All posts tagged "Swine Flu"

More than a fifth of the world's population was infected by the H1N1 virus in the 2009-2010 flu pandemic, according to new estimates released on Friday.

The death toll in Mexico from an outbreak of A(H1N1) swine flu has hit nine, with 573 cases detected, officials said Sunday.

This is super interesting. (Via.) The NY Times is understandably fascinated by the cultural and effort-related aspects of this story, which involves a bunch of researchers swooping in and using an isolated religious farming communities to conduct a test on disease transmission, but the results of the test are just as, if not more fascinating. The finding was straightforward---vaccinating a little over 80% of the children and adolescents in the community against the flu vaccine created what they deemed a 60% "protective effect" in the community. Not just in children; in the community.

For those of us who've been pushing back against anti-vaccination hysteria---most of it coming from the left---I think there's an inevitable sense that the whole anti-vaccination thing is so nutty that it's inevitable that it's going to be picked up by the right wing, the home of most nutty conspiracy theories. And indeed, the Obama administration's efforts to halt the swine flu have created the occasion for this. The Onion published this fake story on October 28th.

I'm going to be sharing my environmental posts at this brand spanking new community environmentalist blog The Clade, which was started by former Pandagon contributor Chris Clarke. I highly recommend checking it out and adding it to your RSS feed, and contributing if you have useful environmental news or opinions.