The swine flu is being covered by the media with the emphasis on vaccinations, washing hands and sneezing inside our elbows. But is the information the public needs and has a right to being made available? Or is the coverage done in a way to favor the pharmaceutical industry and to mostly ignore the role pig CAFOs play in the mixing of new viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

Case in point: April 30th: the WHO, "...bowing to pressure from meat industry producers..." decides to change the name of the swine flu.

Case in point: July 16th: Canadian investigative reporter Alex Roslin finds statistical correlations between pig density per capita in most regions or Canadian Provinces and the number of hospitalisations and deaths due to swine flu in the same region.

Case in point: July 18th: Headline: "Stop counting cases of H1N1, WHO tells countries."

Case in point: September 11th: the Public Health Agency of Canda's Web site shows one death in the Province of Quebec between September 8th and September 10th, but no press release or newspaper article can be found anywhere: nothing else is made public about this death, as far as I can tell.

Case in point: September 13th: a Cornell University student dies from complications after getting swine flu. Classmates would like to have more information: "...information they say could help them prevent getting the virus themselves". The University's spokesperson "...could not comment on the student's health condition because of federal privacy laws."

Case in point: September 14th: a third man of Sarasota County, Florida, dies from swine flu. "The county's other two deaths occurred in men lacking pre-existing health conditions, health officials said. But county health officials now say clinical information about those who have died from the virus will no longer be released because of legal privacy issues."

My questions are: if the public is not given information about the risks of living near of working in pig CAFOs, and if personal data is not given out about the innocent victims of this pandemic, how can a person make an informed decision about getting vaccinated or not against the swine flu? If most available information in the media and on the Web is favoring the pharmaceutical companies and overlooking the fact that CAFO practices could be responsible for the new mixes of viruses and new antibiotic-resistant bacteria, how well protected and informed are we?