Swine Flu History in the Pacific Northwest-The First Case

I guess I have to say something about swine flu since everybody is reading about it elsewhere when they should be on my blog. So just saying "swine flu" is guaranteed to bring me a whole bunch of new site hits so here goes.

"Swine flu"--we can't seem to escape it, what with 24 hour cable news networks and websites giving case by case number counts. It's like listening to the score going up in an NBA basketball playoff game.

While browsing my footnote.com website, I ran across the article above. It is not Idaho or Steunenberg history but swine flu was already in the news some thirteen years ago on 4/2/1996 in the McKenzie Bridge, Oregon newspaper, River Reflections. Click the pic to enlarge for reading.

Not to take H1-N1 (the name used by us pig lovers) lightly, as I do hope everybody is keeping healthy and taking precautions as we would for any type of illness and flu. A flu outbreak is always of concern although this one has perhaps been a bit unfair to pigs.

Then we have this somewhat similar but more recent picture that is circulating the web. I think it's the pig that may have more to fear in this case.

At least I now know there is one other human that still loves a little fine swine.