“In my opening statement, I kept referring to it as the ’so-called’ swine flu,” he informed Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. Harkin, who represents Iowa’s large pork industry, suggested that the flu “doesn’t necessarily come from pigs” and said that “a more correct terminology for this might be a ‘North American virus.’”

When Fauci resisted that suggestion, Harkin tried another. “Why wouldn’t it be called an avian virus?” he said. Finally, Harkin moved on to a question of more importance: “How soon can we get a vaccine?”

“That’s a very good point, instead of worrying about names,” Fauci answered.

the US can easily absorb this if it outbreaks and kills a huge percentage of the population.

It seems this latest calumny (because the universe decided we didn’t have enough to deal with) has a mortality of 6 % in Mexico. The Spanish Flu clocked in at, eh, 2.5 %, and has been hitting the young quite harshly. Hurm.

The blogs are the place to go to, quite plainly. Listen to the media for too long and you’d think people were having dreams about mother Abigail and Randall Flagg. Still, if there is something that could really clean our clock, it’s this sort of thing. China must be on total lockdown by now.