The NAFTA flu
Robert Wallace, a professor and frequent writer on socio-ecological and health issues, including at his blog Farming Pathogens, explains how agribusiness' thirst for cheap labor and cheap land set the stage for the swine flu epidemic to spread so quickly.

CASES OF swine flu H1N1 are now reported in Honduras, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Austria, Thailand, Israel, etc. Can't keep up at this point.

H1N1 is making its way across the world by hierarchical diffusion. By the world's transportation network, it is bouncing down a hierarchy of cities defined by their size and economic power, and their interconnectedness to Mexico City, the international city closest to the initial outbreak. It's no coincidence that New York and San Diego were among the first cities hit. The virus is also engaged in contagious diffusion, spreading out within each new country hit.

For the most part, only a few cases have been reported in countries other than Mexico. But as influenza, unlike SARS, can transmit before symptoms show, there may be no way to stop H1N1 now. New York now reports hundreds infected.

What is clear is that the more countries affected, the more likely the virus will find chinks in the world's epidemiological armor. The new strain may develop the right epidemiological momentum once it reaches those countries whose public health infrastructures are underdeveloped or undermined by structural adjustment programs.

Link to con.