I have a headache, joint pain, and some weakness in my extremities.
I checked with the internet and I have either a cold with a mild fever and seasonal allergy symptoms or Kuru, a neurodegenerative transmissible spongiform encephalopathy caused by prions.
It doesn't matter that colds are transmitted by, you know, leaving the house while Kuru is transmitted by ritual cannibalism of the neurospinal column of an infected corpse. The symptoms are the same and, well, I have been hearing a lot about Kuru lately.
I have sympathy for the government and media. Really, dealing with the dissemenation of information on issues of public health, safety and welfare is not easy.
Official Sources and media outlets must constantly tread the boundary between prudence and hysteria while communicating in a way that accounts for the American public's antipathy toward compound sentences. Nevertheless, I have to restrain myself from punching the monitor when I see things like this:
Setting aside the fact that the swine flu just isn't that damn communicable or lethal, peruse this list of "warning signs" from CDC public statements. Those are the symptoms of the swine flu. Or the regular flu. Or a cold. Or a sinus infection. Or an attack of seasonal allergies. Or drinking until 4 AM and going to work on 90 minutes of sleep. Or eating enough cheap, grease-laden Mexican food to give oneself the thunderous shits for a few hours.
While government statements and media reports about the swine flu are always couched in caveats that are rarely noticed and easily overwhelmed by the paranoia of the foolish, for the most part the treatment of this statistically insignificant illness has spawned the predictable hysteria. Doctors and hospitals must take to the airwaves to combat the rising tide of panicking twits crowding their offices and ERs. The medical community is forced to divert resources to the urgent preparation of a "swine flu vaccine." Old people, irrational parents, and the generally feeble-minded are convinced that this virus is the biggest threat to civilization since Satanic Ritual Abuse and back-masked Judas Priest lyrics.
I have previously recommended Barry Glassner's excellent Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things and I will do so again. This disease has caused two confirmed deaths in the United States.
Two. Does the CDC note that every single day the regular flu – the plain old kind that you will get twice this winter – kills six hundred Americans? Six hundred. Daily. Septic infections in hospitals, the same ones would-be swine flu victims rush to, kill 93 people every day. People who are terrified of catching the swine flu have little probelm getting in their car four or five times per day, an activity thousands of times riskier. Sixty Americans die every year from being hit by lightning.
Your odds of drowning in your bathtub (1/800,000) dwarfs your odds of even catching the swine flu let alone perishing from it.
What the fuck, America?
Oh wait. It provides a great excuse to rile up the yokels about Messican immigants.
Matthew says:
http://doihavepigflu.com/
An essential resource for everyone.
ChimericMouse says:
Thank you. THANK YOU for that. I'm so sick and tired of people getting all freaky about the swine flu, and thereby cheapening the plight of people who are actually suffering with it.
This overheated news coverage has causing me a lot of unnecessary stress, which I don't need right now, since my own case of the swine flu has already reached the "sore throat" and "headache" stage. I called 911 and asked them to drop off some Tamiflu, but they told me that Tamiflu isn't effective against H1N1 until it's progressed to the "tummyache" stage.
karen marie says:
remember the hysteria about the bird flu.
in 2006 100 people died from it.
three years later we're on to the next boon to hypochondriacs.
Mike says:
I had the regular flu all last week and, in addition to freaking out my coworkers every time I coughed, I thought that if I was one of the ~16K/year people who died from the regular flu at that time, everyone was going to think I was really f'ing weak at the funeral.
"Good thing he died early. No way could he survive the swine flu, dying from just a regular old flu." That would have been the eulogy.
cschack says:
Hey, let's not forget that in Africa 3.000 children die of malaria every day*. This is generally referred to as "unfortunate".
*Source: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0042-96862003000600029
blogenfreude says:
Swine flu? Feh – an asteroid will wipe us out long before I get swine flu.
dbsmall says:
As a regular listener to Right Wing Radio, I can assure you, the Rabidly Regressive were blaming the liberals for blowing this all out of proportion. Hannity would crow about 34,000 people dying annually from boring-old-normal flu.
So both sides played the "let's not get too paranoid" card.
If it had been a pandemic, and there had not been a warning, everyone would have complained that the leaders did nothing to warn us.
It's either:
1) Political leadership going Macchiavelli and manipulating the masses through fear. (That's certainly been asserted about the two prior presidencies.)
2) Leaders' fear that they'll be punished more for failing to warn, than for unnecessarily warning.
JohnR says:
Remember the Anthrax terrorism? We got a little pamphlet on what to look for – dang if all the various terrorist pathogen attacks could be recognized by 'flu-like symptoms'. Me, I'm holding out for Ebola – there's not too many things you can get confused with that.
J. Dryden says:
Michelle Bachman (but of course) is the one who really hit it out of the park on this one:
"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."
Now *that* is spin. Are you experiencing flu-like symptoms? Blame your political affiliation! Switch to the GOP–your life may depend on it.
Nate says:
@blogenfreude: Or, you'll get it and fight it off like almost everyone else who isn't elderly, an infant, or have some sort of weakened immune system.
Christina says:
It's too bad that in this nation of ours, we cannot hear, "We need to watch this as it is new. We don't know what it'll be and so that concerns us" and not begin freaking the hell out, screaming and running around like Henny Penny.
I'll be interested to see what it becomes when it comes back around during flu season. Will it be the Spanish Flu (another H1N1 virus) or will it stay mild?
Only Darwin knows. Well, actually, no. Darwin is dead; he doesn't know anything anymore.
sauerkraut says:
here in pennsyltucky – coal country to be specific – the local denizens did not wait for the swine to get the flu. instead, they found a "messican immigrant" and beat the living snot out of him. then, the local jury – composed entirely of pig farmers – acquited the little rascals.
who needs swine flu when a half pack of yuengling can get 6 high school football players drunk enough to murder Luis Ramirez?
moondancer says:
For years I have PRAYED to Kuru. Now I find out its a disease. No wonder my life stinks….
Nan says:
Actually, CDC did point out the actual statistics. Rick Besser tried to keep things in perspective, but the media loves a good feeding frenzy — and unfortunately, thanks to the way the federal regs are set up, before CDC can start the wheels in motion to respond to any outbreak, regardless of virulence, the language that must be used to authorize the response is guaranteed to have the general public freaking out.
The health communication specialists were working 24/7 to put basic facts out there in plain language, and I swear the morons in the MSM ignored 99% of it. From the breathless way they all say "pandemic" you'd think it referred to a specific disease instead of just being another way to say "wide spread."
BTW, ebola hermorrhagic fevers can be confused with other common tropical many diseases (dystentery, for example), and often is. There's only so many ways the human body can respond to infections so there's a lot of overlap on symptoms.
Beth says:
Truly excellent flu posting–it is almost funny if it weren't so ridiculously pathetic how frightened we are of the things that really have no chance of getting us, like sometimes at night I worry that a serial killer will come into my room and chop me up. Silly.
By the way–love the statistics about the regular flu. Reminds me of some of my students (college) who were getting all worried the other day about an apparent "serial stranger rapist" near the town where we live. I tried to remind them that they are much more likely to get raped by someone they know, and that getting married is the most dangerous thing a woman can do. Oh well.
Warmbowski says:
I wonder if there is a correlation between people who panic over catching swine flu and people who purchase weekly lotto tickets as a form of retirement investment.
JohnR says:
Nan, you party pooper (little subtle reference to your 'dysentery' remark, there, haha). Well, all I can say is, if there are that many diseases where you bleed profusely from areas you don't normally bleed from (from), then I'm danged glad I live outside the tropics. And Beth: "getting married is the most dangerous thing a woman can do" ?! More dangerous than basejumping without a 'chute? More dangerous than walking into a hyena pack wearing a steak-trimmed dress? More dangerous than appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show? Come on; I think you need to take a couple deep breaths and maybe spend a little time around men – we're really not so bad when you get to know us. Just a few minutes a day at first, if you don't feel up to more..
Christina says:
/Sigh/ I think Beth was speaking about statistics and what is *statistically* more dangerous for women as a whole, JohnR. But, you know, if you know a bunch of women who are basejumping or walking into hyena packs wearing steak-trimmed dresses, I'm sure you lead a very interesting life and good for you.
It's just fantastic, this "thought process". If you non-douchey men would just get together and put signs on the rapists, abusers, murderers, pricks and douchebags, we women wouldn't have to view ALL of you with suspicion. But, since you won't/can't, we have to view all with suspicion in order to protect ourselves (a losing proposition but an excellent way to feel guilty about not doing it well enough if something bad happens) but when we do, we're misandrists with an angry and skewed view of the world, despite all the statistics to the contrary. Let one of us NOT look at the world that way, and something bad happen to her and voila! She's a stupid cunt who deserved what she got for being there/wearing that/being so naive/doing that/saying that/existing-while-female and she's probably lying anyway.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Beth says:
Thank you Christina, for your contribution. You are awesome. And JohnR: Can't you think of anything more original than "spend a little more time around men?" Please. For your information, the ways in which we have constructed masculinity (which is usually performed and perpetuated by men) is the real problem. Patriarchy is the problem. Looking at women as if we are objects or toys or less than human is the problem. And no, JohnR, I am not a humorless feminist. I am actually a very humorous person. My students frequently write down what I say and tell their friends about it–there is even a facebook group based on my pithy and funny sayings. And isn't it interesting that when women get married their health declines and their husband's goes up, and when they divorce the woman's income goes down but her health improves. Hmmmmm.
dbsmall says:
"I am not an X, but Y" is an interesting construct. It usually disproves X.
For example: I, dbsmall, am not a complete tool, but I felt like posting this message to Beth.
Christina says:
Right, Mr. Small, because telling a woman that it obvious that she hasn't spent enough time around men when she quotes a statistical fact is just HILL-arious and any woman who doesn't agree with that must, therefore, just not "get it" or be lacking in a sense of humor. Of course. Because it's HILL-arious, as previously stated.
To quote Twisty:
And the fact still remains that 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime, many of them more than once and that most of those rapes will be perpetrated by someone they know and that if they are going to be murdered, it will probably be their boyfriend or husband that kills them. As Beth said.
dbsmall says:
It is entirely possible for all of the following to be true:
1) I am a tool
2) Twisty's a jerk.
3) Beth is humorless. (Keep in mind that her punchline was this: "And isn’t it interesting that when women get married their health declines and their husband’s goes up, and when they divorce the woman’s income goes down but her health improves. Hmmmmm.")
In fact, I'm willing to bet on all 3.
Beth says:
dbsmall-you are a jerk and a tool. Can't you talk about anything without being a total asshole? twisty is amazing, and one of the best theorists around.
talking about women's lives is NOT a punchline.
why is it that when we call the patriarchy out for what it is we get snarked at?
Christina-thanks again for your smart and sassy responses.
Ed says:
The comment about divorce, health, etc is ridiculous. Sorry. Correlation does not equal causation. This is really not the forum to attempt an argument with logic that poor.
Why is it that every time We don't fall over backwards saying "OMG you're right!!!" whenever someone like Twisty makes a point, we become the patriarchy and thus Must Be Called Out? It'd be nice if you could lend that critical eye to her blog in addition to this one. About 50% percent of what comes out of her mouth is stark, raving retarded. But since she is a Brilliant Theorist, I guess the rest of us just have to hope that her readers will show up and point out what bad people we are.
Maybe, just maybe, the other commenter didn't prostrate himself before your point about divorce and health not because of the patriarchy but because your argument is ridiculous.
So long as the "logic" persists that We Are Men and thus Wrong and you are Woman and thus Right about all aspects of the issue of gender, patriarchy, and sexism then I guess we can keep going around in pointless little circles until you convince the world to nod and say "Yes, excellent point!" in response to statements like "getting married is the most dangerous thing a woman can do."
Ed says:
PS – If I were as Awesome as Twisty, I would already have banned your IP ten times over for daring to disagree with me or, as is the case here, daring to disagree with one of my Community.
Nothing shouts "I am completely fucking humorless" like having to state that one is not humorless and set up a community wherein members can decry the misogyny of being called humorless.
Beth says:
Ed, you really should do some research, but I guess you'd rather just be a blowhard.
Ed says:
Research on what? Tell me, please.
I like how you liked this blog until I didn't agree with you, and now I'm a blowhard. Twisty has taught you well.
Cassie says:
I initially thought "basejumping without a ‘chute" was a reference to having unprotected sex. Also more dangerous than getting married.