Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

Even as CNN cuts every five minutes to show the latest maps of suspected and confirmed cases of swine flu in the US (with occasional mentions of the rest of the world) there’s a lot that that’s being left out of the story. Here are five things you probably haven’t heard much about in connection with the flu:

1. Industrial Agriculture: Animals living in cramped, unhygienic quarters provide a breeding ground for new viruses, allowing them to hop from host to host, swapping DNA as they go. The drugs that they animals are pumped full of to keep them “healthy” actually make this worse because it means that the viruses that survive and thrive are drug-resistant strains. This current virus does respond to Tamiflu and Relenza, older anti-virals have no effect.
2. Poverty: Many of the first people to come in contact with the zoonotic viruses bred on factory farms live in cramped quarters with little access to hygienic facilities. This means that the disease passes on to more people more quickly. Also, the less money you have, the less likely you are to be able to afford missing work when you’re ill. The disease spreads to co-workers (and customers).
3. Air Pollution: The swine flu can lead to pneumonia. People whose respiratory systems are already under stress—from living in a highly polluted area, for example—are more likely to develop this complication. Given how polluted Mexico City is, it seems odd that this hasn’t been considered as a possible explanation for why the strain is less deadly (so far) in the US.
4. Potential Food Supply Disruption: If the swine flu does reach pandemic status, it’s likely that the food supply would be disrupted (and that you won’t want to go to the grocery store even if it isn’t). I’m sure you’ve already been told not to panic, so I won’t tell you again. I will, however, advise you to stock up on canned goods. If, like me, you live in an earthquake zone, you know you should have done this already.
5. Zombies: OK, so zombies actually have nothing to do with swine flu, but every major story should be connected to zombies by people on the Internet. This law is even more universal than Godwin’s.

I’m put into a quandary by Lesley Wheeler’s poem, Zombie, because I can’t accept the concluding lines, and I’m not sure if the problem is in me or in the poem. The first nine couplets are full of very physical descriptions of the experiences of a member of the living dead, though clearly not one of those zombies who stumbles around after brains and violence. A descriptive zombie or a reflective one.

But a philosophical zombie? That’s what the (majority of the) final couplet seems to suggest, as the speaker concludes “[t]hat I was less a working / body than a mind’s routine, a rhythm.” Perhaps I should say these are the words of a zombie that is philosophical, since philosophical zombie as a phrase usually refers to the notion that you and I (living live, not living dead) have no free will. I suppose “a mind’s routine” could suggest this idea, but the rest of the poem tells us we’re dealing with a more placid version of a Dawn of the Dead zombie.

I suppose it should be reassuring that the “mind’s routine” continues on, apparently unimpaired, but here’s where I run into trouble. While I’m able to suspend disbelief and accept that the zombie is conscious of its physical state, I have a much harder time with the notion that it is capable of such abstract thought. (Though I suppose this would be easier to accept if I also accepted that we were all philosophical zombies anyway so that the living dead wouldn’t be credited with the choice to think anymore than I would.) The only reason I can think of for my inability to accept higher cognitive functions in the living dead is that I am possessed of some general notion of post-death decay: that if the body rots, so should the mind– but then, the contrast between “working body” and “mind’s routine” in the conclusion would seem to suggest a much greater acceptance of the Cartesian divide than I’m typically willing to give.

Perhaps, then, the problem is my own stereotypes about zombies and this poem is making a valiant attempt to break down these biases. In that case, I can only make the weak plea that perhaps an indication of more abstract capabilities earlier in the poem would have better prepared me to accept them (as well as the divide).

Live Like It’s the End . . .

             How long will you hold onto you
             with body being broken from you
                           We ask in years & decades

                          until they break our skin
                          with teeth or hypodermics

Hold on too long   body goes on
walking its rot   hungry for minds
             still calling them brains

Notes: The subject of this poem came from yesterday’s Blog Like It’s the End of the World event. I realize the central metaphor is a bit of a cliche; I was hoping to reanimate it with a bit of nuance. Now it’s an undead metaphor.

I can’t believe how poorly some of my students have done on their oral English finals. Seriously, it seems like every single one I tested this morning had regressed. Some of them were completely incoherent; I couldn’t make out a single word. One guy just said “brains” over and over again. And, I know this might sound crazy, but I think one student tried to bite me when I told him he had failed! After that, I looked for someone to report him to, but I couldn’t find any of the tutors or administrators.

Anyway, I’ve heard some talk about “the end of the world” on other blogs I read, but the Great Fire Wall seems to be blocking the site they link back to (and for some reason, using a proxy isn’t helping). I’m sure it’s all just paranoia, but could anyone tell me what this site says?