Swine flu

[[Image:Plaguemask.jpg|thumb|right|165px|This summer's new look.]]
{{biology}}
'''Swine flu''' refers to any influenza [[virus]] which infects [[pig]]s; while most of these do not infect [[human]]s, occasionally a strain of flu can be transmitted between humans and pigs (compare also avian flu, where the same thing can happen with a flu virus between humans and [[birds]]).

==Naming==
The term commonly refers to the '''H1N1''' [[pandemic]] which first broke out in [[Mexico]] in May 2009 and ended officially in August 2010.<ref>http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/communicable-diseases/influenza/news/news/2010/08/who-director-general-declares-h1n1-pandemic-over</ref> This was originally believed to be swine flu but has since been renamed novel flu because it contains a reassortment of swine, avian, and human flu virus material (and not because it would make a good book). It was also at first called Mexican flu or Mexican swine flu, then just swine flu, although the [[pork]] industry objected to calling it swine flu on the grounds that this may discourage the consumption of pork.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/28/mexican-swine-flu-pork-name Onoz, official offense registered by Israeli and Mexican governments over one name or the other!]</ref><ref>[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/28/national/main4975851.shtml Onoz, hog farmers afraid the name of a flu might devastate their $15 billion industry!]</ref> (Except fiction writers, maybe?) In any case the "swine flu" name has stuck, much to the chagrin of [[pig]]s everywhere.

==Hysterics==
[[Image:Onozomg.gif|thumb|left|We're all gonna die!]]
During the 2009 Pandemic, among the variety of responses suggested included avoiding taking mass transit, canceling vacations to both Mexico and the [[United States]], wearing N95-rated dust masks in public, cancelling school classes for a week or more, and other [[Hysteria|hysterical]] responses; and of course it was an excuse for [[cranks]] to promote their pet causes, ranging from "we're all gonna die" [[doomsday scenario]]s, [[anti-vaccine]] fearmongering (e.g. conspiracy theories that the vaccinated were being micro-chipped), to selling [[colloidal silver]] and other claimed remedies.

Very hysterical, or very stupid people, laughably thought that eating pork products would infect them with swine flu. This was such a common misconception that the [[CDC]] actually addressed it in their FAQs about swine flu,<ref>[http://www.cdc.gov/flu/swineflu/key_facts.htm Key Facts about Swine Influenza (Swine Flu)]</ref> while many people proceeded to mock the uninformed idiots without mercy.<ref>[http://xkcd.com/574/ XKCD — Twitter is great for watching uninformed panics unfold live]</ref><ref>[http://laughingsquid.com/swine-flu-bacons-revenge-t-shirt/ Laughing Squid — Swine Flu, Bacon's Revenge]</ref>

In [[Egypt]], the swine flu epidemic was used as an excuse to order the slaughter of all the nation's pigs; this was widely considered a backhanded attack on the country's minority Coptic [[Christian]] population, who owned all the pigs in question, since the majority [[Muslim]] population believe them to be ''haraam'' (religiously forbidden).<ref>http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jcA1RNrTNpUZH2_tiWe-iHSm8XXg</ref> Ironically, this ended up [[Irony|backfiring]], as the pigs were fed with organic wastes, and without them the concentration of wastes on Egyptian streets increased.

Except for the pig and pork theme, the crank responses during the 2009 pandemic were similar to those of the [[COVID-19]] pandemic a decade later, with many of the same anti-vaccine fears being rehashed and spread alongside new ideas of bio-weapons and non-viral causes of the later disease (which came from a different kind of virus). A big difference, though, is that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was greater action taken – societal lock-downs and social distancing policies to varying degrees – in response to a virus spreading much further (though with lesser lethality), more like that of the Spanish flu a century earlier. Thus, in place of 2009-style hysteria for taking more action (though that kind of hysteria repeated as well), there was far more hysteria against the actions being taken (sometimes viewed as a terrible totalitarian conspiracy).

==Historical precedents==
[[File:FordSwineFluShot1.jpg|thumb|right|250px|President [[Gerald Ford]] receiving the Swine Flu vaccine in 1976]]
Up to the time of the 2009 outbreak, there had been 3 major flu outbreaks: the most serious was the 1918 "Spanish Flu" immediately after [[World War I]] which actually first broke out in the [[United States]], not [[Spain]], and eventually took the lives of between 50 and 100 million people around the world.<ref>[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/ 1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics] by Jeffery K. Taubenberger & David M. Morens (2006) ''Emerg. Infect. Dis.'' 12(1):15–22. doi:10.3201/eid1201.050979.</ref> The other two were in [[Asia]] in 1957 and 1968 and took about 1 million lives each. For further perspective, ordinary influenza takes around 36,000 lives in the U.S. alone every year.

Swine flu also refers to the 1976 "outbreak" that never was, but which led to the U.S. government embarking on a [[Flu shot|program to vaccinate]] the entire U.S. population. This was called off after 25% of the population was vaccinated and no flu outbreak occurred. [[Vaccine hysteria]] promoters point to the 1976 vaccinations, and the small number of people who suffered adverse reactions<ref>''The Swine Flu Conspiracy: The Plot to Kill 213,000,000 Americans in the Bicentennial Year 1976'' by John Deaux (1997) Larksdale Press. ISBN 0898962625.</ref> (which is ''normal'' for any vaccine) as an indictment of vaccination in general, which is just [[bullshit]] as the threat of suffering adverse reactions from diseases like mumps and polio is far greater if one is not vaccinated than the extremely small likelihood of an adverse reaction to the vaccine — but it does call into question the wisdom of rushing into drastic action when it is unclear what, if any, threat there actually is.

==See also==
*[[Conspiracy theory]]
*[[Covid-19]], which has ended up being much closer to what people feared 2009 Swine-flu would be and whose early (lack of) response in the West may have been impacted by the hysterics that surrounded this pandemic.

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Medicine]]
[[Category:Media hysteria]]
[[Category:Disease]]
[[Category:Viruses]]

Categories: Medicine, Media hysteria, Disease, Viruses