Yesterday again on our news, the swine flu. And what were the recommendations like they gave us! Improve your hygienic conditions, avoid the virus ... this approach to the problem is reaching extremes like declining another person's handshake! How come? Since years we know that exposure is better than avoidance. Our immune system has to be taught to interact with its environment without overreacting, it needs training a life long as everything else. Otherwise it is not capable of keeping our body in a balance that goes along with healthiness and well-being. This is one aspect why the avoidance approach (=lack of training) leads to illness, not only to allergies but infections too.

Since my telephone conversation with Chris about the swine flu hysteria in South East Asia only a few days have passed. But it was this talk and the fact that we have got this colostrum flu study that made me decide to jump on this subject and work on a little series. This starts with a search, of course. And this is what I did or better currently do. Since then I am afraid to drown ;-) ... in articles. The data is massive, the conclusions not conclusive and the whole subject under drift, shift or flux, one name it. The topic is extremely interesting because it turns out to be a densely intertwined mixture of science and politics, views, facts and fictions. A mold of this kind is prone to raise panic. First, I thought I need to have an idea about the virus as such. What is the role of the swine in this game? We have the bird flu, we have the swine flu, the Spanish one, the one from Hong Kong. Influenza infections are always around out there but it becomes an issue, if they become pandemic and lethal. The terminology for us who are not familiar with this virus family is definitely confusing. We think we get bird flu from birds and swine flu from pigs. Wrong, so it seems.

Today I  had a long telephone call with Chris. He is back in Sydney and wanted to fly to Singapore for a short holiday with his family. Not that easy as it turned out. Asia is in a turmoil because of the swine flu. At Singapore airport they have implemented a temperature sensor that is screening all visitors to the country. Elevated temperatures mean a quarantine for 7 days. As his daughter Tahlia is still a little bit frail after the cold she had, and her temperature still slightly above normal, Emma and Chris don't want to take the risk. Swine flu is the issue in South Asia, he told me. "It seems that whole Australia is sick", he said. People walk around Sydney with face masks, they prefer to stay home instead of going out. "It is weird", he said, "having been in Europe for so long I missed the months that lead to this escalation of the situation. It is all about immunity and the immune system around me." The flu is a viral infection. The most powerful tool against this illness is a strong immune system. This is straight in the line with biestmilch.

Yesterday when I was watching the news on TV, I was really apalled. In Mexiko, in Egypt, in China ... states of emergencies, mass slaughter of pigs, deserted public places, people with face masks, shear horror on the screen. They count the deceased penny by penny, they revise the figures day by day. There is a chaos of opinions and hear and say around us, to whom to listen, whom to trust? It seems all so very arbitrary. Some countries practice de-escalation others escalation. A blog post from the New Scientist tries to sober the situation a little bit. I like that.They say that the name swine flu is very misleading and misleading is the term influenza A (H1N1).