Epidemiologists Searching for Deadly "Noodle Vector"

PORTLAND (Oregon) & LONDON (Ontario) — A team of epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and crack bureaucrats from Health Canada have been sent to Oregon and a sleepy university town in Southwestern Ontario to find the source of a scourge sweeping through North America.

“We think that if we can locate the original infection and discover the source of the so-called Norse strain of it as well, we will be able to synthesize a vaccination to slow the spread of the disease,” Dr. Franklin Stein, who is in charge of the team, told The Skwib.

There have been outbreaks of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSMS), also known as Pastafarianism, throughout North America. The disease manifests itself at first by creating a craving for pasta in the tummy region; it then moves to the brain, where it lodges and produces belief systems that rely on a supernatural god-like creature called the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

In the final stages of the disease, those afflicted dress up as pirates, and start raving incoherently, shouting, “avast me hearties!” and so on.

In the other type FSMS — which has emerged in Canada, the so-called “Norse” strain — victims clothe themselves as they imagine Vikings did, and are even less coherent. Usually, there is some eye-rolling and bloodthirsty screaming, which sounds a lot like: “arrrrgggh!”

“It is really a devastating disease,” Stein says. “We have to control its spread before it moves offshore and gets its noodly appendages in other populations that may have even less immunity to it.”

Stein would not specify what regions those may be.

When asked if the CDC routinely tries to quash emerging religions, Stein refused comment. The team later issued a statement, saying that FSMS was in no way a religion, and was a disease.

“How do we know it’s a disease? Because we’re scientists. That’s how.”

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