International Law

Swine Flu Nationalism, or How I Spent Labor Day

By Stan

The one article that jumped out at me this weekend while I was enjoying the Labor Day holiday was this report on the origins of Swine Flu from Wired:

Scientists have traced the genetic lineage of the new H1N1 swine flu to a strain that emerged in 1998 in U.S. factory farms, where it spread and mutated at an alarming rate. Experts warned then that a pocket of the virus would someday evolve to infect humans, perhaps setting off a global pandemic.

The new findings challenge recent protests by pork industry leaders and U.S., Mexican and United Nations agriculture officials that industrial farms shouldn?t be implicated in the new swine flu, which has killed up to 176 people and on Thursday was declared an imminent pandemic by the World Health Organization.

From a scientific standpoint, it is of course important to track this outbreak back to the origin, or to what some are referring to as “Pig Zero.” To the extent that this started on a factory farm (those places really are germ factories, by the way), perhaps this will further the debate on industrial food production, which would be nice.

Other than that, does it matter which country “spawned” the latest scary bug? Apparently yes, if you are a nationalist looking for someone to blame or to somehow validate your own country/culture.

Let me track back this most recent problem I am having with nationalism. Three unrelated instances:

1. Swine Flu and China

Cruising several BBSs and chat rooms, my wife informed me that the nationalists were on a tear on the Chinese Intertubes, claiming that because there had been no significant Swine Flu outbreaks here, this somehow meant that not only were China’s health/quarantine measures the best in the world, but also that the number of outbreaks in Mexico and the U.S. was evidence of systemic problems in those nations.

Note that at the same time this theme was percolating online, the rumors of government coverups of Swine Flu cases were rampant, with many saying that the reason China’s “track record” on Swine Flu was so stellar thus far was due to an information clampdown on cases. (I have no evidence as to whether this is true — sounds like the usual conspiracy theories, although after SARS, who knows?)

2. Swine Flu and the U.S.

In the U.S., the chatter last week was that the Mexican border should be locked down tight because of the disease. Needless to say, right-wing nutjobs were all over the Net with stories of infected illegal immigrants flowing across the U.S. Southern border to take advantage of the health care systems of California, Arizona, Texas, etc. They still have health care in Texas? You can always count on the radical fringe in America to take any issue, in this case an outbreak of the flu, and turn it into an exercise in xenophobia.

3. The Analogy

A chunk of my weekend was spent taking care of a problem that has been on my “To Do List” for several months: finally plow through Left 4 Dead and uninstall the game from my PC. Once you install a game and play a couple of levels, devoting precious hard drive resources along the way, it is difficult to just turn around and uninstall if you don’t like the game all that much. So usually you just bear down, grind through the game, and then move on.

This is what I did. I first spent a few hours making a huge pot of bean and barley soup (I’d been hoarding a piece of lamb for this recipe for a while). With food preparation out of the way, I focused on the game.

While I admit to being partial to first-person shooters, there is a limit to how much fun murdering zombies can be if there is no overarching story, no weapon/enemy progression, and no puzzles to solve. This is Left 4 Dead’s big problem. Not only is there no story whatsoever (you are dropped into a classic zombie situation without knowing why, never to figure it out), but instead of the usual game progression, there are four separate mini-games, which are completely self-contained.

Mindless and boring, just like the zombie inhabitants of the game itself. Which gets me back to nationalists and Swine Flu.

Halfway through my pot of soup and battling the mindless undead horde in a cornfield, my fatigued brain, which resembled barley soup at that point, began imagining the zombies as brainless nationalists.

What does a zombie want? Well, it varies, but usually human flesh. Genre cognoscenti will tell you that for the discriminating zombie, only human brains will do.

For the nationalist, it is all about self-validation. And if the individual hasn’t done anything worth validating, then something that the group has done. Basically it’s the same as sports. I like the New England Patriots football team because I lived in Boston, and I’m happy when they win. Doesn’t matter that I have no real connection to the team and have not assisted them in their victory in any way — I take credit for the win in a small way because I am a fan. Complete, batshit crazy, irrationality at its best.

And now there is Swine Flu. A minor global health crisis if there ever was one, if current trends continue. But in the mind of the nationalist, another great reason to lash out at others and confirm why your place, and people, are #1.

And here in China, the nationalists want everyone to know that the lack of reported cases is proof positive that if somehow a real global pandemic erupts, the safest place will be . . . here? Look, health care in a big city here is OK if you have enough money, but let’s not forget why the government recently unveiled its big health care reform plan — for most of the country, affordable medical care is iffy at best.

As recent economic indicators have pointed to some “green shoots” in the Chinese economy, and the stories in the press about China leading the world out of the Great Recession have proliferated, the nationalists have received way too much self-validation. We really need to stop encouraging these people.

Conclusion: this is all really &#c%@(g annoying. Please make the nationalist zombies stop.

(I understand that in writing this, I may have unwittingly unleashed the nationalist zombie comment troll horde on my blog. On the other hand, zombies are usually hung over the day after a long holiday, so I might be safe for the time being.)

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Full post as published by China Hearsay on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).