Doaa El-Bey tries to separate swine flu fact from fiction The banner headline of the official daily Al-Ahram warned that half the world's population can catch swine flu if it becomes a pandemic. The official daily Al-Akhbar wrote that the rumours are not correct; Egypt is free from swine flu, while the independent Al-Masry Al-Yom wrote that the swine flu hysteria is overwhelming the world and striking terror in the heart of the Egyptian government. The opposition daily Al-Wafd quoted The Daily Telegraph as saying that two weeks remain before we either wipe out swine flu or it wipes us out. Iman Anwar wrote that indeed there is fear that swine flu can turn into a pandemic, despite the success of man in eradicating other pandemics in the past like the plague and smallpox. However, the nature of life on earth always succeeds in producing new diseases, or in breathing life into germs and bacteria after we thought that they had become extinct like tuberculosis. The writer reached the conclusion that there is no safe place on earth because swine flu, which emerged in Mexico, does not need more than 24 hours to move to continents and man is the primary carrier of the disease. He is the one spreading it without realising that he is destroying himself. At present, all what we know vis-à-vis science and technology is impeded in front of the dilemma of change in the genetic map of the ordinary cold virus. That tiny virus is becoming the greatest challenge to human civilisation with all its achievements, towers and miracles. Up to today scientists do not know the secret of the virus which moves freely between organisms, killing whoever it wants whenever it wants. "We immunise ourselves inside our armour: our bodies of flesh and bone, and we wear our masks for fear of organisms that we cannot see. Now, all masks of intermingling nationalities and ideologies which we hide behind and which individualise us have fallen. They all fell in front of an enemy in disguise. It is the greatest epidemic and the eternal curse," Anwar wrote in the weekly official newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom. Abdel-Hadi Mesbah compared the swine flu virus to a terrorist who is in search of a safe place to carry out a terrorist act. The guard (the immune system) cannot recognise this terrorist except by what he is wearing. However, the terrorist keeps changing his clothes to deceive the guard. In this case, there is no way to secure the area other than to watch what this terrorist wears before he reaches the place and inform the guard with the terrorist's specifications to be able to recognise and stop him. This is the job of immunisation or preventive vaccines which are manufactured every year depending on the widespread strain that year. But to increase the camouflage, this terrorist gets a new ID card and a new national number every now and then so that he can deceive the guard. By so doing, the writer added in Al-Ahram, he succeeds in getting in so easily to do whatever he wants or cause a global epidemic that can kill millions of people. Thus, Mesbah strongly urged the removal of pig farms, and breeding pigs in a clean environment, not in the garbage and dirt, and without any health or medical supervision. He also found mass culling a good thing in order to get rid of these farms at the present time, not because of the swine flu, as it has already gotten out of the bottle and moves efficiently between humans, but because Egypt has become a country in which bird flu is endemic, and is also the country with the highest rate of the transmission of infection from birds to humans in 2009. That indicates the difficulty in changing public habits in dealing with this epidemic. The existence of so many pig farms amid populated areas which are open and filled with dirt and leftovers, where migratory birds can land, can cause the development of another strain of the virus. Asked Mohamed Mustafa Shordi: if the virus caused worldwide horror while we are still in spring what would happen next winter? Or what would happen in the southern hemisphere where winter will start after a few days? Winter is the season for influenza. Thus, next winter will put humanity to a big test because the virus has already spread in many countries and tourists are likely to take it from one place to another. So far, doctors have been able to deal with swine flu because cases are few. But its spread could put the government in a dilemma because no state will be able to deal with thousands of cases and provide them with the necessary treatment. "The WHO and doctors are issuing mere precautions in order to face an enemy we cannot see and which is spreading in the air," Shordi wrote in Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the Wafd Party. Mohamed El-Shabba criticised the way we are dealing with the issue, calling it racist and religious sensitivity. The issue of culling pigs is mainly a state issue that has nothing to do with mosque or church. "It is not right that thousands of farmers who rear pigs gather in front of churches in quest of compensation rather than resorting to the Prime Ministry. The government is the government of all Egyptians, not just the government of Muslims," El-Shabba wrote in the independent daily Nahdet Masr. Shabba called on civil society, non-governmental organisations and institutions, schools, universities and mosques, as well as churches to work together to face the danger. The state declaration that Egypt is free from swine flu is not enough and does not mean it is far from over. In the hope of killing two birds with one stone, the independent weekly Sawt Al-Umma published a suggestion by the Euro-Afro-Asian association that asked President Hosni Mubarak to leave the pigs in the areas planted by mines so that Egypt can get rid of both the mines and the pigs. The newspaper also published a surprise by the former head of the Centre for Endemic Diseases who categorically denied the presence of the viruses of both bird and swine flu: it is a conspiracy by American and European pharmaceutical companies to market the stored stock of medicine that treats these diseases. He emphasised that they falsely declared the presence of AIDS, virus C in Egypt and SARS for the same purpose. "It is clear that there is medicine and vaccines that have nearly expired in multi-national and inter-continental mega drug companies that need to be marketed. Meanwhile, these companies seek to deplete the budget and health of African countries," he said. He concluded by asking the prime minister to dissolve the high committee for bird flu and form a committee for road accidents that have killed thousands of Egyptians. He also called on those who rear birds to expose them to sunlight and fresh air that kill viruses.
