Latest posts in epidemic
Everyone always wants someone to blame. If you wind up on the wrong side of a pointing finger, it's much better to be an adorable, impoverished five-year-old Mexican named Edgar than a WASPy, paunchy banker with three homes. Better still, you could be an inanimate object, like say, a tubful of peanut butter. But in the worst-case scenario, you could be a pig in Egypt, where the government has begun a King Herod-style execution of its entire population of 300,000 pigs.
Looking on the bright side: since the illness is not food-borne, meat from all the slaughtered pigs will be available for public consumption. Get ready for an onslaught of cheap Egyptian bacon!
"Today" answered all of our burning (aching, feverish, sniffling) questions about swine flu this morning, debunking myths and providing tips for staying in the pink. But before getting into that, Lester Holt's first question needs to be addressed: "A lot of us don't even know when we have the regular flu. How do we know if we have the swine flu?" Uh, Lester, I beg to differ. When I had the flu last week, I DEFINITELY knew about it. So did my parents, all my co-workers, my roommate, my boyfriend, the drugstore lady, the bodega man, and anyone who had the pleasure of laying eyes on my pale, sweaty, hallowed face. The flu is not exactly something that can fly under the radar, like say, toenail fungus.
Anyway, back to the swine flu Q & A: it turns out that it actually comes from pigs! But don't worry about your bacon: this is a respiratory virus, so it is passed through liquid particles (uh, snot and saliva) that have been coughed or sneezed into the air. Moral of the story? Wash your hands, kids. More swine flu info after the jump.
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