It is surprising how many people you will run into on campus who refuse to get a flu shot. Otherwise charming and capable students and faculty totally balk at the prospect of that little vial: some are wary of needles, some concerned that the flu shot will actually give them the flu (a fallacy), and some just can’t be bothered. “Honestly, the flu will just put me in bed for a few days. I’ve really been falling behind on my episodes of The Ellen Show, anyway.”
If you have had the pleasure to see the government-funded commercials promoting the flu shot, though, you may have noticed a particularly suspect image included in its montage: a waterfowl. Anyone who has been reading the papers lately will be familiar with the somewhat terrifying reality that, as of yet, we have no vaccination for the dreaded avian flu. At this early stage, the strain has been elusive, and thus impossible to create an antidote for. So why the bird in this ministry public service announcement? Have the ad engineers gone quackers?
The answer is a big honking no. By vaccinating ourselves against the more commonly circulating types of flu, we are significantly slowing the mutation of the deadly strain of the avian virus if (when?) it lands in Canada. If there are fewer “other” flu viruses for it to merge with, the form of the avian strain will remain more stable and mutate less, making it easier to identify and vaccinate against.
An OpEd in last Wednesday’s edition of the Globe and Mail, submitted by the executive director of the Vancouver Humane Society and member of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals, quaintly brings up the little idea known as natural selection. The piece charts the relationship between increasing economic prosperity and the corresponding increase in poultry consumption.
She argues that the overwhelming demand for poultry has resulted in more detrimental living conditions for the birds, and that by discouraging varieties of poultry on the mass-producing farms, the birds’ immune systems do not evolve to withstand new diseases. Blame KFC. The article concludes that if only we allowed natural selection to do its thing, we wouldn’t be in this state of global apprehension over the new plague.
This rediscovered sympathy for Darwin is appealing, but not realistic for a world that chows down on eighteen different kinds of chicken wings during the course of a single Leafs game. Sadly, this environmentally empathetic solution is not viable, and we must work with our perverted consumption systems to come to a new solution for a maligned world. Uncle Charles will have to remain relevant to just our studies, and not our snacks.
What we, as individuals, can do to try and disrupt this horror movie in the making is as simple as booking an appointment to see our doctor. Getting the flu shot will certainly not stop the avian flu in its tracks, but we will be doing our part to slow it down.
