Check out the EnviroKnow Swine Flu Page for more information.

U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu :

Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.

Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.

Swine Flu Outbreak linked to Smithfield Factory Farms 11:

Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site—a level nearly equal to Smithfield’s total U.S. hog production.

Contagion on a Small Planet:

An urbanizing planet  knitted by transportation is an extraordinarily welcoming world for infectious disease, particularly easily transmitted viruses like the flu. That’s why it wasn’t surprising Saturday when the World Health Organization concluded that the outbreaks of swine flu focused in central Mexico as well as a school in New York City and several other places around the United States officially constituted “a public health emergency of international concern.” Here’s a W.H.O. video describing their surveillance efforts. Will the safety net hold?

HOW TO: Track Swine Flu Online:

This week, news broke of a new and fatal swine flu on the Mexico-U.S. border. It has quickly turned into a growing outbreak and possible pandemic. Knowing about these important and growing cases is vital to public health. Fortunately, there are several useful online resources that track health information and disease outbreaks.

This resource guide will help you better track not only cases of Swine Flu, but other public health concerns as well.

Swine Flu: Twitter’s Power to Misinform:

That aside, the “swine flu” Twitter-scare has once again proved the importance of context – and how badly most Twitter conversations are hurt by the lack of it. The problem with Twitter is that there is very little context you can fit into 140 characters, even less so if all you are doing is watching a stream of messages that mention “swine flu.” Now, the lack of context is probably not a problem in 99% of discussions happening on Twitter – or, at least, it’s not a problem with devastating global consequences.

However, in the context of a global pandemic – where media networks are doing their best to spice up an already serious threat – having millions of people wrap up all their fears into 140 characters and blurt them out in the public might have some dangerous consequences, networked panic being one of them. If you think that my concerns about context are overblown, here are just a few status updates from random Twitter users that would barely make you calmer (or more informed) about what’s going on:

10 Thoughts on Swine Flu and the City:

It’s interesting to note, however, that swine flu, unsurprisingly, comes from “close contact with pigs” – that is, spatial proximity between humans and their livestock. Swine flu, we could say, is a spatial problem – an epiphenomenon of landscape.

I’m reminded here of a point made recently by geographer Javier Arbona. Referring to the increasingly popular and somewhat utopian idea that, in the sustainable cities of tomorrow, agriculture will have returned to its rightful place in the city center, Arbona asks: “Did everyone think that so much lushness and farming envisioned in the city aren’t going to open up new Pandora’s boxes of infectious diseases and sanitation problems as we come into contact with more manure, more bacteria, and more wild animals that we urbanites are not at all ‘naturalized’ to?”

It’s an important question. After all, it’s incredibly easy, reading about sustainable cities, urban agriculture, and even the locavore movement, to conclude that chickens, pigs, cows, etc., have all been removed from the urban fabric as part of a profiteering move by Tyson and Perdue.