April 30, 2009

• Pig Paranoia

  So, I figure that the latest "pandemic" shouldn't be allowed to pass by without two cents from the resident virus enthusiast.  (I make no claims on the word "expert."  Sure, I've done a lot of reading, but I still have much more to learn.)

  First, please remember that we've already done this.  Multiple times.  Yeah, remember SARS?  West Nile Virus?  Avian flu?  Yeah, whatever happened to all of those?  Funny how, once the media feeding frenzy was over, everything was back to normal and most Americans remained unaffected.  I have no doubt that, eventually, the panic over swine flu will subside and fall to the wayside in much the same way.

  As of today, there are 109 confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States in 2009.  Let's do the math on this one, shall we?  Let's take the population of the United States to be 300 million people.  It's slightly more than that now, but this way, if my calculated percentage is skewed, it's higher rather than lower than it actually should be.  109 people out of 300 million works out to 0.000036 percent of the population.  Furthermore, notice that this is less than a one in two million chance.  Therefore, your likelihood of getting this disease (which, let's be clear--it's the flu) is very, very, very low.  I don't think that we need to be discussing a "pandemic" at this point.  That's absurd.  The government has also set aside twelve million doses of an antiviral drug known as Tamiflu, so the point is, this can get a lot worse before we really need to start worrying.

  Let's also talk about that one death in the United States that the media keeps hyping.  If you've ever had a flu shot, you know that it's recommended for the very young and the very old, since those aged 20 to 45 or so are generally healthy enough to be able to fight off influenza without complications.  This story might be more newsworthy if someone in this age range, therefore, had been claimed by swine flu.  In actuality, though, the victim was a 22-month-old Mexican citizen who was brought to the United States.  The kicker?  The child had an underdeveloped immune system.  Therefore, the one life claimed here in the States wasn't even an American.  It was a very young child from Mexico with an underdeveloped immune system.  Sure, no one likes to see a child die, but I think this is far from cause for panic.

  There's another reason I don't think that we should panic yet.  According to the Centers for Disease Control website, an average of 36,000 people per year died of a cause related to influenza in the United States during the 1990s.  Therefore, people dying of causes related to the flu is neither new nor uncommon.  In fact, perhaps we're safer because we're being proactive with this particular strain.  I can't turn on the television without being warned by some health official to wash my hands, stay home when I'm sick, and cover my mouth.  It seems that these things should be common sense, but perhaps the supply of common sense is low in this country lately.  (At least, that's how it has seemed to me.)  Furthermore, with the nation preparing for this thing to turn terribly virulent, it sounds like we're far more prepared to deal with and contain this virus than we normally are when it comes to influenza.  Therefore, it's entirely possible that we're safer precisely thanks to the paranoia of the media and the preparations that have been made by health officials and the government.

  Sure, the rapid and unprecedented mutation of this viral strain is somewhat unsettling, and the swine flu isn't something that the health officials working to contain confirmed cases should take lightly.  However, I think that the widespread panic that has ensued is overblown and absurd.  I sincerely doubt that pandemic is "imminent," and I don't think that this is something with which the average American citizen needs to concern himself.

  For once, I agree with our noble president, who has asserted that the H1N1 flu strain is cause for "concern," not "panic."

   

  Maybe, instead, we should be focusing on the fact that, mere weeks ago, the Federal Reserve printed a trillion dollars to pump into the money supply in a single day.  A trillion dollars.  $1,000,000,000,000.  In one day.  No wonder the U.S. dollar is basically worthless at this point.

  • 2:24 pm
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