Swine Whine

Wow! How time flies! Just realized it's been a full two weeks (!) since our last post! This is of course troubling, because it's not like NOTHING happened in this time or that we didn't WANT TO HOLD FORTH on something or the other. It's because all of us have been either too busy with all that's been going on OR just to damned lazy to write anything for the blog. We probably wrote about these things for our day jobs or satisfied ourselves by texting each other...And that dear readers is the problem with a format that asks for a lot of time but which is PERCEIVED to be a form of intellectual (or worse, emotional) masturbation... Then again, maybe it's just that it's not PAID - it's doubtful that our worthy contributing bloggers (myself included) would blow off writing if there was a deadline and financial compensation dangling at the end... Ah, well, it ain't changing, so there. I just thought I'd put this out there with the solemn promise to be a bit more diligent about posts.

In any case, here's what I came across this morning, which made my day. You have to LOVE the headline but I do think they may have it wrong. I think they may have tested not for the flu but for being a swine itself!

 

Narendra Modi tests positive for swine flu

30 Oct 2009, 1235 hrs IST, TNN

 AHMEDABAD: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has tested positive for swine flu. The confirmation of the test carried out on Thursday was announced by the state government on Friday morning, sending a wave of panic among a group of top industrialists who accompanied him on a recent visit to Moscow.

The whole Gujarat cabinet is also now being tested for the disease as the ministers were with the chief minister in a three-hour cabinet meeting on Thursday after his blood samples were taken. One minister said: "He should not have taken the meeting if he was being suspected of having swine flu. He could have waited for the results of the test."

Reports about Modi having swine flu had started trickling in on Thursday evening. However, the government had refused to confirm it. Once the first test gave a positive result, another confirmatory test was carried out late on Thursday.

 The government has earlier tried to hide his identity and the sample was labelled with a different name- "Ramesh.".

 Modi, who returned on Wednesday, will be kept in isolation for seven days at his residence, where a team of doctors are attending on him.

 All his public functions have been cancelled.

Pakistan in the Eye of the Pig, Again

A case of swine flu?

 I knew this was coming... Please check out the following bit from an AP report about Swine Flu:

Medical detectives have not pinpointed where the outbreak began. Scientists believe that somewhere in the world, months or even a year ago, a pig virus jumped to a human and mutated, and has been spreading between humans ever since.

China has gone on a rhetorical offensive to squash any suggestion it's the source of the swine flu after some Mexican officials were quoted in media reports in the past week saying the virus came from Asia and the governor of Mexico's Veracruz state was quoted as saying the virus specifically came from China.

One of the deaths in Mexico directly attributed to swine flu was that of a Bangladeshi immigrant, said Mexico's chief epidemiologist Miguel Angel Lezana.

 

Lezana said the unnamed Bangladeshi had lived in Mexico for six months and was recently visited by a brother who arrived from Bangladesh or Pakistan and was reportedly ill. The brother has left Mexico and his whereabouts are unknown, Lezana said. He suggested the brother could have brought the virus from Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Oh COME ON! Is there anything bad in the world that is not the fault of Pakistan?! And of all things, SWINE flu?? If there is anything that will get Pakistanis' goat, it is being associated with a flu named after pigs! I know there are a lot of suar ke bachay in Pakistan but this is really beggaring belief!