“THIS IS WHERE THE IDIOTS LIBERALS ARE TOLD HOW TO THINK.”

“BUT WHAT CAN I EXPECT, ALL LIBERALS ARE TOO STUPID TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES”

Kellykinsel, I don’t think you should sit in the glass house that cheney and bush jr. built and throw rocks and insults at the people outside. It wasn’t the “idiot liberals” who invaded the wrong country after 9-11. It was your president bush jr. and his corporate sidekick DICK cheney.

As liberals, we do think for ourselves and opposed the war in Iraq even before the invasion. It was your heros: Karl Rove & Rush Limbaugh publicly stating that we were “traitors.” If your party had one intellectual rather than a bunch of sheep, maybe the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history and the deaths and injuries to thousands upon thousands upon thousands of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis could have been prevented.

You’re a just another Chickenhawk with no brain. There isn’t a dime bit of difference between and bush jr. If you thought he was wonderful, send your savings (or what’s left of it) to his library in Texas.

I SUSPECT THAT SMITHFIELD’S PIG FARM HAS CAUSED PEOPLE TO BECOME SICK WITH SWINE FLU. I SUSPECT THIS BECAUSE THEY WERE BUSTED AND FINED FOR DUMPING PIG WASTE IN 1997.

Lots of companies have been fined for that. I recall an anecdote about a giant pig-shit fountain in Nebraska that gives off fountain plumes high into the air because of gases fermenting underneath.

This news item would be a great opportunity to shine a light at the multiple horrific practices involved in unsustainable, centralized factory farming. It has poor controls, is environmentally devastating, and is a major factor in the demise of the traditional family farm in the United States. However, to do that we’d have to fudge some facts, make others up, and try to draw a connection that just doesn’t exist. And when we start playing that way, we end up becoming Republicans. Sure, you can win for a while like that eventually then you end up in the position they’re in now, discredited and crazy.

So until we hear from the CDC about the origin (and does it really matter?) we’ll take a pass.

You really just have to sit back and marvel at the abject cruelty and bigotry that permeates the mentality of the right-wingers. From them we get nothing approaching constructive input to the conversation of how to deal with this public health issue in a sane, rational and fair manner. Instead, their vile rantings give the overt impression that if they had their way they’d drop a few nukes on Mexico’s major cities, incinerating all and voila! – two problems solved — no more virus, no more wetbacks. There is something terribly, nauseatingly wrong with these people.

Just saying . . .

Expert Says Farm Isn’t Flu Origin

Mexico’s top government epidemiologist said Wednesday that it is “highly improbable” that a farm in the Mexican state of Veracruz operated by Smithfield Foods Inc. is responsible for the nation’s swine-flu outbreak.

Miguel Ángel Lezana, the government’s chief epidemiologist, said in an interview that pigs at the farm are from North America, while the genetic material in the virus is from Europe and Asia.

Government health workers plan to re-test the pigs for any sign of swine flu, he said.

Veracruz is home to the illness’s earliest known victim so far, though Mr. Lezana on Wednesday said a Bangladeshi street vendor in Mexico City was among the first victims. Locals have been pointing fingers at the pork-processing giant in the nearby village of Perote, run by Smithfield and the Mexican company Agroindustrias Unidas de Mexico S.A, as the source of the flu.

There’s a host of information out there and, unfortunately, not always concurring with factual data. This needs to be collated and presented from a strictly scientific viewpoint.

I read somewhere that they think they found the original carrier. I’ll try find where I read that.

Some Thoughts on Factory Farming

So I know that Grist, and a couple of other places, are promoting the theory that the genesis of H1N1 swine flu can be tied directly to factory farming practices. I’m no fan of factory farming, and it definitely has some associated public health dangers, but I’m not yet convinced that this one of them.

First, according to the experts I’ve spoken to, nobody currently knows specifically where H1N1 swine flu comes from. In fact, the information we’re getting out of Mexico seems to have a lot of holes in it, to the point that (as of my writing this) nobody even knows how many supposed swine flu cases/deaths are actually caused by swine flu or what percentage of people infected with swine flu are dying in that country. As Pekosz told me, there’s no evidence one way or the other.
Second, while past pandemic viruses have had connections to farming, they haven’t necessarily been connections to factory farming; but rather small-scale (and, particularly, subsistence level) farming, where animals of several species share close quarters. This is important for the H1N1 swine flu. Pigs seem to provide a particularly good environment for flu viruses to get their gene-reassorting watusi on. But to get that pig/avian/human mix, the most likely candidate would be a pig who’d had close contact with both people and poultry. As I understand it, it’s less likely that a human who works with pigs and chickens separately could pass the avian virus to a pig. And, factory farms, which tend to be single-species outfits, aren’t really great places for pigs and chickens to interact.

Now, I can see some ways around that. Say, if the pigs were sleeping or wallowing in muck that was contaminated with chicken feces or something. I could also be interpreting the facts incorrectly here. But from what I’ve read, and from the researchers I’ve spoken with, it seems more likely that H1N1 would have been created in the communal barn of a small farm, than in a giant hog-only factory farm shed.

How Nature Makes a Chimeric Virus

Everywhere, you’re reading that H1N1 swine flu contains genes from human, avian and swine flu viruses and, for most people, the imagination immediately jumps to genetic engineering. But, let me assure you, nature can do this perfectly well on its own. No human tampering required.

It works like this. Flu viruses have eight genes, each of which is on a separate piece of RNA and, each of which replicates independently of the others. Multiple types of flu virus can infect the same cell. If a cell is infected with two or three different viruses, genes from the “parent” generation can easily get shuffled around and randomly repackaged into chimeric “offspring”. For a visual, think about taking two shakers of dice, tossing the dice out on the table, swirling them around and splitting them back up again into the shakers. Chances are, some of the dice that were originally in shaker 1 are now in shaker 2, and vice versa. And that’s basically a simplified version of what’s going on with flu virus genes when they create something like H1N1.

Better, and more accurate. Best check that stuck capslock though; it doesn’t give any added weight to your claim…

It makes just as much sense.

teabaggers, do you ever think things out? Ever?

Is being stupid that pleasurable/comfortable?

Stupid is like meth and sex to you teabaggers.

How’s that?