Swine Flu

Swine flu is horseshit.

There. I said it.

And yet, American and Global news agencies are crowing about this like it will cause the end of the world.

If the latest figures are to be believed (and I have serious doubts), then approximately 80,000 people around the world have contracted this particular strain of virus. 327 people in 121 countries have died from it.

Doing the math, that means that out of a population of approximately 6.7 billion people in the world, about .0001 % of them have contracted this virus. I didn't bother to calculate the percentage of people who died from it.

Global pandemic?! Pah! 6 times more people are killed by lightning strikes every year. Your odds are better of winning the lottery than catching this virus.

Granted, viruses have been known to mutate and become more deadly. But such viruses tend to die rather quickly, simply because they kill their victims too quickly to spread. Viruses that survive do so by becoming LESS deadly, because they don't kill quickly, or even at all. Most victims survive the flu, simply because the flu tends not to be fatal, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for the victim at the time. The ones who DO die are often the ones who are the most vulnerable: The old, the very young, the weak, the already sick, etc.

I have to believe that any super-virus that comes our way that destroys us will come out of a test tube in some madman's laboratory, and nothing we do will stop it. It's not going to come from a pig pen.