I live just down the road from a swine research institute, it’s annoying when the wind is from the wrong direction, but if the pigs could end up killing me, that would not be okay.  However, H1N1 colloquially known as” Swine Flu,” isn’t actually just Swine flu, and as I understand it from reading the center for disease control’s website, wikipedia, and various new posts, there are no known cases in which H1N1 goes from Pigs to Humans.

A butcher moves to slaughter a piglet as part of the Egyptian Swine Culling (AP Photo/Nasser Nouri)12

Swine influenza virus (SIV), also confusingly known as “Swine Flu,” can pass from Pigs to Humans, however, the “Swine Flue” (H1N1) that everyone is worried about is actually a combination of two SIV strains, one strain of human influenza virus, and one strain of avian influenza virus.34

So while H1N1 does have similarities with swine influenza virus, it isn’t just swine influenza virus, so before you go Egyptian on every pig you see, know that it won’t necessarily do any good, and you’ll waste a lot of pork.

And if you are wearing a hazmat suit and living in a self-imposed quarantine, at least one article states that “Swine flu may be less potent than first feared.”

  1. http://online.wsj.com/video/egypt-slaughters-pigs-to-avoid-swine-flu/0F07C3FC-6B1C-40FA-81FD-6AA4BEEE935C.html [↩]
  2. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5jVjq5eEi7w7p4zgIjnSIiBIZ7RkQD97TEKMO0?index=0 [↩]
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swine_flu [↩]
  4. http://cdc.gov/h1n1flu/swineflu_you.htm [↩]