We'll All Die From Swine Flu When Pigs Fly

Get it? Pigs fly...swine flu! Okay, I shouldn't be joking about this, but it's hard not to with a name like that. Actually, they've stopped using the name, swine flu, and are now using the name, influenza A/H1N1. Still, I think it's a little too late for the pork industry. From what I hear, you can't even catch it from pigs, yet that hasn't stopped countries like Russia and China from banning imports of pork and I just read that Egypt is slaughtering pigs to stop the spread of the virus.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't take something like this serious, but like any disaster, this can be made lots worse if we panic and I think people are panicked. In 1976, the United States was faced with a swine flu scare. The government's response was to inoculate people and save us all from dying. In the end, it wasn't as bad as they feared and only 1 person died from the actual swine flu here. On the other hand, people got sick from the flu shot the government was giving them and eventually, 25 people died from the vaccination!

The flu is serious and can spread very fast, but other germs are serious too. Last year there were 13,000 cases of tuberculosis in the United States. Now in 2006, there were 644 deaths from this. (SOURCE) I don't remember any news conference for that. People die all the time from the regular flu that comes around every year. Now this is a much more deadly strain since it supposedly is killing healthy people instead of sick ones. It's a concern, but I think we're going about this way too crazy.

There's a bunch of dead people from this in Mexico, and there is one 2-year-old boy from Mexico that died here in the U.S., but pretty much all the people here are recovering rather well on their own. So to me, it seems a bit early to say this is a serious threat here. Maybe the people in Mexico didn't have the proper access to medical treatment and medicines to help them pull through. Maybe they didn't drink enough water and dehydrated.

During any disaster, the news media will usually make things sound much worse than what they are. Fear sells, and the best thing is to not buy into it. It's good to know that there is a dangerous flu virus out there and we should take caution, but unless you've traveled to Mexico lately, or people in your town are getting it, I wouldn't worry too much, yet. This could turn really bad, but if it's not that bad and we panic, we could make a human disaster worse than this natural disaster, like in 1976. That's really the only point I wanted to make.