Difference between revisions of "574: Swine Flu"

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Revision as of 20:26, 13 September 2012

Swine Flu
Bad flu epidemics can hit young adults hardest because they provoke their powerful immune systems into overreaction, so to stay healthy spend the next few weeks drunk and sleep-deprived to keep yours suppressed.
Title text: Bad flu epidemics can hit young adults hardest because they provoke their powerful immune systems into overreaction, so to stay healthy spend the next few weeks drunk and sleep-deprived to keep yours suppressed.

Explanation

Swine flu is a strain of the flu which can be transmitted from pigs to humans. In 2009, it was the origin of the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus, which most new stations called either "H1N1" (the subtype name) or "swine flu". Because of the ambiguous name given to it and the somewhat hazy description of the transmittal process and dangers to humans, many people were concerned about the virus in ways that weren't going to be threats. This comic pokes a bit of fun at the overreaction by users on Twitter.

The last comment by 2011SENIORSRULE references a medical paper published by the journal The Lancet, in which it is proposed that autism is caused by vaccination. This Since then, the paper was partially retracted in 2004, and fully retracted in 2010 because of conflicts of interest. The entire incident has been defined as the MMR vaccine controversy and more details can be found on the Wikipedia page. This stance has still been seen since the retraction of the paper, and still holds some popularity. The most famous figure in support of it is Jenny McCarthy.

The title text refers to the common notion that young adults a hard drinking individuals who get limited sleep.

Transcript

comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

HANNELOREEC [1] is a character in the web comic Questionable Content [2]. Hannelore suffers from OCD and other issues including another anxiety disorder, and even the idea of kissing grosses her out. Her comment in this comic is a typical display of her OCD. -- ‎64.242.52.33 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I do not wish to start an edit war, so I shall give my reasoning here for putting this under "furries." According to xkcd, furries are people with a fetish for animals. Given that Untoward seems to have "gotten intimate" with a pig (hence why he got a venereal disease), I decided that Untoward has an animal fetish, thus concluded that Untoward was a furry. Greyson (talk) 22:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

  • I'm pretty sure that all the twitter names are references to other online comics. 69.121.10.82 04:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Besides that, such an act does not make one a furry. Instead, it makes one a moron. Furries are in fact simply those who have an interest in anthropomorphic animals. 108.8.100.183 09:08, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Anyone else notice the 1918 swine flu pandemic reference? 86.15.83.223 19:57, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the title text explanation misses a key point, some flu strains (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic) disproportionately impact fit healthy young people due to an overreaction of the immune system. The title text humorously suggests that counter-intuitively being drunk and sleep-deprived will actually be good for your health in such circumstances. Plm-qaz snr (talk) 14:05, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

It may be worth noting that Hannelore's tweet is real.--108.162.229.123 11:12, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

The question is, did Randal and Jeph collude intentionally or did Randal just throw the tweet into the comic? 108.162.219.77 18:00, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

@GreatWyrmGold (not having a Talk page to say this on, so I hope you see this here) regarding the "(→‎Explanation: Silly little edit. (Should this wiki have a "citation definitely needed" tag to distinguish this sort of thing from obvious-but-citation-still-needed stuff?))" comment. There's already the {{Actual citation needed}}, which I think is what you're looking for.[actual citation needed] 141.101.99.32 01:17, 12 May 2022 (UTC)