Swine Flue

Swine Flu

Kenzie came down with the flue – and promptly passed it on to me. Just as I was feeling tired and achy, the swine flu story hit. Now it seems to be everywhere. Well, let’s hope I mean the story and not the virus itself.

I always shrug these stories off. Maybe it's "ignorance is bliss." Maybe it’s my disdain for the doomsayers who are always looking for the next sign of the Apocalypse (another typhoon, virus, gamma ray burst, asteroid spotting close to earth, another y2k type virus). Or maybe it’s that I learned my lesson several years ago when I got all worked up about the Ebola virus after seeing Outbreak and reading Stephen King’s The Stand and buying several books on the Ebola virus – yet it’s 12 years later and the outbreak and impending doom never materialized.

So when the swine flu made the news, I lumped it in with the bird flu as just another news story designed to rile people up.

But I have to admit when we brought Kenzie to the doctor on Tuesday night and CNN was running a story on it, I had an odd feeling. I felt like I was in one of those horro/sci-fi movies where they show the unsuspecting masses going about their daily lives as the news foreshadows the looming disaster (think of I Am Legend or 28 Days Later or The Andromeda Strain type films).

Then I began thinking of what the hospital – which was still open around eight in the evening and was functioning efficiently, even though they had a bare bones staff on hand – would look like after a month or two of all of us being wiped out. It was eerie.

But how else could one feel?

I’m sure the poor unsuspecting souls in Europe had an odd feeling when ships began washing upon shore from the east with either their crew missing or dead. I’m sure they felt odd unloading the sudden windfall of cargo. And I’m sure they went about their lives and hardly noticed the rats dashing about the ships and onto the coast. I’m positive they never suspecting that fleas on those rats would soon unleash the Bubonic plague – the ugliest pandemic the humans have ever seen - and wipe out at least 1/3 of Europe’s total population in just a few years.

But how else could one feel?

Well, one could get that feeling again that, naaah. Something like that could never happen again. That’s the same feeling I have again now. That’s the feeling I prefer to have. Unless I become one of the growing number of faces on the news and internet with one of those blue facemasks on.

Naaah. Something like that could never happen again. Or at least let us hope not.

That’s why I switched the channel from CNN to American Idol. Bring on the ignorance and the bills!