When pigs fly and swine flu.

Meet Edgar

Edgar is four years old. Edgar lives in Mexico. Edgar had swine flu. Tragic isn’t it? Well, not really. Because Edgar is still alive and now swine flu free. Completely recovered.

The influenza virus referred to by people smarter than me as influenza A virus subtype H1N1, has caused a panic that has spread globally at a rate  faster than the disease itself.

Airport security is no longer just scanning for weapons and hijacking materials, but also for temperatures over 99 degrees using thermal scanners

And as expected, Arnold declares a “STATE OF EMERGENCY!”

But what is the deal?

According to the World Health Organization, tens of millions of people catch the flu world wide at this time of year with hundreds of thousands dying anually. Thats your regular stomach flu.

To date, swine flu has been the apparent cause of death for 160 people but of these deaths only 7 have been CONFIRMED cases of the strand (most medical authorities agree that its hard to decipher whether someone died of the flu or died with flu-like symptoms). Even though a death is significant, and 7 is tragic, all but one of these deaths have been cases from Mexico City, which has a population of over 10 million people. That is a pretty low percentile.

I don’t want to diminish the severity of this, but I must admit the panic and alarm that has taken over is a bit much. Its as if swine flu is going to pass over your house at night and take your first born. And it begs the question:

So ….what do we do?

what do we do when faced with a pandemic? with the WHO raising the pandemic level from a 3 to 4? what does that even MEAN? what do we do to avoid the embarrassment of dying from something called ‘SWINE FLU’?

We wash our hands. Thoroughly and frequently.