Give me a break, this is getting more absurd by the minute.

Don't get me wrong, I am enough of a hypochondriac myself to be worried about (mostly imagined so far) illnesses and diseases I have, but the present obsession with Swineflu is a bit bizarre even for me.

Let's get the facts: so far only 29 death have occured in Mexico that have definately been contributed to Swineflu, only one, an infant, in the US. In all other cases outside Mexico the symtoms have been described as very mild.

A term of "pandemic" does not refer to any fatality rate of a disease, just to the spread of the disease, e.g. being found in population of more than two countries. It does not therefore not equal "killer disease on a global scale" like the Black Plague.

In any given year, the normal flu occuring at wintertime will kill between 8 - 12,000 people in the UK alone, around 20,000 in the more populous Germany.

So why am I subjected to terrified schoolkids from Devon on the TV news,
trembling and crying with fear that they may have contraced Swineflu (implying that they might possibly die of it)?

Is it just my cynical self that, at least at this stage, suspects other motives behind the present hysterical obsession with the Swinefly, notably that the global recession has sudenly disappeared from the News, and with it the actions of Banks, large scale Corporations and the greedy behaviour of (Bank) Managers and the apparent inability of governments to remedy the crisis fast and decisively?

Of course, fighting a flu makes everyone (erm governments, politicians, even the WHO) look good, with the stockpiling of medicine (namely Tamiflu, a reminant of the last global killer disease that was not to be, so wasn't it good that we produced all that stuff back then that would have otherwise gone to waste?) and besides, crying children are so much more pityable than trembling Bank managers with their final salary bonuses.

Conspiracy theorist, me?

:wave: