Ok ok ok. So it's been a while since I've ranted for my online friends however... I think it's time we sit around and chew the pig fat.
This swine flu thing has more twists and turns than an M. Night Shalymanlyman film. It's a complete media driven frenzy created out of roughly 2000 cases worldwide making it seem like this is the Apocalypse. Let's think about this rationally for a second... IS THAT EVEN FUCKING POSSIBLE ANYMORE??? Arent we just supposed to be scared of whatever the news tells us? WASN'T IT JUST PIRATES LAST WEEK? I can barely keep up.
Ok ok. Calm down Reem. You don't wanna die from any stress related illness either. Look the odds are like this: There are upwards of 6.7 billion people worldwide and 2,341 (as of when this was written have contracted swine flu and 44 have died as a result. ERGO:
NOTE: (I have the math skills of a iguana with a frontal lobotomy so feel free to check):
Odds of contact with someone with Swine flu (H1N1 to get specific): 6.7 billion to 2,341
=2 758 946 to 1
Odds of death from Swine flu (H1N1): 6.7 billion to 44
= 152 431 818 to 1
This does not seem like an extreme risk to me when you consider the following:
Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1
Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1
Chance of dying in a fireworks accident: 1,000,000 to 1
Odds of striking it rich on Antiques Roadshow: 60,000 to 1
I'll even throw in some other disease scares we've had!:
Chance of contracting the human version of mad cow disease: 1 in 40,000,000
Chance of dying from SARS in the United States: 1 in 100,000,000
So what the fuck is the big deal? Also it's a FLU! You sneeze, you cough, you shit a few extra times and thats about it! Do people in places like Chatsworth, Ontario really need to be wearing masks over their faces?
You know what I've been doing since I heard? I've been licking every fucking doorknob and handrail I have come into contact with and (guess what?) it seems to work just as well as the mask thing. Know how I know how? I HAVEN'T GOT A GODDAMN THING. The logic seems the same to me. It's probably better because I know I am not sterilizing the shit out of my own body so that it develops some white blood cells to actually kill diseases so that I don't have the biological equivalent of a fly swatter as the only thing keeping H1N1 at bay.
THE MOST important point I seem to notice that has been missing from the discourse is "How was this disease created?" NOT WHERE to which apparently the answer is Mexico. But HOW? This is a perfect example of the consistent degradation of our meat packing industry and these genetic mutations come from the geographical locations of hundreds of thousands of animals being put into one place. This has been very gently brushed on but barely by the news media. It is a disease not just from pigs but birds and humans as well and has mutated due to our high concentrations of animals on feedlots.
About 1000 Egyptian farmers rioted after the Egyptian gov't started slaughtering over
300 000 pigs even though they have not one confirmed case and no real mass feedlots as a majority non pork eating nation. Why? They saw it on TV and got scared. Just in the same frenzy as any of us.
Meanwhile in Mexico there was a 6.0 scale earthquake earlier in the week and the drug cartels are still battling and controlling parts of the country. Did ya hear about those things? I have a feeling a few places there are still more worried about 'lead' poisoning.
And here at home the odds of a man developing cancer in his life is still 1 in 2.
This leads me to believe that we, as a society, have the collective attention span of a cat with ADHD. I miss the pirates.
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