Swine Flu part 2. Knee deep in excrement

Tom Philpott has a great post with aspects of this story at grist.org [http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield]

There is also, as of today (May 1st) a good entry in Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_outbreak]

There are two reasons why this swine flu outbreak (let’s not call 150 or so deaths a “pandemic” or even epidemic, yet) could have started in Mexico.

1.As Mark Sircus (International Medical Veritas Association) points out: In Mexico City children rarely use the color blue when they paint the sky. The atmospheric pollution in the Mexican capital, one of the world’s biggest cities, is one of the most severe air pollution cases in the world. Contaminated air hangs over its population of more than 20 million people doing damage to children’s lungs causing chronic lung diseases when they are adults. Perched at 7,300 feet in a bowl-shaped valley where the air is thin, vehicle fumes get trapped and you might as well be living in a gas chamber. It is that bad and this explains in part why we are finding deaths from the flu concentrated there with no deaths reported outside of Mexico to this date. Even the healthy are sick. Full of toxins, they are medically speaking “accidents waiting to happen,” so when a strong flu strain strikes such a population the death rate will be very high. The cause of death is debatable!

2.Most of the initial severe cases appear to be centered on a hog farm owned by Smithfield Foods in the immediate area. Smithfield Food, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. According to the locals, the organic and fecal waste produced by Granjas Carrol isn’t adequately treated, creating water and air pollution in the region. Residents have long complained of “fetid odors” in the air and water, and swarms of flies hovering around waste lagoons of shit and hog urine. The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link. According to the newspaper, the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the orginal carrier for the flu could be the “clouds of flies” that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary’s manure lagoons.

Significantly, I told you that the US media keeps quiet about inconvenient truths. Surprise, surprise, I cannot find any mention of this important potential Smithfield flu link in US journals, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The only story running is that Smithfield shares have dropped—but that’s to do with other countries starting to ban pork imports.

Well, it wouldn’t be very comfortable reading, would it, that unscrupulous US corporations (whether Baxter or Smithfield) had caused large numbers of human deaths?

However, the biggest inconvenient fact of all has still to be addressed: WHERE DID THE VIRUS COME FROM?

I have already quoted a WHO source as saying this is NOT a normal virus. The weird genetic mixture screams of an artificially engineered strain and no-one, so far, can explain how this might have arisen naturally, even on a disgusting and exploitative hog farm run by a greedy, abusive corporation.

Protecting Yourself Against Swine Flu

If this outbreak does really get out of hand, I’ll be publishing a list of instructions and SCORES of things you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones from the worst ravages of flu. No need to wait for a worthless hyped vaccine.

Don’t forget, if you haven’t heard it yet, my audio on the surprise reason why the 1918 flu epidemic was so deadly and why I don’t think we’ll see its like again (not unless the same strange set of circumstances combine once more).

Listen to it on this page.