NEWS FLASH - MONEY IS TIGHT
Okay, no 'news' in that news, is there? One of the distributors of our (home business) product has been slow in paying us at the same time we've been doing more 'prep for future' than 'immediately paying work'. We knew that our choices would reduce income for a while, so it's okay.
But it means that I'm doing even more cooking from scratch, at the same time that my husband wants to buy more goodies at the local Farmers Market. We're compromising - he gets to buy 1 loaf of artesian bread (UpTown Bakers rock!) but we have to make cookies/muffins/etc at home, as well as the rest of our bread.
Today I'm baking a lovely loaf of bread and some blackberry muffins. But I don't have all the ingredients that the muffin recipe calls for!
FLEXIBILITY & SUBSTITUTION
Actually, the husband and spawn want blueberry muffins, but I have blackberries, not blueberries, in the freezer to use up. So that's substitution #1.
Substitution # 2 is for some of the 1 1/2 cups of plain yogurt that the recipe calls for. I don't have that much. If I had planned ahead (as I SHOULD have) I'd have made more yogurt by now. Instead, I've got some sour cream in the freezer left over from something or other, and I'll use that - no need to worry about it separating in baked goods.
Of course, I'm still going to have to make some more yogurt, since I like the stuff and use it for all manners of things.
YOGURT MAKING - YOU KNEW I'D GET TO THAT EVENTUALLY.....
Making yogurt is incredibly easy. Heat milk to about 115 degrees. Add starter yogurt - some left from your previous batch, or half of cup of plain yogurt from whatever brand you usually buy (so long as it brags about live cultures). Keep the mix warm for a few hours. Poof! It's yogurt!
I'm going to rotate my dry milk for this. Since I mix the powder with hot water (it dissolves better that way) it will heat the milk in the same step. About 1 quart of warm milk, 1/2 cup of starter, tuck it into the hay box cooker, and ignore it till later today.
I'm VERY good at ignoring things.
Enjoy!
Friday, May 29, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Quick Bean & Ham Soup
First it was hotter than usual for the month, then it got colder than usual. During the hotter time, my freezer was left slightly ajar (thanks, Spawn!). Did I mention that it was HUMID during the hot time?
At any rate, I had to defrost the freezer.
Defrosting the freezer I found amazing items I had not really focused on still being around. I found ham left over from Thanksgiving. I found kidney beans left over from SOMETHING or other. I found more beef stock than I thought I had in there. Having found them, and knowing that the weather was changing, I hauled them out and made soup.
I have GOT to stop feeding the freezer and letting things accumulate in it.
QUICK BEAN AND HAM SOUP
1 1/2 cups left over ham, cut in about 1/3 inch dice
2 cups left over beans, any type really. If using canned, rinse them well.
1 cup diced carrots
1 qt beef stock
1 qt chicken stock
Take a big ol' pot. Put a bit of fat in the bottom and saute' the carrots 'till crisp but cooked. Add rest of ingredients. Simmer. Adjust seasonings. Serve.
Makes about 8 servings.
At any rate, I had to defrost the freezer.
Defrosting the freezer I found amazing items I had not really focused on still being around. I found ham left over from Thanksgiving. I found kidney beans left over from SOMETHING or other. I found more beef stock than I thought I had in there. Having found them, and knowing that the weather was changing, I hauled them out and made soup.
I have GOT to stop feeding the freezer and letting things accumulate in it.
QUICK BEAN AND HAM SOUP
1 1/2 cups left over ham, cut in about 1/3 inch dice
2 cups left over beans, any type really. If using canned, rinse them well.
1 cup diced carrots
1 qt beef stock
1 qt chicken stock
Take a big ol' pot. Put a bit of fat in the bottom and saute' the carrots 'till crisp but cooked. Add rest of ingredients. Simmer. Adjust seasonings. Serve.
Makes about 8 servings.
Brown Gold
Holy Liquid of All Life - coffee prices have jumped while I wasn't looking!
The Spawn went to Costco for me yesterday, as Costco is near his college. Among the other things I had him pick up was coffee since we've gone thru' most of the beans I had in storage. I was shocked at the bill - the coffee alone had gone up almost 15% since we had last bought it.
Why Was I Surprised?
I suppose I shouldn't have been. Maybe I've been suckered by all the recent chatter about deflation due to recession and all. At the very least, I'd not been following comodity prices lately.
Oh, I'd noticed that gas prices were up about 10% lately. Really up 33% over the lows gas hit last year. I'd noticed the jump in the price of oil. But I've not been watching other comodities.
It's a Finite Planet, Folks
I'd forgotten that this is a finite planet. I had become complacent. This has got to change, I have to go back to my paranoid .... er .... prepared ways.
Time for me to finally get the garden in. Even tho' I'm going to have to do it in the pollen (and the pollen led to the sinus and ear infection that stripped my will to blog over the past 10+ days). Time for me to grind my own flour again. Time for me to tell y'all all about it in vivid detail.
I'll bet y'all can't wait [grin]
.
The Spawn went to Costco for me yesterday, as Costco is near his college. Among the other things I had him pick up was coffee since we've gone thru' most of the beans I had in storage. I was shocked at the bill - the coffee alone had gone up almost 15% since we had last bought it.
Why Was I Surprised?
I suppose I shouldn't have been. Maybe I've been suckered by all the recent chatter about deflation due to recession and all. At the very least, I'd not been following comodity prices lately.
Oh, I'd noticed that gas prices were up about 10% lately. Really up 33% over the lows gas hit last year. I'd noticed the jump in the price of oil. But I've not been watching other comodities.
It's a Finite Planet, Folks
I'd forgotten that this is a finite planet. I had become complacent. This has got to change, I have to go back to my paranoid .... er .... prepared ways.
Time for me to finally get the garden in. Even tho' I'm going to have to do it in the pollen (and the pollen led to the sinus and ear infection that stripped my will to blog over the past 10+ days). Time for me to grind my own flour again. Time for me to tell y'all all about it in vivid detail.
I'll bet y'all can't wait [grin]
.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Sabbat Energies
I'm still running-off-at-the-mind over Beltane, dates for Pagan High Days, and ideas about 'what and who) rituals are for'. I'm going to try to limit this post to most of the 'dates for High Days' issue
Unintended Consequences of My Ritual Date Setting
There is at least one unintended consequence of using local conditions as the basis for neoPagan High Day rituals. It will affect the amount of energy/unity on this plane for that ritual.
[Oh, Gods, this might expand to a discussion of raising energy vs tapping energy, too. Let us all hope I don't run-off-at-the-mind THAT much!]
Ever spend a season to a year making sure that you are deep in meditation at the EXACT TIME that the moon goes full and dark? Some of my friends and I have, and we've uniformly been able to tell the exact time of the shift in energies. The same ort of enery is available for the solar quarters (with quirks thrown in due to northern vs southern hemisphere issues). Astrological and astronomical based energies are strong and time-specific. OTOH, even with their strength they still are shaped by where you are on the earth - thus the strong Equinox energy is going to manifest totally differently north and south of the equator.
I'm not convinced that the astrological or astronomical energies are available for the cross quarters at all - I think that those high days work on a different power-grid.
But doing things based on local conditions means that the group mind and intent is lower due to just plain lower numbers of humans doing ritual and lighting up 'intention beacons' in the Other Worlds. If EVERY NeoPagan did their Samhain ritual the same night, at the same time, that would be some kick-ass energy. But we neopagans are a contentuous and squabbling lot, and we do most group celebrations at a time and date that is most convenient for most members of our groups - and most folks in the southern hemisphere are going to celebrate Beltane at that time. So at the VERY least Samhain gets celebrated over a 24 hour period - and really, it gets celebrated by small groups over a two-week period. That two week period is WITHOUT most neopagans celebrating it based on local conditions!
The Other Worlds don't have linear time as we do, so I'm not sure of the level of impact on THAT side. Ideally we're tapping into energy from the ancestors for our High Days and that energy has left huge trails on the Other Sides, so once there maybe we just travel down the well-worn way.
That said, I'm in a Wiccan tradition where at least one of our Elders (Ivo Dominguez, Jr) times rituals very carefully in accordance to astrological movements. When the coven I am in was having it's formal creation ritual we had an 8 minute window of opportunity to start the ritual in, between ... I THINK it was the end of a Mercury Retro and ... something else. I'd have to look it all up in the journal for that year, and I'm not doing that right now. But since we were manifesting something on THIS plane that was new to ALL the plane, and we were only the 5th or 6th coven in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, we weren't treading a very well-worn path. In cases like that trying to tie more things together, from all sources, is a Good Thing.
Buzzing on....
Okay, I AM going to go on a bit on Beltane and this Southern/Northern hemisphere thing. IF we decide dates of things by the calendar, AND we stay earth-focused, then the fact that it's Samhain in one hemisphere when it's Beltane in the other is enough to convince me that Beltane is 'another new year' day, AND that the veils MUST be thin then, too. I just can't see spiritual veils being thin ONLY in ONE hemisphere.
So, would Beltane be a good time to scry and see what we've planted will bring? Dunno! What say ye?
Catch you later!
.
Unintended Consequences of My Ritual Date Setting
There is at least one unintended consequence of using local conditions as the basis for neoPagan High Day rituals. It will affect the amount of energy/unity on this plane for that ritual.
[Oh, Gods, this might expand to a discussion of raising energy vs tapping energy, too. Let us all hope I don't run-off-at-the-mind THAT much!]
Ever spend a season to a year making sure that you are deep in meditation at the EXACT TIME that the moon goes full and dark? Some of my friends and I have, and we've uniformly been able to tell the exact time of the shift in energies. The same ort of enery is available for the solar quarters (with quirks thrown in due to northern vs southern hemisphere issues). Astrological and astronomical based energies are strong and time-specific. OTOH, even with their strength they still are shaped by where you are on the earth - thus the strong Equinox energy is going to manifest totally differently north and south of the equator.
I'm not convinced that the astrological or astronomical energies are available for the cross quarters at all - I think that those high days work on a different power-grid.
But doing things based on local conditions means that the group mind and intent is lower due to just plain lower numbers of humans doing ritual and lighting up 'intention beacons' in the Other Worlds. If EVERY NeoPagan did their Samhain ritual the same night, at the same time, that would be some kick-ass energy. But we neopagans are a contentuous and squabbling lot, and we do most group celebrations at a time and date that is most convenient for most members of our groups - and most folks in the southern hemisphere are going to celebrate Beltane at that time. So at the VERY least Samhain gets celebrated over a 24 hour period - and really, it gets celebrated by small groups over a two-week period. That two week period is WITHOUT most neopagans celebrating it based on local conditions!
The Other Worlds don't have linear time as we do, so I'm not sure of the level of impact on THAT side. Ideally we're tapping into energy from the ancestors for our High Days and that energy has left huge trails on the Other Sides, so once there maybe we just travel down the well-worn way.
That said, I'm in a Wiccan tradition where at least one of our Elders (Ivo Dominguez, Jr) times rituals very carefully in accordance to astrological movements. When the coven I am in was having it's formal creation ritual we had an 8 minute window of opportunity to start the ritual in, between ... I THINK it was the end of a Mercury Retro and ... something else. I'd have to look it all up in the journal for that year, and I'm not doing that right now. But since we were manifesting something on THIS plane that was new to ALL the plane, and we were only the 5th or 6th coven in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, we weren't treading a very well-worn path. In cases like that trying to tie more things together, from all sources, is a Good Thing.
Buzzing on....
Okay, I AM going to go on a bit on Beltane and this Southern/Northern hemisphere thing. IF we decide dates of things by the calendar, AND we stay earth-focused, then the fact that it's Samhain in one hemisphere when it's Beltane in the other is enough to convince me that Beltane is 'another new year' day, AND that the veils MUST be thin then, too. I just can't see spiritual veils being thin ONLY in ONE hemisphere.
So, would Beltane be a good time to scry and see what we've planted will bring? Dunno! What say ye?
Catch you later!
.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Are You SURE it's Beltane?
Blessings, Darlings!
For readers who are NOT neo-pagans, Beltane is a Pagan holiday. Beltane has Celtic roots. It is unabashedly a fertility festival.
Most folks (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) celebrate it May 1st, even going so far as to call it MayDay or MayEve, if the celebrate the night before. Therein lies what I see as a problem.
This problem was pointed out to me, years ago, on the Pagan Path Yahoo group by my buddy Red Deer. He posted about how he uses local flora and fauna to determine the day of the 'cross quarter festivals' - Samhain, Imbolg, Beltane, and Lughnasadh) rather than using the Julian calendar or by using the midpoints in the astronomically determined holidays (the solstices and the equinoxes [equini????]). After all, our paleopagan ancestors did NOT use the Julian calendar, nor the Gregorian calendar. They used nature to determing High Days.
Neopagans like to think that we are all so much more tied into nature than the rest of humanity. Nice illusion, I guess. In practice, most of us look to the printed calendar to see when the dark, new and full moons are rather than watching the sky, and set our holidays by the dates on the page.
It's not even like we don't know how the paleopagans set the dates for their 'cross quarter' high days. Most of them are older ones, based on nomadic herding in Europe rather than agriculture and settled villages. Samhain was the finally harvest - that is, when folks culled the herds down to the ones they were willing to feed over the winter. Thus, it was held after all the animals and people had gotten to where they overwintered. They were out of the mountains, they might have moved somewhat south as well.
When did they leave the mountains? I'm not sure what their cue was. I'm going to make a SWAG and say that they moved following the killing frost. I don't know how long it took for them to get to where they overwintered, either. In Ireland it wouldn't have been a really long period.
There would be side effects of using nature to determine the dates of the high days. First - they were different each year. They would NOT handily fit on a calendar. Second - they would be different practically tribe-by-tribe, as different locations would have the killing frost on different days. Might Samhain practically be at Yule in some locations some years? Sure, not that it mattered - it's not like Yule is a Celtic holiday. Yes, the Beaker People (protoPicts) noted the winter solstice, but nomadic tribes like the early Celts didn't - you need, oh, stone circles and such to note astrological events. Those things came later.
So, for me, I celebrate Samhain 3 days after the killing frost in my area. The 3 days is ONLY to give me time to make food/offerings/etc, maybe fast, and do some special visualizations and such for the ritual. I'm SWAGing that the ancient ones would have had to prep, too, after they got to winter quarters. I use the 3 day rule for all the cross quarter holidays, BTW.
Imbolg is all about ewes birthing lambs. I base this on friends who raise sheep in my area who tell me when their sheep start birthing.
Beltane was traditionally held when the leaves of the hawthorn trees were the size of squirrel's ears. So you'd have to know what your local hawthorn trees looked like, and the size of your local squirrels' ears!
Lughnasadh ... well. First harvest, when the barley was ripe. It was celebrated by horse races, horse trading, games of skill. So, I either use county/state fairs in my area to note the date of this, OR if I'm feeling more Wiccan than Celtic Reconstructionist, then it's all about when my garden starts to produce zucchini and tomatoes. In Illinois the county and state fairs were a GREAT match for my garden. Here in Maryland the fairs are later in the year, so it doesn't work as well. I DO wish I knew some local barley farmers, that would rock for making my own beer as well as helping me tune into the same cues the ancient ones did.
And all of this begs the question that aniraangel and I have been discussing on Twitter - how do European customs transfer to neopagans living south of the equator? Or, even, in equitorial areas - no frost to determine Samhain if I lived in Miami!
Neopaganism is new enough (I'm leaving out the Romantic Era Mesopaganism of the 19th century for now) that I don't know if many folks have examined that. I'm wondering if Christianity is different in Oz and Brazil and Sri Lanka where the liturgical cycle is either at odds with the local conditions or if there isn't really much of a cycle at all. Has anyone examined THAT? Seems to me that the field is ripe to see if evolution of religion in those circumstances is different than it is in areas where liturgical cycle and seasonal cycle match.
As always, more questions here than answers. Y'all have any hints for me?
Catch you later!
.
For readers who are NOT neo-pagans, Beltane is a Pagan holiday. Beltane has Celtic roots. It is unabashedly a fertility festival.
Most folks (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) celebrate it May 1st, even going so far as to call it MayDay or MayEve, if the celebrate the night before. Therein lies what I see as a problem.
This problem was pointed out to me, years ago, on the Pagan Path Yahoo group by my buddy Red Deer. He posted about how he uses local flora and fauna to determine the day of the 'cross quarter festivals' - Samhain, Imbolg, Beltane, and Lughnasadh) rather than using the Julian calendar or by using the midpoints in the astronomically determined holidays (the solstices and the equinoxes [equini????]). After all, our paleopagan ancestors did NOT use the Julian calendar, nor the Gregorian calendar. They used nature to determing High Days.
Neopagans like to think that we are all so much more tied into nature than the rest of humanity. Nice illusion, I guess. In practice, most of us look to the printed calendar to see when the dark, new and full moons are rather than watching the sky, and set our holidays by the dates on the page.
It's not even like we don't know how the paleopagans set the dates for their 'cross quarter' high days. Most of them are older ones, based on nomadic herding in Europe rather than agriculture and settled villages. Samhain was the finally harvest - that is, when folks culled the herds down to the ones they were willing to feed over the winter. Thus, it was held after all the animals and people had gotten to where they overwintered. They were out of the mountains, they might have moved somewhat south as well.
When did they leave the mountains? I'm not sure what their cue was. I'm going to make a SWAG and say that they moved following the killing frost. I don't know how long it took for them to get to where they overwintered, either. In Ireland it wouldn't have been a really long period.
There would be side effects of using nature to determine the dates of the high days. First - they were different each year. They would NOT handily fit on a calendar. Second - they would be different practically tribe-by-tribe, as different locations would have the killing frost on different days. Might Samhain practically be at Yule in some locations some years? Sure, not that it mattered - it's not like Yule is a Celtic holiday. Yes, the Beaker People (protoPicts) noted the winter solstice, but nomadic tribes like the early Celts didn't - you need, oh, stone circles and such to note astrological events. Those things came later.
So, for me, I celebrate Samhain 3 days after the killing frost in my area. The 3 days is ONLY to give me time to make food/offerings/etc, maybe fast, and do some special visualizations and such for the ritual. I'm SWAGing that the ancient ones would have had to prep, too, after they got to winter quarters. I use the 3 day rule for all the cross quarter holidays, BTW.
Imbolg is all about ewes birthing lambs. I base this on friends who raise sheep in my area who tell me when their sheep start birthing.
Beltane was traditionally held when the leaves of the hawthorn trees were the size of squirrel's ears. So you'd have to know what your local hawthorn trees looked like, and the size of your local squirrels' ears!
Lughnasadh ... well. First harvest, when the barley was ripe. It was celebrated by horse races, horse trading, games of skill. So, I either use county/state fairs in my area to note the date of this, OR if I'm feeling more Wiccan than Celtic Reconstructionist, then it's all about when my garden starts to produce zucchini and tomatoes. In Illinois the county and state fairs were a GREAT match for my garden. Here in Maryland the fairs are later in the year, so it doesn't work as well. I DO wish I knew some local barley farmers, that would rock for making my own beer as well as helping me tune into the same cues the ancient ones did.
And all of this begs the question that aniraangel and I have been discussing on Twitter - how do European customs transfer to neopagans living south of the equator? Or, even, in equitorial areas - no frost to determine Samhain if I lived in Miami!
Neopaganism is new enough (I'm leaving out the Romantic Era Mesopaganism of the 19th century for now) that I don't know if many folks have examined that. I'm wondering if Christianity is different in Oz and Brazil and Sri Lanka where the liturgical cycle is either at odds with the local conditions or if there isn't really much of a cycle at all. Has anyone examined THAT? Seems to me that the field is ripe to see if evolution of religion in those circumstances is different than it is in areas where liturgical cycle and seasonal cycle match.
As always, more questions here than answers. Y'all have any hints for me?
Catch you later!
.
Blah
I'd post more, but I'm digging my way out of end of month business stuff and can barely see due to allergies. Dammit, I'm a DRUID (well, neo-Druid) - shouldn't I have a better relationship with oak pollen?
Monday, April 27, 2009
ZooFlu SWAGs
Again, SWAGs are 'scientific wild-ass guesses'. And 'ZooFlu' instead of 'the current varient on swine flu' because Jane on some of the survival lists I'm on named it that, because it combines genetics of influenzas from three different animals. And it rhymes.
STATEMENT OF FACTS
About two weeks ago a new influenza started moving in Mexico. It's an H1N1 influenza that started in pigs. It is spreading human to human, and appears to be very easily spread via air and surfaces. Death rate from this, in Mexico, looks to be at least 7% which is WAY higher than the typical less than 2% influenza death rate. That said, it is WAY lower than the at least 10% (and possibly 20%) death rate from the 1918 avian influenza pandemic. And as of last night no one has died of it in the US.
WHY THE ZOOFLU HAS GOTTEN SO MUCH ATTENTION
The death rate among those with this flu in Mexico is the number one reason. If it bleeds (or dies) it leads in the news media. Why it has gotten the attention of the public health community is both the high death rate in Mexico AND hitting at a warm time of year.
See, flu viri are weather sensitive. They like cold weather and low humidity. Mexico city probably has low humidity, but spring is warm enough there that a wildly spreading influenza is might darn unusual and dangerous.
Another unusual factor is that we're seeing such mortality in an H1 flu virus. In a normal flu the ones with high mortality are varients on H5 or H7's, not H1's. Pandemics have been H1's, H2's, H3's. OTOH, that might just be an artifact - microbiologists first worked to identify the pandemic viruses, so they got serotyped first.
RUMOR SLAPDOWN
Grist has an article trying to link the zoo flu with Smithfield pork production in Mexico, due to their pollution of water/air. The pollution is not likely to be a factor - viri need a live vector, especially to recombine. And insects like flies don't work for the recombitant part.
Epidemiologists and public health folks (like me, actually - I've a bachelor's degree in public health) have long expected the next pandemic to come from pigs. Not only are pigs biologically close to humans but they have long been known as a vector for influenza recombining. And that's even BEFORE the issue of factory pork raising enters the picture.
PREVENTION? TREATMENT?
Prevention - wash your hands. A lot. Don't touch your hands to your face/eyes. To be honest, I'm a prepper enough that I have N95 facial masks, too. I've not started wearing them when I go out yet.
There is no vaccine for this. Yeah, I know - we had a swine flu vaccine in 1976. But this is not your father's swine flu. It's the ZooFlu. It's not genetically the same. And, THINK - even if it had been the same, vaccines are not fine wines. They do NOT improve sitting on a shelf (or in a freezer) for 30 years.
And even tho' the fall '08 influenza vacccine covered ONE H1N1 varient, there does not appear to be cross protection.
Treatment - so far 'they' say this responds to Tamiflu and Relenza.
"REVVING UP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM"
This is a real problem. Yes, the healthier you are the less likely you are to get anything. However if you DO get something like this, dispite nutrition/prevention/etc, there is a problem - it's the healthiest that die. What tends to kill folks who have a killer influenza is their own over responding immune system, filling their lungs with fluid, etc. It's called a cytokine storm, cytokine's being one of our body's antibodies. The healthiest bodies produce the biggest storm. This is different than what happens in a more typical flu death - there it's an elderly person who gets the flu then gets pneumonia on top of it, and the pneumonia kills 'em.
CALL TO ACTION
Wash your hands. Don't touch your face and eyes. The rest is a crapshoot.
Catch you later!
.
STATEMENT OF FACTS
About two weeks ago a new influenza started moving in Mexico. It's an H1N1 influenza that started in pigs. It is spreading human to human, and appears to be very easily spread via air and surfaces. Death rate from this, in Mexico, looks to be at least 7% which is WAY higher than the typical less than 2% influenza death rate. That said, it is WAY lower than the at least 10% (and possibly 20%) death rate from the 1918 avian influenza pandemic. And as of last night no one has died of it in the US.
WHY THE ZOOFLU HAS GOTTEN SO MUCH ATTENTION
The death rate among those with this flu in Mexico is the number one reason. If it bleeds (or dies) it leads in the news media. Why it has gotten the attention of the public health community is both the high death rate in Mexico AND hitting at a warm time of year.
See, flu viri are weather sensitive. They like cold weather and low humidity. Mexico city probably has low humidity, but spring is warm enough there that a wildly spreading influenza is might darn unusual and dangerous.
Another unusual factor is that we're seeing such mortality in an H1 flu virus. In a normal flu the ones with high mortality are varients on H5 or H7's, not H1's. Pandemics have been H1's, H2's, H3's. OTOH, that might just be an artifact - microbiologists first worked to identify the pandemic viruses, so they got serotyped first.
RUMOR SLAPDOWN
Grist has an article trying to link the zoo flu with Smithfield pork production in Mexico, due to their pollution of water/air. The pollution is not likely to be a factor - viri need a live vector, especially to recombine. And insects like flies don't work for the recombitant part.
Epidemiologists and public health folks (like me, actually - I've a bachelor's degree in public health) have long expected the next pandemic to come from pigs. Not only are pigs biologically close to humans but they have long been known as a vector for influenza recombining. And that's even BEFORE the issue of factory pork raising enters the picture.
PREVENTION? TREATMENT?
Prevention - wash your hands. A lot. Don't touch your hands to your face/eyes. To be honest, I'm a prepper enough that I have N95 facial masks, too. I've not started wearing them when I go out yet.
There is no vaccine for this. Yeah, I know - we had a swine flu vaccine in 1976. But this is not your father's swine flu. It's the ZooFlu. It's not genetically the same. And, THINK - even if it had been the same, vaccines are not fine wines. They do NOT improve sitting on a shelf (or in a freezer) for 30 years.
And even tho' the fall '08 influenza vacccine covered ONE H1N1 varient, there does not appear to be cross protection.
Treatment - so far 'they' say this responds to Tamiflu and Relenza.
"REVVING UP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM"
This is a real problem. Yes, the healthier you are the less likely you are to get anything. However if you DO get something like this, dispite nutrition/prevention/etc, there is a problem - it's the healthiest that die. What tends to kill folks who have a killer influenza is their own over responding immune system, filling their lungs with fluid, etc. It's called a cytokine storm, cytokine's being one of our body's antibodies. The healthiest bodies produce the biggest storm. This is different than what happens in a more typical flu death - there it's an elderly person who gets the flu then gets pneumonia on top of it, and the pneumonia kills 'em.
CALL TO ACTION
Wash your hands. Don't touch your face and eyes. The rest is a crapshoot.
Catch you later!
.
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