The Pre-history of the Swine Flu Pandemic

Courtesy of Ben Chau on Flickr

Remember when swine flu was the only thing anyone would talk about? Swine flu was going to kill everyone and then we would be reduced to a post-apolcalyptic civilization similar to 12 Monkeys. Then we found out that everything was going to be ok, and there was nothing to panic about because the swine flu was apparently a kissing cousin of the regular flu. They even stopped calling it swine flu in favor of the technical term H1N1, so people would buy pork again. Great, nothing to worry about. Then came the pandemic announcement yesterday, which the World Health Organization was quick to disclaim measures the spread, not necessarily the deadliness. For most of us, the terms swine flu, hamthrax, H1N1…the hampocalypse (i couldn’t resist) entered into our vernacular just recently. But health officials have known about H1N1 for a while. Here’s the pre-history of the swine flu pandemic.

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