Friday, May 01, 2009

No more swine flu

A follow-up to my 'pork conspiracy' post, which attracted more comments than just about anything I've posted.

The World Health organisation has now declared that they will stop using the term 'swine flu' to describe the latest outbreak of the virus. It's officially influenza A (H1N1)

The reason is: "to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs."

Authorities certainly have been confused and have taken unnecessary action. As I said in my earlier post: "General Secretariat of Municipalities has issued a circular banning the import and sale of all types of pork in the country as a precautionary measure against swine flu".

Egypt has decided to kill all its 300,000 pigs. The Iraqi government will kill three wild boars at the Baghdad Zoo.

It's panic time again.

Why has the world developed an instant panic default mode for just about anything I wonder?

By the way, forgive me if I indulge myself here.

Commenting on my earlier post, Mark Stuart suggested I was joining the "arrogant people that believe they have sufficient knowledge in fields they have never studied or researched to even imagine they can impress upon you their beliefs, thoughts, opinions or fantasies as worth voicing just because they can read and write."

I hadn't apparently done enough "digging and research before you accused the Abu Dhabi Authorities of ignorance"

Well now.

Apart from the realisation that they've caused confusion and panic resulting in unnecessary and ineffective restrictions and slaughter of pigs, the WHO clearly states more than once on its website that eating pork products will not transmit the infection.

"There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products." "Pork and pork products, handled in accordance with good hygienic practices recommended by the WHO , Codex Alimentarius Commission and the OIE, will not be a source of infection."

I rest my case, Mark.


The WHO quotes are from here and here.

4 comments:

Seabee said...

Mike, you should know better than to believe what you read on blogs!!

That story has appeared in the mainstream media, it may or may not be true, it may be partially true - great conspiracy theory stuff though.

aslihan said...

ok but there is something;
the key is "well cooked"
so when you sell pork, it is clearly a risk! authorties can follow us up for the pork recipies?
how they can be sure about we will be cook well the pork we bought.

ofcourse dont kill pigs but banning pork import is, i think, some prevention.

Seabee said...

Er, Aslihan, the same could be applied to anything. Motor cars kill people unless they're driven sensibly, electrical equipment kills you if you don't use it properly, matches burn you if you put the flame to your hand. Everything is a risk. How, as you ask, can the authorities be sure we will do the right thing?

If banning meat on the basis that people may treat it incorrectly is the right thing to do then the same rule should be applied equally to everything else.

aslihan said...

yes you are right at your point of wiev. but we have all those rules, laws, regulations etc.. to minimize risks.
and also flu is something different, you can catch it when you are thinking everythings normal. it is an passive disaster coming to your life in silence.
you cant put away it from childeren or click your seatbelt.
plus in your examples its just few people that can get effected. but we are talking about millions to die. and we can cause it unconsiously, just eating a not cooked well pork.

swine flu something unknown. i mean we dont know what is going to be. in that logical statement illness, flues, vireses are different problems that u cant compare with daily ones. every each of them has its own special circumstances.
otherwise we should ban sex, bloodtransactions for prevent aids. funny huh =)