Joe Biden, voice of calm and reason
For the most part, since his inauguration as vice president, Joe Biden has done a good job of keeping himself in line and avoiding the kind of verbal slip-ups he's famous for. That streak ended...
View ArticleYour daily corporate swine flu update
The speculation that there might be a link between corporate hog farming and the swine flu that I linked to on Wednesday "sparked a vigorous debate on the Society for Environmental Journalists...
View ArticleWhite House aide probably infected with swine flu
At his daily briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced that a man who was part of the advance team sent to Mexico before President Obama's trip there has come down with a...
View ArticleAttack of the killer plague movies
The recent swine-flu headlines have done a number on many of us, playing upon our greatest fears and apprehensions. For years, scientists have been warning us that it's only a matter of time before a...
View ArticleRadio host suspended; blamed Mexican “primitives” for flu
The rhetoric on talk radio about Mexicans and swine flu has been getting pretty nasty, and now one Boston-area host has taken it so far that he's been indefinitely suspended.WTKK-FM isn't disclosing...
View ArticlePandemic pandemonium
"Revelation," notes the historian Barbara Tuchman in her epic book "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," "was the favorite guide to human affairs in the Middle Ages."And the terrible...
View ArticleMask hysteria
Mexico City is currently enjoying a stretch of beautifully clear, hot days, and the city streets are wonderfully clean and quiet. The schools, movie theaters and sports stadiums are all closed, as are...
View ArticlePeak star anise?
The price of star anise is rising in Chinese markets, reports China Daily, (found via Danwei.) The ostensible reason: A big production ramp-up for the drug Tamiflu, believed to be the most effective...
View ArticleAsk the pilot
All around the world, health authorities are bracing for mass casualties as the smallpox virus, which first appeared in Mexico in mid-April, continues its deadly march across countries and...
View ArticleBacon-flavored capitalism
Even if you don't dig on swine, it has become impossible to avoid them. If you're not pummeled by television reports about Wall Street oinkers, you're bombarded by talk-radio rants about congressional...
View ArticlePregnant women hit hard by swine flu
The first American to die of swine flu was a 33-year-old schoolteacher named Judy Trunnell of Harlingen, TX. She died on May 5, after slipping into a coma, and giving birth to a healthy baby girl by...
View ArticleSwine flu on the automated pig farm
A tweet from Tom Philpott alerts us to the definitive article written, so far, on the intersection between swine flu and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), a superb piece of science...
View ArticleWhy are parents skipping swine flu vaccines?
Despite the recent panic over swine flu and recommendations that schoolchildren be immunized, a new poll shows that parents are less likely to bother vaccinating their kids against the H1N1 virus than...
View ArticleBeck’s latest conspiracy theory won’t end well
One positive thing about Glenn Beck: The guy is dependable. You can almost set your watch by him -- if you spot some new conspiracy theory developing in the darker corners of the Internet, one that...
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Glenn Beck flirts with sanity
Fox NewsGlenn Beck isn't going to tell you whether he's decided to get the swine flu vaccine, and whether he'll be getting his kids vaccinated too. "I'm trying to give you the facts tonight, with no...
View ArticleHealth insurance industry secret weapon: Swine flu
The first time I read the The Onion report, "Obama's Declaration Of Swine Flu Emergency Prompts Pro-Swine-Flu Republican Response," I laughed (because it's darn funny), but then I cried -- because it's...
View Article800,000 doses of kids’ swine flu vaccine recalled
Health officials are recalling hundreds of thousands of doses of swine flu vaccine after tests indicated they may not be potent enough to protect against the virus.The Centers for Disease Control and...
View ArticleWHO to send swine flu vaccine to poor countries
The World Health Organization plans to start shipping swine flu vaccine to Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and Mongolia in the next few weeks, flu chief Keiji Fukuda said Thursday.Another 35 developing...
View ArticleOur hand-cleaning paranoia
It's going to take more than a squirt of Purell to make you invincible. Just in time for back-to-school and flu season, a University of Virgina study out this week decrees that those stinky hand...
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Hog wild
As the four members of the all-lady team make their way into the circle, one especially rotund member saunters towards the middle of the soupy, Ovaltine-and-water-looking pool of slop with an empty...
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