Can someone please tell me what the big deal is about swine flu? And I refuse to use the politically correct term - H1N1...it's swine flu. Period!
As of yesterday, there were about 1,500 confirmed cases in the United States. Hardly an outbreak by my calculations. Rounded by four decimal places that figure still equals 0%. You have to go six decimal places before something other than a zero even shows up. Hardly a reason to cancel sporting events, weeks of school or any other social gatherings.
The confirmed deaths from swine flu - 2! I'm not even going to do the research but I suspect more people have died from getting struck by lightning since the so-called swine flu pandemic. PANDEMIC! Pa-Lease!
A pandemic is described as an epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population. Riiiiiiight! Swine flu should be re-labeled the no-demic.
I chalk up the fear mongering going on about swine flu as merely a slow week in the news. After all...it's the FLU! It's not like the swine derivative causes your head to fall off your shoulders. That might actually be something to be worried about. But it's not! The flu has been around for, what, 1,000 years? I would suspect there have been more cases of the regular flu in the past few weeks. Don't hear a whole lot of coverage about the good ole fashion flu being a pandemic do you?
The next time there is a sickness that warrants the pandemic label and the amount of news coverage that the swine flu has garnered, I would suggest the over-under be at least 1% of the population, be a sickness that has more substantial consequences and has precautions other than washing your hands.
That being said, I still don't want it.
Its just another in a long line of media inflated PANDEMICS. I mean what ever happened to SARS? It's just gone. "Dont worry folks we got it all! It's safe to come out." Right. I'd like to know the real story about that. But we never will.
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