From a hot tipper at swine@thestranger.com. (And here I was, thinking "swine@" was our general inbox address.)

You can't buy Purell around here. Bartell's on Rainier was sold out (except for travel samples), and so was Bartell's on Broadway & Pike. Though at the Broadway store, someone stashed five bottles behind the hand creams, and I found them! SNAP! I grabbed 2, then pointed them out to another customer, who bought 1. If you're quick there's still 2 left!

Yes, soap and water works, and so do wipes (though stocks on them were getting very low as well). Also, Lysol has a liquid foaming hand sanitizer that's stocked elsewhere in the store (household cleaning supplies, with the rest of the Lysol).

That's all... for now!

It's the "for now" that gets me. Am I ashamed that I just lugged my ass back from QFC with a giant boxful of canned food? No. I am not. That sweet corn would taste real nice next to a hunk of roasted Greenlake goose.

The King County Health Department has ordered the closure of three more schools in the Seattle area. Stevens elementary, Aki Kurose Middle School in Seattle and Woodmont elementary in Federal Way will close for at least a week after several students came down with apparent cases of swine flu.

Earlier today, the Seattle School District shut down Madrona K-8 over a probable case of swine flu at the school.

Inevitable. And highly clickable.

I'm up at the state health department lab in Shoreline where they've been testing medical samples for swine flu all week.

It appears several more probable swine flu cases have been found in Washington. In the last four days, the state lab has received about 100 samples of possible swine flu for testing, 60 of which came in within the last 24 hours.

Right now, any probable samples have to be shipped off to the CDC in Atlanta for confirmation—which takes about a week—but the state should be getting its very own swine flu test kit some time next week.

I'll have more info as soon as I get back to the office.

Update: Expect more school closures. King County has confirmed 7 additional probable swine flu cases, 4 of which are school-age children. A King County spokeswoman would not confirm potential closures but did say that a press release about schools was coming later today.

Okay, a lot of people might die—but if the swine flu pandemic puts an end to the whole "sex pig" thing... they won't have died in vain.

The doors to Madrona K-8 have signs on them explaining why the school is closed (you can read them here and here). That's the school in the background. Across the street from it, this pig is cavorting with a panther. They are part of a sculpture by Richard Beyer called "The Peaceable Kingdom" that sits in the grass outside the Madrona-Sally Goldmark Branch of the Seattle Public Library. An employee of the library, asked if she's worried about swine flu considering she works right across the street from the site of a probable case, said, "My boss just told me we're not able to comment on it."

Back outside, as that KIRO van was going past, someone rounding the block shouted to her friend, "KIRO still got their ass here? Shit, they've been here since 9 this morning! There ain't no news here!"

The PI is reporting that two siblings of the 11-year-old Madrona school student whose illness forced the closure of this school now likely have the flu as well. The possible number of cases in King County is now 13. Eight of them are children. According to the AP, 300 schools are now closed across the country.

An ad from the British government's new swine flu education campaign. (Um, they only have eight confirmed cases, we have 112, and they have a public health ad up before we do?)

Though this one, from 1948, is far more cute—hankies!

Via The Lede.

Whoops:

In a pair of articles in New Scientist, Debora MacKenzie links the swine flu virus now spreading across the globe to large-scale pork-raising operations in the United States.

In the first article, titled “Swine flu: the predictable pandemic?,” MacKenzie writes that the “virus has been a serious pandemic threat for years, New Scientist can reveal—but research into its potential has been neglected compared with other kinds of flu.” She writes that the strain now in the headlines has its origins in an earlier outbreak in the United States a decade ago:

This type of virus emerged in the U.S. in 1998 and has since become endemic on hog farms across North America. Equipped with a suite of pig, bird and human genes, it was also evolving rapidly.

Which, if true, also means that US officials shouldn't have been so deferential to the pork industry in agreeing to no longer call it "swine flu."

As you can see, we have a new tag—SNOUTBREAK—for any posts related to the flu scare. It's unclear how serious this is going to get, and if it starts getting ugly we'll obviously let up on the jokey stuff. We have several staffers devoted to working on this developing story. If you have any information that might be interesting or useful to them, the email address for tips is swine@thestranger.com.

I just got the following press release from the American Public Transportation Association (emphasis added):

Public Transportation Is Safe
Public Transit Systems Have Precautionary Procedures In Place

The millions of people who take public transportation should continue to do so, knowing that public transit systems already have procedures in place to deal with seasonal flu outbreaks and are closely monitoring the H1N1 virus (swine flu) outbreak.

“People should continue to ride public transportation. Buses and trains are as safe as any other public area,” said American Public Transportation Association (APTA) president William W. Millar. “Public transit systems deal with large numbers of people on a regular basis and already have precautionary procedures in place for both riders and employees.”

Transit systems regularly clean facilities, vehicles, and fare vending equipment with high-grade germicidal solutions and will take additional measures as appropriate.

Transit systems regularly clean facilities! Don't you feel reassured?