Swine flu - Scare Me Again

You don't believe in Swine flu. That is, you don't believe it is a full-on, population-decimating, world-circling pandemic. You'll never say so if a reporter asks you, and of course you'll nod along when the company stops you travelling, or makes you take your laptop home in case commuting is banned overnight, or when the headteacher closes your daughter's school... but you don't believe a word of it. It's the belief that dare not speak its name – that all these scares are hyped.

You have this vague feeling that if it really was that deadly, they'd only know what it was after the first eight thousand dead bodies had been buried; that the Mexican village where it started would have a population of three by now; that international flights would be cancelled. You've heard that new viruses start deadly but only survive if they turn less deadly, because if they stay deadly their host population dies too fast and takes the virus down with it. Since they know what this thing is, it must have reached the “less deadly” stage. You've heard of the 1919 flu outbreak, which killed more young men across the world in six months than World War One did in just over four years. That's a pandemic.

But editors have to sell newspapers (not that Swine flu is obliging them with headlines); pharmaceutical companies have to sell medicines; politicians and corporate honchos have to be seen to be saying “the right thing”; bureaucrats and scientists in the WHO, CDC and other health organisations get to look important and maybe protect their budgets for next year. And the one border the USA really, really, wants an excuse to control? Oh, right, that would be the one with, yep, Mexico. Sadly Swine flu isn't going to be a good enough scare.

At the back of your mind, you're saying “better safe than sorry”. Really? The flu is the only risk around? At the front of your mind, you're saying “who cares? It's not going to affect me, no-one believes it anyway and I don't pay it any attention.”

But it does affect you. You pay taxes to fund all these people. They are wasting that money on nonsense when they should be spending it on something useful. They are wasting their time on this rubbish, when they should be using that time on something useful. It's a distraction from the real work of those involved.