Endless fight against viruses

As you know, swine flu is raging all over the world. The number of infected people has already surpassed one thousand. WHO announced that they changed the emergency level of swine flu from phase 4 to phase 5.

So, people all over the world are really warred about having a pandemic disease. Japanese government is trying to prevent swine flu from entering the country.

They try to keep people who have a possibility of swine flu, but the new assassin will invade soon. I also worried about a prejudice and discrimination against people who were diagnosed as swine flu. I feel media exaggerate too much. It seems no one knows about that swine flu is weak toxicity type. I think the reason why Japanese people are concerned too much is that Japan is an island country. That means Japanese people tend to be sensitive about everything which come from outside. In addition, Spanish flu(The 1918 flu pandemic) spread to nearly every part of the world in 1918. In Japan many people were infected with it too.

According to Wikipedia, 390,000 people died in short-term. Since then, Japanese government hates viruses. So, it seems that Japanese government tries to exterminate all viruses that is bad for people. However, I think it's totally nonsense. I think exterminating bad viruses could accelerate to form mutation new virus. Also, avoiding viruses too much could lead to reduce human resistance that is inherent in human beings and I'm concerned about causing the feeling that they'll do wholesale slaughter of swines only because they could have a original virus holder like hakubishin before. 

Also, this time, Egyptian government decided to do wholesale slaughter of all swines in their country.

It's a way of thinking that focuses on only human being's advantage. It's same as environmental destruction. The virus that was found as a new type sometimes existed before. So, it's not new, but it's only found by human. There are some cases that people entered primitive area then got a new type of virus and spread.

So, we should stop thinking of focusing on only human being now and I'm worried about the influence of bad image to pork processed food companies.

I guess that in Japan, many people try to keep off eating pork. Then, some pork processed food companies will go bankrupt. So, WHO just canted the name from swine flu to Influenza A(HINI).

France and China also changed it.

Here in the U.S. also changed it since April 29th.

In conclusion, we human being never get rid of viruses. We should find how to live together with viruses. Losing our child is really sad thing but, at the same time, even human being is one of creatures. So, we will die for sure someday.

There are a lot of risk that we always face with death not only a virus. We should accept a virus as natural things. I think it's out of the question to isolate infected people from our society.

Written in 2009 and revised July 2012