“The only thing that spreads faster than a health crisis is the panic about it.”
That quote from TV programme Eleventh Hour is as apt a summation of the H1N1 “swine flu” outbreak as any.
The media overload is quite stunning to behold when it gets going. As some wags put it - Hamageddon, or Aporkalypse Now.
Of course Stalker wouldn’t want to be blasé about the subject, some experts predict that this is just the first wave - the problems come when the virus mutates or combines to form something even deadlier.
As the news of the H1N1 spread continues - scientists seem to have discovered that the H5N1 variety designated bird flu was not such a risk after all. “Bird flu may not have become the threat to humans that some predicted because our noses are too cold for the virus to thrive, UK researchers say.
An Imperial College London recreation of the nose's environment found that at 32 degrees Celsius, avian flu viruses lose function and cannot spread.
"It is likely that the viruses have adapted to suit the warmer 40 degree environments in the guts of birds."
Maybe it’s time to hope that pigs do start to fly?
