person," said Kansas hog farmer Ron Suther, who is banning visitors from his sow barns and requiring maintenance workers, delivery men and other strangers to report on recent travels and any illness before they step foot on his property.
"If a person is sick, we don’t want you coming anywhere on the farm," Suther said.
Previously on Neatorama:
- Scientists: Swine Flu Milder Than Run-Of-The-Mill Winter Flu
- Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge
- What is Swine Flu? How Does an Animal Disease Spread to a Human Host?
- 5 Deadliest Pandemics in History
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Scientists: Swine Flu Milder Than Run-Of-The-Mill Winter Flu
If you’ve been watching all of the media hype, you’d be forgiven if you think that the swine flu pandemic will kill us all. But according to some scientists, it’s actually much milder than your average run-of-the-mill flu that hit every winter:
The swine virus does appear able to spread easily among humans, which persuaded the WHO to boost its influenza pandemic alert level to phase 5, indicating that a worldwide outbreak of infection is very likely. And the CDC reported on its website that "a pattern of more severe illness associated with the virus may be emerging in the United States." [...]
But certainly nothing that would dwarf a typical flu season. In the U.S., between 5% and 20% of the population becomes ill and 36,000 people die — a mortality rate of between 0.24% and 0.96%.
Dirk Brockmann, a professor of engineering and applied mathematics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., used a computer model of human travel patterns to predict how this swine flu virus would spread in the worst-case scenario, in which nothing is done to contain the disease.
After four weeks, almost 1,700 people in the U.S. would have symptoms, including 198 in Los Angeles, according to his model. That’s just a fraction of the county’s thousands of yearly flu victims.
Karen Kaplan and Alan Zarembo of The Los Angeles Times has more: Link
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10 Pigs We Will Always Love
Fatigued and irritable, with a touch of fever? No, it’s not swine flu. Chances are, you’ve caught swine flu overload.
And who’d blame ya …with "breaking news" every few minutes over possible cases of the flu, followed with even more breaking news of press conferences of denying that those cases were even flu to begin with. Not that Neatorama isn’t guilty of hyping up the swine flu, mind you.
So. Pigs have gotten a lot of bad press, lately, and the only cure for swine flu overload is … more news about pigs (positive spin, of course). That’s just what Nicholas Nadel of Asylum has done – here’s a look at the 10 Pigs We Will Always Love:
3. Babe
Smart, adorable, and with the voice of Bobby Hill, Babe is the only pig with an Oscar nomination under his belt. In fact, he’s such a well-rendered pig, he beat "Apollo 13" for best special effects. (The bad blood between Babe and Tom Hanks is legendary.) He even scored a sequel, the darkly surreal "Babe: Pig in the City." Fun fact: "Babe" was banned in Malaysia for not being "halal." That won’t do pig, that won’t do.
Link – Thanks Kurt Patat!
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Swine Flu: Bacon's Revenge
Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge – $9.95
Swine flu is on everybody’s mind, so why not on their T-shirts as well? Neatorama illustrator Chris Murphy cooked up this hammy design that will surely get your friends and co-workers chuckling (though whether they’re chuckling because the shirt is funny or they’re nervous about swine flu is another matter).
And for those who’re sick and tired of hearing of the swine flu pandemic, how about a little pundemic? The cleverest pun in the comment (yes, I’m looking at you, Kalel) will win this T-shirt. Moral outrage is welcome (as long as it’s funny).
Link | Lots more fun Science T-Shirts
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What is Swine Flu? How Does an Animal Disease Spread to a Human Host?
The Geeks are Sexy blog has a great post explaining everything you need to know about swine flu and how animal diseases can jump across the species barrier.
Have you been watching the news at all recently? If so, you’ve probably heard the term “Swine Flu” bouncing around a lot. While most people come down with the normal human flu at some point, it’s not really a danger to anyone but the very young and the very old. Why is this flu different and what does it have to do with pigs?
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5 Deadliest Pandemics in History
The outbreak of swine flu, first in Mexico then cases all over the world, has gotten a lot of people worried. And for a very good reason: despite the existence of scarier diseases caused by exotic viruses like Hantavirus and Ebola, influenza still reigns as the number one infectious killer in modern times.
Unlike regular seasonal epidemics of the flu, there are also rare but deadly pandemics, i.e. cases of influenza that spread on a worldwide scale and infect a large proportion of the human population.
While it's important not to panic (the swine flu appears to be highly treatable with conventional antiviral drugs), a review of past pandemics will elucidate why authorities are responding quickly to this outbreak. Here's a quick summary of the 5 deadliest pandemics in history:
1. The Peloponnesian War Pestilence
The
very first pandemic in recorded history was described by Thucydides. In
430 BC, during the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta, the Greek
historian told of a great pestilence that wiped out over 30,000 of the
citizens of Athens (roughly one to two thirds of all Athenians died).
Thucydides described the disease as such "People in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath." Next came coughing, diarrhea, spasms, and skin ulcers. A handful survived, but often without their fingers, sights, and even genitals (Source)
Until today, the disease that decimated ancient Athens has yet to be identified.
2. The Antonine Plague
In 165 AD, Greek physician Galen described an ancient pandemic, now thought to be smallpox, that was brought to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia. The disease was named after Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, one of two Roman emperors who died from it.
At its height, the disease killed some 5,000 people a day in Rome. By the time the disease ran its course some 15 years later, a total of 5 million people were dead.
3. The Plague of Justinian
In
541-542 AD, there was an outbreak of a deadly disease in the Byzantine
Empire. At the height of the infection, the disease, named the Plague
of Justinian after the reigning emperor Justinian I, killed 10,000 people
in Constantinople every day. With no room nor time to bury them, bodies
were left stacked in the open.
By the end of the outbreak, nearly half of the inhabitants of the city were dead. Historians believe that this outbreak decimated up to a quarter of human population in the eastern Mediterranean. (source)
What was the culprit? It was the bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This outbreak, the first known bubonic plague pandemic in recorded human history, marked the first of many outbreaks of plague - a disease that claimed as many as 200 million lives throughout history.
4. The Black Death
After the Plague of Justinian, there were many sporadic oubreaks of the plague, but none as severe as the Black Death of the 14th century.
While no one knows for certain where the disease came from (it was thought that merchants and soldiers carried it over caravan trading routes), the Black Death took a heavy toll on Europe. The fatality was recorded at over 25 million people or one-fourth of the entire population. (source)
It's interesting to note that the Black Death actually came in three forms: the bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic plague. The first, the bubonic plague, was the most common: people with this disease have buboes or enlarged lymphatic glands that turn black (caused by decaying of the skin while the person is still alive). Without treatment, bubonic plague kills about half of those infected within 3 to 7 days.
In
pneumonic plague, droplets of aerosolized Y. pestis bacteria
are transmitted from human to human by coughing. Unless treated with antibiotics
in the first 24 hours, almost 100% of people with this form of infection
die in 2 to 4 days.
The last form, septicemic plague, happens when the bacteria enter the blood from the lymphatic or respiratory system. Patients with septicemic plague develop gangrenes in their fingers and toes, which turn the skin black (which gives the disease its moniker) Though rare, this form of the disease is almost always fatal - often killing its victims the same day the symptoms appear. (Photo and Source: Insecta-Inspecta)
We haven't heard the last of the bubonic plague. In 1855, another bubonic plague epidemic (named the Third Epidemic) hit the world - this time, the initial outbreak was in Yunnan Province, China. Human migration, trade and wars helped the disease spread from China to India, Africa, and the Americas.
All in all, this pandemic lasted about 100 years (it officially ended in 1959) and claimed over 12 million people in India and China alone.
5. The Spanish Flu
Emergency military hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas (Image: National Museum
of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington
D.C.) via PLoS
Biology
In
March 1918, in the last months of World War I, an unusually virulent and
deadly flu virus was identified in a US military camp in Kansas. Just
6 months later, the flu had become a worldwide pandemic in all continents.
When the Spanish Flu pandemic was over, about 1 billion people or half the world's population had contracted it. It is perhaps the most lethal pandemic in the history of humankind: between 20 and 100 million people were killed, more the number killed in the war itself (Source)
The Spanish Flu actually didn't originate in Spain - it got its name because at the time, Spain wasn't involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship, thus it received great press attention there.
Recently, scientists were able to "resurrect" the virus from a well-preserved corpse buried in the permafrost of Alaska.
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