I knew in the end, it would be the commies fault.

haha great poem, great post.

I'd recently read that it's a strange mixture of swine and bird genes in this flu variant. If you think about this, that speaks to a point of origin other than the much-derided "factory farm", as such operations tend to raise animals that rarely if ever see any creatures other than fellow members of their own species.

This instead indicates a crossover point where pigs and chickens (or other fowl) were in close enough proximity for viral interaction and mutation, and humans were added to the equation somewhere along the line.

Now, there are other reasons to dislike the (corporate) factory farm, to be sure, I just don't think this is one of them.

Hi Old Grouch,
I’m not much of a poet or a scientist, but here are a couple of other things to check out...

Pigs are nature's notorious "mixing bowls" for inter-species infections, and many swine flu viruses have long contained human influenza genetic components. Then, in the late 1990's - when industrialized swine production really took off in North America - scientists were alarmed to find that avian influenza genetic material was also mixed into the continent's viral soup (see below). Fortunately, it was not the dreaded and lethal H5N1 strain, which most people know of as "bird flu." So where did this new, virulent and highly infectious influenza emerge from? According to Mexico's Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, the virus "mutated from pigs, and then at some point was transmitted to humans." It sure sounds like something happened on some farm, somewhere. For years, leading scientists around the world have worried that large-scale, indoor swine "factories" would become breeding grounds for new pathogens that could more easily infect humans and then spread out rapidly in the general population - threatening to become a global pandemic. - by David Kirby

And:

NAFTA unleashed the spread of industrial livestock farms in Mexico by creating investment incentives for transnational companies to relocate operations there. The "race to the bottom" -where companies move production to areas where environmental and health restrictions and enforcement are low, is exemplified in livestock farming.- by Laura Carlsen

Good one SF. Oh, and BTW, it's now known as 'the flu formerly known as swine'*.
*H/T to BeGlad.

I liked the comment that they're looking for Pig Zero.