A Pig Pandemic… It’s just the Flu
A pig pandemic, that’s what we were scared with last week into this week. But if I might entertain you with this thought – 36,000 died of the normal flu last year, millions had it and not one panic around that. Where the surgical masks with the Government Approved Flu? Where’s the outrage? Why weren’t the schools closed on the onset of flu season? Look I’m not being a smart mouth hear, but there are bigger occurrences of West Nile Virus than there are of Swine Flu… oops excuse me I meant to say the H1N1 Virus! H1N1 – who thought that up? Seriously that sounds so clinical and unscary, how are we gonna stimulate the economy if people are calm?
Nope, we need to scare them into buying family sized hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes – and you can only do that if people think they’re going to turn into bacon. H1N1.., that doesn’t sound like anything, at least nothing we can counter act. You don’t stand a chance against it because you really don’t know what it is.
Anyway, back to the swine flu. You’ll forgive me for saying so, but I really think that the United States over reacted to this one. I understand erring on the side of caution, but when this thing hit the headlines only 56 people had it. There are over 304 million people living in the United States. If 56 people in Brattleboro or any surrounding town had Swine Flu… excuse me H1N1 virus I still would believe we had a long way to go before we started closing schools. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m the only who thinks that way but I’m guessing not, I don’t panic about these things until I have to and even then I look for the rational focal point to concentrate on. I’m not a panic guy, I don’t subscribe to the theory that you should shoot first then ask questions. Now I do have my own stuff, like I’m a hypochondriac. I can take a simple flu symptom and turn it into something worse. So you would think that when they announced the Pig Virus that I would have rushed right down to Hotel Pharmacy and purchased up a year’s supply of surgical masks. Nope, not me – I don’t think we need to turn into SARS nation like China did a few years ago. I can’t remember “pandemic” being thrown around for that one, at least not in its early stages and some 8,000 people got that and nearly 1,000 of them died.
So did our Government the Center for Disease Control over react? I really think we freaked out about this one too soon. Again, I understand the use of caution and getting the information out there so people know what to expect, I’m just a little miffed that word Pandemic was thrown out there. This isn’t the black plague that’s going to wipe out 75 million people; it’s another strain of the flu. Yet right out of the gate I expected a scene from the movie Outbreak, quite unnecessary. Not to make it sound light but only one has passed away from it, and it was a small child that couldn’t communicate with anyone so it was probably picked up too late (still, that’s sad).
And for those of you that think I bash the right leaning folks this should please you – can’t we shut up Joe Biden from time to time? Don’t get me wrong, I would follow that guy into war and I would want him in my fox hole, but he wasn’t helping matters when he was on the Today Show last Thursday. He started out fine, he didn’t spread and wild fires and he kept to his talking appoints but then in a Bidenesk moment the truth came out, “I told family to avoid planes, subway any enclosed area because of Swine Flu”. I paraphrased a bit but you get the jist. When the VP is telling you everything’s OK and in the very same breath he’s telling you what he’s telling his family to do (which is the polar opposite), well then you’ve got to ask – what the hell is up with that?
