A Disaster for Tourism in Mexico

It really is a disaster that the swine flu seems to have started in Mexico, not least of which is the hit to their economy, a lot of which is fueled by tourism. It's not enough that they already have a ton of problems on the border, with all the violent drug cartels, the kidnappings, and murders in broad daylight.


Not that many years ago, twenty maybe, one could go down to the border and cross it to go shopping or have lunch. Those days are long gone, unfortunately. I wish it weren't so, as I love travel and have never been to Mexico. We live so close to it, but it's really not safe to go there anymore. There are Mexican nationals who travel between the US and Mexico because of work or personal reasons here, and even they won't go to the border towns, they only travel through them, usually early, early in the morning. Indeed it has gotten so bad, that many who live in the border towns have come up here to stay with relatives.

And there's a great danger of the violence spilling over the border. Indeed, earlier this year in Pharr, which is near McAllen, a live grenade was tossed into a bar where off duty police officers frequently hung out.

It's really terrible for the people having to live there, and the Mexican military seems out gunned, and outnumbered. I really don't have an answer on how to stop it all either. Well, I do, but no one will like it. Legalize all drugs and tax the hell out of them. There you go. Perhaps it's not realistic, but in my head it makes sense. All of a sudden the cartels are without business, because you can buy your drugs legally. Of course, no one will like this idea, because it's not "moral" whatever that is. As if it's "moral" to allow people to suffer under the cartels, but whatever. I've always been of the mindset that if one is going to do drugs, they're going to do them legal or not, and if they're not going to do them, they won't even if they're legal. I wouldn't do drugs, even if they were legal. I don't smoke cigarettes, so I wouldn't even smoke marijuana, even though I don't think it's all that bad for you.

I also think that the fact that it's taboo, probably leads some people to do it. I have known people when I was younger, who abused alcohol because their parents were teetotalers, and it was a reaction against that. They drank to spite their parents, or to see if they could get away with it. I on the other hand, had parents who were a bit more open than that, and insisted that if I was going to drink or something, that I be safe about it. I never had an urge to go and get drunk as some of my friends did. I think it's something psychological.

And we're in a huge mess tax wise, with the Republicans screaming they don't want more taxes. Well, here you can have your cake and eat it too. Imagine all the tax money from legal narcotics. Imagine all the money saved by not prosecuting people for damaging their own health. Now don't get me wrong, if you're driving under the influence, or causing a disturbance because you're on drugs then you need to be prosecuted as such, but if you want to sit in your own home and fry your brain, that ain't none of my business.

You know, it was entirely different at the end of the 19th century. I read a really interesting article not that long ago, that many middle and upper class women were totally addicted to heavy duty narcotics because they were marketed as elixirs for their health. But the thing is, they didn't understand how bad it was for them. IMHO, education is the answer, not punishing people for it. You see, this is why we wound up with the mob in the 30's because they outlawed liquor, and the mob filled a niche. As I said, if one is going to do it, the legality of it is generally not a deterrent. Just sayin'

Swine Flu Creates Backlog at Labs

So, the Swine Flu, now being called H1N1 (which isn't even bloody accurate as there are other flu that shares that type) or North American Flu, has turned out to probably not be that big of a deal. However, it has exposed some enormous problems in our medical testing labs. For example, where I live not far from the Mexican border, we have hundreds of suspected cases of flu, but no confirmed cases yet, even though they sent the first test swabs off a week ago. It's no surprise there are so many cases here, as many of the people here, even if they've been here for decades or even generations, have family in Mexico, and with the Easter holiday, many of them went to visit relatives and vice versa.

Texas lab swamped with swine flu samples
© 2009 The Associated Press
May 2, 2009, 12:07PM

AUSTIN, Texas — Only a fraction of the nearly 2,500 nasal swabs sent to the state health department lab have been tested. The Austin lab had tested 181 of the 2,492 nasal swabs received from counties around the state by Friday, Department of State Health Services spokesman Doug McBride told the Austin American-Statesman for Saturday's editions.

The lab's single testing machine became overwhelmed Wednesday when samples began flooding in from around the state. Three more machines are being added, more staff is being trained to run on two more shifts and the lab will work seven days a week to catch up, McBride said. The lack of test results does not change how doctors treat patients, but makes an accurate count of cases impossible.

"I'd like to know how many (cases) there are," said Dr. Pat Crocker, medical director of Dell Children's Medical Center in Austin. "We have heard disappointingly little from the state."

That hospital's emergency room received twice as many patients Thursday as usual. On Friday, the hospital set up three air-conditioned tents with cots to treat overflow patients in a covered parking area. After state labs test samples from counties, they forward possible swine flu samples to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab in Atlanta for final confirmation. The CDC also is sending supplies to state labs so they will be able to start making their own confirmations.

"Part of what we're trying to do is speed up the confirmation time," said CDC spokesman Scott Bryan. With the additional machines and personnel, the state lab should be able to handle 200 cases per day, whereas now it can do 70, McBride said.

Maybe it would behoove them to take this as a lesson, because if this really were a virulent pandemic that would kill a lot of people, many would be dead before they could even get the results back. But I won't hold my breath. As history has shown, we never learn anything.

Oh, and on that note, so much for Texas being self-sufficient as that gasbag Perry was spouting a couple weeks ago. Instead, he's accepted federal money and federal stockpiles of Tamiflu, and then declared a state of emergency so Texas is first in line for federal aid. We can't even test 10% of the samples of flu in less than a week and a day, much less operate without federal assistance. I dare say that horse won't ride.

Would You Like Some Swine Flu in Your Burger?

I read this article about how despite the Swine Flu outbreak, which probably isn't that bad after all the press hysteria (surprise, surprise), that many people who are sick are going to work anyway because they have no sick time. This was something that I had forgotten. I used to work for various fast food restaurants before I went to college, and there, you have no sick pay and no vacation as far as I can remember.

I have a white collar job now, I get 10 days of sick time and 10 days of vacation a year. I can use my sick time for anything, like if I need to go have my eyes checked, or if I need to take care of personal business. I think that should be standard for every job, but what do I know? I must be a socialist commie (probably throw fascist in there too) because I support worker's rights. It's a terrible thing that a great majority of this country doesn't even realize that they're getting the shaft and they keep voting for the ones who are screwing them over.

Swine flu or not, many workers can't stay home

By JOCELYN NOVECK

NEW YORK (AP) -- You wake up one morning and you're feeling achy and feverish. The directions from health officials battling swine flu are clear: Stay home from work. Don't risk infecting others. And certainly don't send a sick kid to school.

But what if you're one of the estimated 57 million working Americans with no paid sick days?
...
"The problem has really come into sharp relief the past few days," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, which has long pushed for paid sick leave. "Many people don't even realize that almost half the private sector - 48 percent - has no sick days, not even a single one."
...
Making matters even worse: Those least likely to have sick leave are low-income workers, particularly in fields like food services, child care and the hotel industry - in other words, the people you most want to be staying home if they're sick...

The Associated Press interviewed a number of workers in the food industry. Not surprisingly, most didn't want their names used for fear they would be fired. They told stories of coming to work with a fever or flu in order to keep their jobs, and of seeing sick co-workers sneezing and coughing near food... A study on sick leave found that 68 percent of those without paid sick days had gone to work with a contagious illness like the flu or a viral infection...

Making the problem even thornier: Kids. Children get sick all the time and infect each other. Yet even among those workers lucky enough to have paid sick leave, few have flexible sick days that can be used to care for a family member... Advocates for family-friendly policies point out that the U.S. is the only country out of the top 20 world economic powers with no federally mandated sick days. Put another way, some 140 other countries have them.

No U.S. states have them either, though three cities have passed such measures: San Francisco, Washington and Milwaukee, where implementation has been held up by a lawsuit...

There are two types of people. There's the worker, who apparently is content to be screwed over, and then there's the higher ups, thankful that the workers don't realize that they should be getting the better end of things, especially considering that the CEO of most major companies makes hundreds of times the annual pay of their workers.

And I just want to point out, that I as bad as the evil Wal-Mart is painted to be, they provide a little sick time to their employees, or used to at any rate. I don't know about now.

Oh, and you want to know why the economy is in the tank? Henry Ford, as much of an anti-Semitic bastard that he was, realized that if he would pay his workers enough, they'd buy his product. Well guess what? We don't pay the majority of people in this country enough to afford to live, much less buy anything. But we have a solution for that. We give credit cards to everyone! The working class can then go out and charge it, but they still can't pay for it. So they can file bankruptcy, and get credit cards again. Yes, this really does happen. I have seen it with my own eyes. But now there's no credit unless your rating is sky high, and so the working class can't buy anything, because they didn't have the money for it in the first place. And our economy is in a death spiral because of it.

Michele Bachmann Dodges Question

Not surprising that the anchor at Faux News didn't insist she answer the question. Indeed, I'm surprised they even asked it. The appropriate answer would have been "I'm an idiot."

Biden Talking out of his Ass: Swine Flu

Oh, Biden. You say some of the most ridiculous things. Where do I begin? For one thing, according to this article at liveScience.com, flu is spread by droplets that we expel from our noses and mouths when we sneeze or cough. These get on our hands or settle on surface, and someone else touches the same surface, and then touches their mouth, nose or eyes, and they get sick. This can happen in the mall, at school, at work, or wherever. So to imply that you have a greater chance of getting sick on an airplane of flu is not exactly true. Sure, you're in a confined space and you probably don't want to be sitting next to someone for so long if they're sick as they'll probably be coughing or sneezing in your space (have you sat in economy lately?), but you have just as much chance if you're sitting next to someone in the theater, or standing in line next to someone at the mall. Openness has little to do with the spread of disease, it has to do with you getting said virus on your hands and then it getting into your bloodstream.

Now the one thing that I will fault the airlines with, is their sinks. You cannot wash your hands properly at them, and so that might be why it seems you are more likely to get sick after being on an international flight when someone else is sick, which has happened to me. Their sinks suck. There's no water pressure, and you have to hold the little lever down to have water come out, and so you have to touch something that has been touched by others to get water. I think maybe it would be prudent at that point to have anti-bacterial gel to put on your hands before you eat or touch your face. Indeed, maybe it would be a good idea for the airlines to hand out anti-bacterial towelettes when you board and supply them throughout the flight.

What I think this boils down to, is if you're sick, you should really ask the airline to change your ticket if it's possible, most of them are being really lenient right now about waiving change fees. Don't fly if you're sick, it's rude to the other passengers. And if you have to fly, maybe consider wearing a face mask so you keep your water droplets to yourself.

Mexico Slow to Update Swine Flu Statistics

I've been checking the WHO's website every day waiting to see what Mexico was saying after all the hyperbole in the press about 150+ deaths. They have not updated how many are infected or have died in more than two days. So either they have no more cases, or they're not telling us. I am betting on the latter.

Swine influenza - update 5

29 April 2009 -- The situation continues to evolve rapidly. As of 18:00 GMT, 29 April 2009, nine countries have officially reported 148 cases of swine influenza A/H1N1 infection. The United States Government has reported 91 laboratory confirmed human cases, with one death. Mexico has reported 26 confirmed human cases of infection including seven deaths.

The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths - Austria (1), Canada (13), Germany (3), Israel (2), New Zealand (3), Spain (4) and the United Kingdom (5).

Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis.

WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities.

There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products. Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

That's the same as Monday's update.

Indeed there are supposed to be a bunch of suspected cases locally where I am. This is day three of waiting for the results from the state capitol. They said it would take up to 72 hours, well it's been that long. I'd like to know whether we have cases here or not. Yes I am impatient. Supposedly a bunch of children are ill at some of the local elementary schools, but it's hard to tell if that's just rumor or what. They haven't taken any action to close any of the schools yet. The local paper isn't any help at all, as all they do is parrot the AP, and pass along rumors and misinformation.

Egyptians Slaughtering Pigs for No Reason

Egypt is ordering hundreds of thousands of pigs slaughtered.

Apparently the health authorities in Egypt missed the fact that swine flu is spreading from person to person, and that the people contracting it have not had any contact with pigs. And why would pigs half a world away from the outbreak be infected?

This will only hurt the poor farmers there, who are told they can sell the meat so they deserve no compensation from the government. I wonder what slaughtering 300,000 pigs all at once will do to the price of pork when the market is flooded there? It doesn't take an economist to figure that one out.

Dirty Swine! Flu Name Offensive

I wondered why they had started calling it "North American Flu" in the press this morning. Now I have my answer.

Israeli official: Swine flu name offensive

"JERUSALEM (AP) -- The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and "we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu," he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel.

Both Judaism and Islam consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products.

Scientists are unsure where the new swine flu virus originally emerged, though it was identifed first in the United States. They say there is nothing about the virus that makes it "Mexican" and worry such a label would be stigmatizing..."

So now we're going to start naming medical based stuff based on religious superstition? Please. I happen to like pigs by the way. They're smart, and I don't understand how merely saying that the flu is 'swine' somehow compromises their religious beliefs. Maybe it's just me.

I fail to see how a exhortation from the Biblical writers to not eat pork, translates into not using the name "pig" or "swine". Are they not allowed to look at pictures of pigs either? I mean, I'm really not schooled on this avoiding all things to do with pigs. I just thought they weren't supposed to eat it. So, if this is the case, does reading The Three Little Pigs to a Jewish kid in a class constitute an infringement on his religious beliefs? Am I correct in thinking that this is about as ridiculous? Or am I missing something?

Sensationalism is the New Press: Or How We're all going to DIE!!!

So, I was checking my email, and one of the links to yahoo!News happens to catch my eye. It screams "Swine Flu epidemic enters dangerous new phase"!!!!! zOMG... it must be terrible, they must have more information, more people must have died, or something... Nope. Same story that I read earlier this afternoon. Nothing had changed, except they felt the need to make the title sensational.

As an aside, I happened to visit the WHO's website. Their latest update says that seven people are dead in Mexico from this. Yes, you read that correctly. There are 26 confirmed cases of swine flu in Mexico, and seven, yes that's seven people are dead. According to them.

Swine Influenza - Update 3

27 April 2009 -- The current situation regarding the outbreak of swine influenza A(H1N1) is evolving rapidly. As of 27 April 2009, the United States Government has reported 40 laboratory confirmed human cases of swine influenza A(H1N1), with no deaths. Mexico has reported 26 confirmed human cases of infection with the same virus, including seven deaths. Canada has reported six cases, with no deaths, while Spain has reported one case, with no deaths.

Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis.

WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities.

There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products. Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

Now the AP is saying it's 160 dead in Mexico, and their numbers keep going up every hour. They have no information though on who is dead, demographics, age, etc and no source for their numbers. The Health Minister of Mexico has said that twenty are confirmed dead of swine flu, but he can't give details because of privacy reasons, and doesn't "have the information" on him concerning their ages or situations. Really? You have got to be fucking kidding me. What are we basing these numbers on? Rumors?!

What I want to know, is when the fuck someone is going to reign the press in and tell them to stop spreading possible lies and causing panic. And when the fuck is Mexico going to get their shit together and figure out what is going on and who has actually died of this as opposed to any other form of flu or illness. It's like, "oh yes, old lady Juarez is dead down the street of something, must be swine flu because what else could it be?"

And again, a public health announcement. Wash your fucking hands!

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"You turn the page, you wash your hands. You turn the page, you wash your hands. You turn the page, you wash your hands."--Filbert, Rocko's Modern Life

God will Save You From Swine Flu

Mexico doesn't have the manpower to send people to interview the families of the deceased who supposedly died from swine flu, but they say they have enough medicine to treat the outbreak if need be. Huh? In the mean time, religion will solve this, so you better start praying.

"For the first time in 300 years, the cathedral in Mexico City's main plaza has pulled an icon of the Lord of Health from storage, and worshippers placed it on the principal altar."

I'm beginning to doubt Mexico's ability to handle the situation, whether this flu is a global threat or not. The people of Mexico are obviously suffering, as usual.

In Toluca, a city west of the capital, one family said health authorities refused to treat a relative Sunday who had full-blown flu symptoms and could barely stand. The man, 31-year-old truck driver Elias Camacho, was even ordered out of a government ambulance, his father-in-law told The Associated Press.

Paramedics complained that Camacho — who had a fever, was coughing and had body aches — was contagious, Jorge Martinez Cruz said.

Of course, this is if you can even believe anything the press is saying at this point. They say over a hundred people have died in Mexico of this, but if you dig deeper you find out that the majority of those cases are *not* confirmed yet. Confirming them requires them to sequence the DNA, which takes days, if they even have samples from these cases. Leave it to the press to spread panic prematurely.

Sure, we should all be careful and wash our hands well, cover our mouths if we cough, and if you're sick you should stay home or see a doctor if you have symptoms, but seriously. On that note, this whole thing rings of Christian Fundamentalism "the-end-of-the-world-is-coming" ideology, also known as "we're-all-gonna-die!!!!!" There's a point where we should panic, and we're no where near that point. So, let's not panic yet, shall we? Turn off 24 hour CNN (or whatever news network you watch) and go do something else. Remember, the press is merely in it for the ratings. I suggest if you want information on this, to look at the CDC's website, which is not in it for the ratings.

Congressman Calls for Mexican Border to be Closed

What an interesting development. After all this time of screaming about having closed borders with Mexico, we finally have an excuse. I find this an interesting development. I wonder if they'll cancel all flights into and out of Mexico as well.

"The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved," Massa said in a statement.

"I am making this announcement because I see this as a serious threat to the health of the American public and I do not believe this issue is receiving the attention it needs to have in the news," Massa said.

Really? Despite the fact that the news has talked about nothing else, it hasn't paid enough attention to it. Would quarantining Mexico even work, considering that people have been coming and going all this time? This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

As an aside, they'd better not cancel flights to and from Europe, as I'm going next month! Grr.

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"My name is Shackleford, Rusty Shackleford."--Dale Gribble

Republicans, Democrats, What's the Bloody Difference?

In an article from the UK that I stole from The Well-Armed Lamb, it seems that the Obama Administration is taking some pages out of Bush's book. They want to overturn a 1986 ruling (Michigan vs. Jackson) that people have the right to legal counsel before being questioned by the police, and that the police are supposed to inform them of this, and not question them if they want a lawyer. It's designed to protect the mentally ill, the poor, the uneducated, and the young, who may not know that because of the sixth amendment they have a right to a lawyer before being questioned.

If they have any sense, they'll backtrack off this real quick. However, it doesn't do them any favors. If you ever doubted for a moment that this Corporatocracy was run by two parties you have another thing coming. These politicians, on both sides are nothing but lying sacks of shit, plotting on how best they can usurp total control of us all. In the end, that is what both parties want, and they're willing to work together behind closed doors to see it happen. Of course they have to put up the fake fight, it's like a WWE match, so fake you can't even stand it, in public, in front of the cameras, so that we can all see how "different" they are.

And what was that I was saying yesterday about the Swine Flu being used to cover something up... as important as this is, it isn't in any of the American News (yet?), not even on supposedly liberal MSNBC or even on Faux News. Funny that. I would think Faux News would be all over this as much as they hate Obama all. The British report it and it doesn't even affect them. Absolutely fucking amazing.

Swine Flu being used to Cover Up something?

Isn't it odd that all of a sudden we have the press attempting to spread panic over a flu that isn't a pandemic, and probably won't become one, by trying to say it might. There was absolutely nothing in the news about this flu before yesterday morning. A pandemic by definition is a virus that spreads quickly from person to person. The people who came down with it in the United States were sick two to six weeks ago. Two of the high school students who were sick in the United States have returned to school. If it were a pandemic, at least half the high school would have been sick. It would have spread all over the country by now, and we'd be closing everything up in an attempt to contain it. I live less than a hundred miles from the Mexico border, and I don't know anyone who is sick here or has been sick in the last two months. If we ever do have a pandemic, we'll see illness before we see news about it.

Indeed, a doctor at a hospital in Mexico City hasn't even seen a case of it.

"Outside Hospital Obregon in the capital's middle-class Roma district, a tired Dr. Roberto Ortiz, 59, leaned against an ambulance and sipped coffee Saturday on a break from an unusually busy shift.

"The people are scared," Ortiz said. "A person gets some flu symptoms or a child gets a fever and they think it is this swine flu and rush to the hospital."

He said none of the cases so far at the hospital had turned out to be swine flu."

Twenty people as of this morning (they're saying maybe 62 now) dying in Mexico, a third world country of the flu is no surprise. I mean how many people die in Mexico of the flu in any given year? Something is going on, something is happening, and someone doesn't want us to notice, they want it buried by this swine flu panic. Could it be the torture news about Cheney? Or something else? Is Mexico involved in something with us?

Cheney gathering documents?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Or new torture photos?

Or is it something else we don't know about yet? Or is it merely a coincidence?