In amongst the current epidemic of articles about swine flu, some have been examining the likely role of factory farming in generating harmful strains of flu virus.
This article on New Scientist’s site – “Is Swine Flu a bioterrorist virus?” – is another example. Having used the headline to pique your interest, the writer waves away the implausible notion of this strain of flu being the result of bioterrorism within the first sentence, and gets on with explaining the science behind the evolution of new virus strains in the straight forward layperson’s style which New Scientist is often quite good at.
And then I read the reader’s comments following the article …………………..
Even allowing (hoping) for the possibility that half the comments are jokes, I can’t even begin to describe the batshit crazy weirdness of so many of them. You’ll just have to go to the site and read them for yourself. But if these are from people who read science blogs, I don’t want to begin thinking what sort of things people who inhabit other parts of the internet might believe is behind the swine flu outbreak.
It does make you wonder if a side-effect of this particular virus is to make people believe some seriously weird stuff. Either that or it’s a side effect (or mainfestation) of some of the hysteria surrounding it.
- Wonkette unveils the real cuprit – Bob Dylan!
- And FirstDog reveals the horror of where it will all end. (unless he’s just trying to throw everyone off his trial – maybe it’s really dog flu, not swine flu)
2 Comments
It has long been noted that the net intelligence of the net is a constant while the population is growing.
Yep. According to a later New Scientist article Swine Flu appears to be only barely infectious to keep itself going and seems to have been around since late last year. If it were anything like a normal Flu virus we would be seeing thousands of cases by now.
Its supposed ‘deadly’ fatality rate seems to be coming down daily, probably about 1%. But who knows since the data from Mexico seems pretty unreliable or at least their governments spin on it.
But every headline you read you see things like ‘deadly’ blah balh…has 11 fatalities.
It is beginning to look like a second rate flu virus. Now all of these things can evelove and come back later as something more virulent and deadly, but they can all do that.
The hook for this virus is that it is ‘Swine, Pig, Porcine’ so we can rerun all those old movies, dream of Ebola, SARS, avian flu…
All the central authorities are doing the right thing, erring on the side of caution, you can’t wait for these things to reveal themselves in full before you act.
The media is not interested in being responsible or the public good…they are trying to save their income bacon with some sensational news.
Oh well, they tell me print media is on the way out…and it seems they are trying to create the rationale for why they are of no further value to the public.