(no subject)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/28/regular.flu/index.html
If you don't have swine flu yet, take heart! The REGULAR FLU has killed thousands more Americans since the beginning of the year. And really, if you're neither very young nor very old, or you have access to health care, or enough money to buy a dose of Tamiflu, the swine flu isn't very scary either. The symptoms are (bizzarely) exactly like the regular flu, with perhaps more vomiting and diarrhea.
Maybe I'd be more worried, but when's the last time you heard of someone coming down with smallpox, or polio, or rickets? That's because this is the USA, where our CDC has mostly eradicated those diseases, and when there's fewer diseases going around to drone on about, the media has to resort to the little guys. So, swine flu, bottoms up, you might have only killed a couple dozen people, but that counts as the big time in this modern age. May your media-backed fearmongering campaign be a huge success, the stock prices of everyone who makes hand cleaners and face masks is riding on it.
I suppose if I had ever come close to dying in the over 20 times I've had the regular flu, I'd be worried about the swine flu. I never got the bird flu or SARS either. And I've managed to somehow avoid smallpox, polio, and rickets.
If you don't have swine flu yet, take heart! The REGULAR FLU has killed thousands more Americans since the beginning of the year. And really, if you're neither very young nor very old, or you have access to health care, or enough money to buy a dose of Tamiflu, the swine flu isn't very scary either. The symptoms are (bizzarely) exactly like the regular flu, with perhaps more vomiting and diarrhea.
Maybe I'd be more worried, but when's the last time you heard of someone coming down with smallpox, or polio, or rickets? That's because this is the USA, where our CDC has mostly eradicated those diseases, and when there's fewer diseases going around to drone on about, the media has to resort to the little guys. So, swine flu, bottoms up, you might have only killed a couple dozen people, but that counts as the big time in this modern age. May your media-backed fearmongering campaign be a huge success, the stock prices of everyone who makes hand cleaners and face masks is riding on it.
I suppose if I had ever come close to dying in the over 20 times I've had the regular flu, I'd be worried about the swine flu. I never got the bird flu or SARS either. And I've managed to somehow avoid smallpox, polio, and rickets.