Pork Gets Porked

Despite this (and this), we're going to use "pork" as a verb, meaning: to take advantage of.

You all laughed when you read this, yes?

Israeli Health Minister Yakov Litzman has been updating a nervous public on the swine flu epidemic - and he started by renaming it for religious reasons.

Well, read on:-

The World Health Organisation (WHO), bowing to pressure from meat industry producers and concerned governments, said on Thursday it would refer to a deadly new virus strain as influenza A (H1N1), not swine flu.

"From today, WHO will refer to the new influenza virus as 'influenza A (H1N1)'," it said on its www.who.int/en/ website.

The new strain has infected 257 people. The WHO has confirmed eight deaths although many more people are suspected to have died from the virus.

It derives from a swine influenza virus but the new strain has been found only in people. While it contains mostly swine flu genetic sequences, it also contains small amounts of human and bird flu virus genetic material.

No pigs have been confirmed to be sick with it.

WHO has consistently said the disease cannot be caught from eating pork if it is prepared properly.

"There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products," it said on its website on Thursday.

The name of the flu led several countries to ban imports of pork from Mexico and the United States, where the outbreak first appeared, and authorities in Egypt have ordered a cull of pigs.

So, how to defend ourselves?

CNN relates:-

...Markel was tapped by the CDC to study what worked and what didn't during the 1918 flu disaster. Markel and colleagues examined 43 cities and found that so-called nonpharmaceutical interventions -- steps such as isolating patients and school closings -- were remarkably successful in tamping down the outbreak. "They don't make the population immune, but they buy you time, either by preventing influenza from getting into the community or slowing down the spread," Markel said.

Markel describes a dramatic example in the mining town of Gunnison, Colorado. In 1918, town leaders built a veritable barricade, closing down the railroad station and blocking all roads into town. Four thousand townspeople lived on stockpiled supplies and food from hunting or fishing. For 3½ months, while influenza raged in nearly every city in America, Gunnison saw not a single case of flu -- not until the spring, when roads were reopened and a handful of residents fell sick.

You'll never know.

The real problem?

Here:

Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.

The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.

According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”