The Swine Flu: Global Pandemic?
Imagine someone being infected with a currently incurable disease. What will happen to them? What happens to their loved ones? There are numerous unanswered questions about the Swine Flu. Many people fear it coming to America. Little do they know, it is already here whether they like it or not. Moreover, this is not the first time it has been in America.
The 1918 flu pandemic was when the Swine Flu was first proposed as being a disease related to the human influenza. About ten years later, in 1930, the first case of the flu virus was identified as a cause of disease in pigs. There have been many outbreaks of Swine Flu throughout history in the United States. A new outbreak was discovered in 1976 when an army recruit at Fort Dix stated that he was feeling tired and weak. This soldier died the next day as four of his fellow soldiers began feeling sick and were hospitalized. Two weeks later, health officials announced that the cause of his death was Swine Flu. This particular outbreak was detected only for a short time, January 19 to February 9, and it never spread beyond Fort Dix. In the year 1988, Swine Flu was found in pigs in four U.S states. Within a year it had spread across the United States (“Swine Influenza”). The Swine Flu is predicted to become a major problem in the fall of 2009.
The Swine Flu virus is contagious, as with other influenza viruses, but at this time it is not known how easily or quickly it can spread between people. Swine Flu is able to spread from pigs to people and from people to pigs. However, it is a myth that one can acquire Swine Flu by eating pork. The Swine Flu transfers between humans the same way as the seasonal flu does (“Swine Influenza”).
In the spring of 2009, there were confirmed cases of the Swine Flu in Mexico as well as several states in the United States (“H1N1 (swine) influenza”). According to AOL Health Editors, there have been a total of 30,000 confirmed cases of swine flu throughout the world. These confirmed cases have been located in 47 different countries. Based on these 30,000 cases, the World Health Organization has declared Swine Flu to be a global pandemic. AOL Health Editors reported that the World Health Organization has “raised the alert level from phase five to phase six: the highest possible.” With the current Swine Flu on the rise, the media has been saturated with the dangers.
Randy Bish has printed a cartoon of this issue in the Tribune Review.
In this cartoon, Bish portrays how people are frightened of the current outbreak of Swine Flu and that many believe they need to keep their distance from pigs as well as pork. Miss Piggy is standing on one side of this cartoon with an exasperated look on her face. Her face shows that she thinks that Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Beaker, and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew are overreacting with their precautions in her presence. On the other side of the cartoon stands Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Beaker, and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is wearing a doctor’s mask and reading a newspaper headlining the Swine Flu outbreak. Kermit the Frog is wearing a doctor’s mask as well and has a disgusted look on his face. Fozzie Bear looks hesitant toward Miss Piggy’s presence and is also wearing a doctor’s mask. Beaker is the only one in the room not wearing a doctor’s mask other than Miss Piggy. He has a terrified look on his face. Beaker’s hair is standing on end; his eyes are wide open, and his mouth is hanging open in fear.
Bish shows that Swine Flu is still a new and unfamiliar disease that many Americans fear. Bish is mocking people’s current fear of pigs, since the Swine Flu outbreak, in this cartoon. Americans are worrying about this disease before it is even a major issue. This cartoon shows the extent that Americans are going to try and avoid getting sick with the Swine Flu.
The issue of the Swine Flu is going to be exactly like the Bird Flu and West Nile. A tremendous scare but nothing major will come out of it. People will get sick and die from it, but it is not going to become what experts are making it out to be. People just overreact to these kinds of diseases. Once it is around for a while people will forget about it and worry about the next disease coming America’s way.
However, people need to become educated about the Swine Flu. Maybe once people know more about the Swine Flu they will also know more about how to protect themselves from it. That certainly does not mean cutting pork out of one’s diet. People also need to be sure that they are using good hygiene and taking care of themselves. If Americans keep clean and wash and sanitize their hands regularly they should be fine. Everyone just needs to go on living their life.
Instead of Americans being afraid of a disease they have absolutely no control over, they should focus on what they can control. For instance, smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer. Often times that lung cancer leads to death. Americans can control their addiction and make a wise choice. They need to stop smoking or participating in unhealthy habits that they know causes harm to their body. Why do people freak out about what they can not control in life, yet they let the things they can control slide by unfixed? Americans need to start using their heads and fixing what can be fixed, not worrying about something they can not change.
Works Cited
AOL Health Editors. "Swine Flu: What You Need To Know."Latest on Swine Flu. May 2009. Web. 13 Sep 2009. <http://www.aolhealth.com/condition-center/cold-flu/swine-flu?sem=1&ncid=AOLHTH00170000000017&otim=1252894075&spid=33206041>.
Bish, Randy. "Swine Flu."Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoonist. 04 Sept. 2009. 8 Sep 2009<http://www.cagle.com/news/SwineFlu09/1.asp>
"H1N1 (swine) influenza." Google Health. 2009. Web. 13 Sep 2009. <https://www.google.com/health/ref/H1N1+(swine)+influenza>.
"Swine influenza."Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 10 Sep 2009, 08:34 UTC. 10 Sep 2009.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swine_influenza&oldid=312948487>.
Amanda Barnes
Sep 18, 2009 3:10 PM
The background part went the best for me. It was interesting to learn that the swine flu has been in America before. I thought writing part three in third person was the hardest. It was difficult for me to find a way to state my opinion without using the word I, or any other form of first person. I overcame this struggle by getting feedback from my friends and rewording my writing. While writing this paper I never learned the terms of cartoonists. However, I did learn a lot about the swine flu and where it originated from. I feel like this essay was a lot better written than my prisons essay, but I know that there is still room for improvement in my writing. I hope to do even better on my memoir essay.
Amanda Barnes
Sep 28, 2009 10:28 AM
The revision went really well for me. Most of the mistakes I had in the first essay were minor and easy to fix. I had to go through my paper and capitalize Swine Flu and I also had one sentence that was in second person and I had to change it to third person. Other than that my mistakes were mostly convention errors.