swine flu - should we be just as worried about crying wolf?

well it shouldn't be news to anyone at this point. we have a swine flue outbreak. swine meaning it's a variant of a human/pig influenza virus. yes, pigs are so similar to humans we can bascially cross pass viruses between us. in fact pigs organs are almost identical to ours as well as their flesh. in interveiwing cannibal societies over the years they related human meat to being very close to pig. also ballistic test are sometimes doen with live pigs to get "better real world results."so think of that next time you eat some bacon or a ham.

anyways, so it's come out of a big smelly shithole called mexico city. no surprise to me, but a bit disturbing seeing how many border crossings we have daily into our country.

well rather than cover whate very media outlet is on this pandemic. i'm going to state what i thought of going back to the asian sars outbreak. this was pusehd in much the same way as this swine flu is now. as we know the sars outbreak was stopped fast. we could debate all day on what stopped it, but my point being is that this one is being taken very seriously in some ways too seriously. what i mean by that is, if this thing dies iff and doesn't do too muhc on a global scale. when we have a bird flu plague or somehting else that could wipe out hundreds of millions of people will we all take it as seriously as we should?

i don't know.

lately i've been kind of a dooms dayer in my ramblings and this time i am not saying to ignore this bug. it appears to be getting worse and mutations occur quickly and that could mean not only young children and old people getting killed, but also young healthy adults. so yeah i am saying take it seriously. not to the point where you exhaust yourself though. meaning the next time another one of these pops up, your memory of having put so much energy and effort for no reason on this swine flu might make you just shrug your shoulders and say so what.

okay back to my dooms dayer. this is certainly not what we need right now in the global economic crisis. the travel industries meaning hotels, airlines, destinations, etc can't take any more cutbacks in volume. ironically it was the travel indistry that turned this into a global pandemic. i got a bad feeling about this bug, this time. of course all i seem to get lately are bad feelings about everything. so keep that in mind as i ramble on further.

this could be a show stopper. if it mutates and becomes much more deadly we could be seeing entire countries being shut down due to panic and govt quaratines type of actions. such as shutting schools, businesses, and curfews, etc. stuff that is already happening in mexico city, btw. scary stuff.

sometimes i sit back and try to vision the future. most of the time i see a world not a whole lot different than the one we live in now, but sometimes i see a perfect storm of small issues all piling together, to the point where it is too late to correct it, and everything goes to shit. have we reached that point....i don't think so.

well what's my advice on this round of being kicking while we are already down. keep a low profile until this thing ends. stay home as much as possible. follow the cdc's handwashing after touchig stuff and not touching your nose or mouth with your hands, etc. you can get the whole list at the cdc.gov site. avoid crowds. stay far away from sick co-workers. you never know if a buddy or relative you dont know about came back from mexico and has it. that is how this stuff spreads and fast. if your kid's school gets shut down temporarily due to this. use up your vacation time and stay home with them. a small child's life is worth far more than some vacation time. do not put them in daycare. that's the basics.

if this thing turns into a plague or starts to really ramp up....my advice is to watch any plague sci-fi flick. they usually cover all the scenarios possible.:)