“No, I’m not really worried about the flu outbreak. I’m more worried about ending up as someone’s breakfast sausage.”
One needs to keep an open mind when interpreting events in your surroundings. That is no matter if you are talking about the pothole situation in your hometown or a possible disease pandemic occurring globally.
If you are one to get freaked out easily, then you should stay away from cable news today and its coverage of the swine flu scare. Or perhaps I should say this particular swine flu scare.
The 1976 version was more like hysteria and one which was probably enhanced a bit after then-President Gerald R. Ford called for all U.S. residents to get vaccinations. It all took place after an outbreak of swine flu among Army trainees at Fort Dix, N.J. I was stationed in the Navy at Gulfport, Miss., at the time and since the commander-in-chief said everyone should get a swine flu shot that meant I had no choice in the matter. I received my vaccination without warning one morning right after arriving to work and, unfortunately, after a long night of partying. I think that later that afternoon I felt like I had been run over by a swine truck.
It can be pretty easy to be overwhelmed when you have the media screaming “pandemic.” That’s their job, however, and the public would be mighty pissed if the media had not put out plenty of information should a real pandemic occur. But outbreaks of communicable disease of any type need to be viewed in a proper perspective. For instance, the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people including more than a half-million Americans. It was such a severe strain that it knocked back life expectancy in the U.S. by 10 years.
There have also been other pandemics since then such as the Asian flu pandemic in 1957 which caused almost 70,000 deaths in the U.S. Also, the last pandemic and one I remember was in December 1968-January 1969. I don’t think I had the flu but I do recall school being cancelled during the outbreak which really didn’t break my heart at the time. Nearly 34,000 deaths were a result of that outbreak in the U.S., which is about the average number of deaths from seasonal flu each year.
So a possible pandemic can be a cause for concern but it isn’t necessarily the end of the world as we know it. We’ve had pandemics before and many of us have lived through them, even after having these flu. Wash your hands, don’t go kissing total strangers, don’t watch too much cable TV news and you may just come through whatever this flu strain turns out.