Swine Flu: Another Problem with Uncontrolled Borders

I’ve seen a lot of media hand wringing over the latest Thing We All Must Fear, swine flu. Seems like it is coming into the US from Mexico – yet another pathology resulting from this uncontrolled border. From Yahoo News:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Governments around the world rushed on Sunday to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and infected around a dozen in the United States.

Mexicans huddled in their homes while U.S. hospitals tracked patients with flu symptoms and other countries imposed health checks at airports as the World Health Organization warned the virus had the potential to become a pandemic.

In New Zealand, 10 pupils from an Auckland school party that had returned from Mexico were being treated for influenza symptoms in what health authorities said was a likely case of swine flu, although they added none was seriously ill.

And a rather interesting point:

The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people. A 1968 “Hong Kong” flu pandemic killed about 1 million people globally.

When I read “a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses“, the paranoid in me wonders if this new virus has been engineered in a lab. Now this would be something to panic about.

And here is a story saying this virus may have sickened children in a New York City school.

Seems this virus spreads fom person to person like seasonal flu. Uncontrolled borders result in movement of people who may be carrying this, and/or other diseases. Not Good.

Japan, the World’s Richest Country, is Running Out of Food ?!?

From theage.com

“While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.”

Hard to believe that the rich are worried about their food supply. Why? Because they rely on imports. We all know the folly of depending on imports for oil. Food appears to be another vulnerability.

Perhaps we will realize that globalization of trade is going to pauperize all of us, except the 2 or 3% at the top of the economic pyramid. I don’t hear our Presidential wannabes proposing solutions, do you?