Swine Flu

A hundred days into the new administration, Obama-related headlines had stopped carrying the punch they used to. People were also becoming numb to reports about the financial crisis. The media needed something new and scary.

So they soiled their pants with glee when Mexico began reporting an "outbreak" of swine flu. A pandemic scare! We haven't had one of those since avian flu became passe!

It's not a serious threat. It's the FLU. Just because it has the word "swine" in front of it doesn't make it the bubonic frakking plague.

There are still under 1000 cases worldwide, and an even smaller number of deaths. And most of those deaths, I think it's safe to say, testify not to the deadly nature of swine flu, but to the inadequacy of the Mexican healthcare system.

Yet people will panic when they're told to panic - and if you tell them not to panic, they'll panic anyway. One of the most vile manifestations of this daft herd mentality has been the mass killing of pigs, particularly in Egypt and Iraq. These killings have nothing to do with preventing the actual spread of the disease; anyone who's actually educated herself on the issue knows knows that, whatever its origins, the virus is spread from HUMAN to HUMAN. No - these mass killings are simply barbaric measures to make ignorant people feel safer.

In a few months, this exercise in scaring ourselves will be forgotten, and we can go back to fearing genuine threats to our well-being, like courts allowing men to marry each other, or presidents with foreign-sounding middle names, or immigrants stealing our much-sought-after janitorial and dishwashing careers.