Why did Babe start the Swine Flu?

Answer 1

There really is no way to know who the first pig with Swine Flu was. We are positive, however, that it was not Babe.

More, on the lighter side:

All the sheep and sheep dogs who knew and lived on the same farm with Babe have indicated that at no time has Babe shown any signs of influenza. There is much speculation on who the first pig with the swine flu was, but as yet it has not been proven conclusively who it may have been.

For a full discussion of this side of the story, see the related questions below, "Who was the first pig to spread swine flu?" and "Is there an update on the information of who was the first pig to spread the swine flu?"

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Answer 2

If your question means that you think the swine flu was created by people (like in a lab), that didn't happen. It occurred naturally as a mutation that combined the genetic material of common flu viruses that infect pigs, and those that infect birds along with those that cause the flu in people.

This process is called a viral reassortant (sometimes also called reassortment). Because pigs are physiologically very similar to people, they can sometimes catch viruses from us and we can sometimes catch viruses from them. The influenza viruses mutate easily and rapidly, like the viruses that cause the common cold.

Somewhere (where is not yet determined, but likely in Asia since there are many occurrences of pigs and poultry/birds living very closely together there and also living very closely with humans) a pig caught the pig/swine flu that pigs get, in fact it had caught three types of pig flu (Asian, European, and American). It also caught the avian "bird" flu and was exposed to the human flu, too. The viruses combined genetic material from all 5 types of flu in the pig, creating the 2009 pandemic H1N1/09 "swine flu" influenza virus. A person caught it from the pig and then passed it to more people. Eventually, since it happened to be an easily transmitted flu virus from person to person, it spread to the entire world and was a true pandemic.