Can we all just take a deep breath or is that simply too dangerous at this juncture?
I’m beginning to think I’m the only one left on the planet who isn’t completely engulfed in panic over The New Flu Pandemic. Don’t get me wrong: There are things about it that are disconcerting: Like everyone else, I don’t want my kid to get sick and I don’t want to get sick.
Admittedly, when I’ve allowed myself to dwell in that cordoned off yet inventive place within my head, I’ve managed to create a number of dreadful future scenarios that mimic José Saragamo’s Blindness. An all-encompassing outbreak of anything is not something I’d like to experience. Unless that outbreak is people being overwhelmingly kind to each other for no fucking explainable reason whatsoever, in which case, I’d be licking handrails and shopping cart handles and eating my daughter’s dropped raisins off the bathroom floor at the zoo. Which is huge for me because I hate raisins.
CNN ran the following headlines on their website tonight, in this in exact order:
- Specter move puts Dems close to magic number
- Face mask demand surges, but do they work?
- Regular flu has killed thousands in 2009
- Why has swine flu killed only in Mexico?
- Why swine flu scares us
- CNN answers your swine flu FAQs
- At least 4 die in California tour-bus crash
I glanced over this list of fear-inducing headlines and couldn’t help but wonder how many of the four victims of the tour-bus crash spent their last days/hours/minutes/seconds fretting about the Swine Flu. Using all the people I’ve spoken to since Sunday night as a sample size from which to extrapolate data, I’d hypothesize that at least three of the four now-deceased passengers were consumed with worry. My point being, what’s the point?
The way I see it, there really isn’t much we can do about this situation besides wash our hands a lot, stay home if we get sick and not eat mishandled raisins off the damp tile floors of public loos. Oh, and don’t go to Mexico.
Poor Mexico. My heart is breaking for Mexico.
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