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Surprising Science

The Thinkers Guide to Swine Flu Prevention

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Apologies for blurring thought and common sense here, but in case the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations were insufficient, we’ll add in some out-of-the-box thinking on staying healthy during swine flu season.

First let’s review the basics in case you have been getting all of your flu prevention tips off Twitter:

–Wash you hands very well.

–Avoid tightly confined spaces with lots of people in them like subways and cities.

–If you are ill, stay home.

–Eat all the well-cooked pork you want.

After you have stockpiled groceries and hermetically sealed off your living quarters:

–Study up on industrial agriculture; it tends to spawn diseases that kill people.

–Take preventative measures until about September, when a vaccine should be ready.

–Review your pandemic jargon: mitigation, multiplier effect, onset date, spike.

–Understand that new viruses tend to come in waves. The 1918 Spanish flu took about nine months to really take off.

–Know swine flu’s history. This mother last reared her head in ’76 in Fort Dix. Here’s what the U.S. Public Health Service said then.

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