Don't Get Sick | New Media

Aug 22 2009

Don’t Get Sick

Published by jnarvey at 8:13 am under Current Events,swine flu

Swine flu didn’t seem all that scary to Canucks a few months back. A few people were dying, almost all of them in far-away Mexico City (and at the time, it was thought that poor air quality in that city was a contributing factor). We had some cases in Canada and then the news kind of faded away. Given that regular flu kills thousands of people a year in this country, I figured the swine flu story was just a sign of a slow news week.

But here’s the latest headline on this: WHO predicts ‘explosion’ of swine flu cases, urges countries to react swiftly to limit deaths

1,800 people died of swine flu this week alone, worldwide. That seems like a lot. I suspect you get the same number of automobile fatalities or more in a week, but we aren’t expecting the number of car crashes to increase exponentially, in contrast to swine flu, so the numbers are a little chilling.

Time to stock up on supplies, padlock the door and shoot any infected that try to get in? Oh, wait. That’s a different kind of virus.