A number of Swedish churches have decided to serve fortified wine during communion in hopes of reducing the risk of spreading swine flu, according to several media reports.
Church authorities hope that fortified wine will provide better protection than light or alcohol-free wine against the spread of swine flu when the communion cup is passed around.
Karlskoga church in central Sweden has decided to reintroduce fortified wine and the issue is also being debated among parishes in Piteå in northern Sweden.
“We will have a vicars meeting where we will discuss this issue. Everything points to the fact that we will decide to reintroduce fortified wine during communion,” dean Stieg Berggren told Piteå-Tidningen newspaper.
The question of whether or not to serve fortified wine remains a local one.
“At the national level, we haven’t made any recommendations about fortified wine,” Stefan Håkansson, press secretary at the offices of the Church of Sweden, told TT news agency.
Several churches have recommended that visitors shouldn’t partake of communion at all to prevent the spread of swine flu.
My brother got infected with H1N1 or Swine Flu in Mexico. He got a mild fever and luckily he did not die.
If you look at the pandemic of 1977, when H1N1 or Swine Flu re-emerged after a 20 year absence, there is no shift in age-related mortality pattern. The 1977 “pandemic” is, of course, not considered a true pandemic by experts today, for reasons that are not entierely consistent. It certainly was an antigenic shift and not an antigenic drift. As far as I have been able to follow the current events, the most significant factor seems to have been that most people, who were severely affected, were people with other medical conditions.