Asinine Flu

Okay, worst state, go ahead and turn black. Holy- Well, would you look at that?

So, we’re all going to die, apparently. And it looks like pigs are to blame – they always said pigs were really smart, but I never expected them to be capable of genocide. I suppose in the end it’s fitting, given my somewhat irresponsible bacon consumption, but I’ve always seen it as more of a “non-survival of the most delicious” situation (hence why the Tiramisu Bears of Colorado are nearly extinct).

This is definitely a good reason to think that I’m stupid, but my main source for information during this whole Swine Flu brouhaha has been the Wikipedia page for “2009 Swine Flu Outbreak in the United States,” because when it comes to global pandemics it’s every country for itself, after all. The best thing about the Wikipedia page is that it has a map of the United States, with each state color coded based on suspected swine flu cases, confirmed swine flu cases, and swine flu cases resulting in death. When I first heard about Swine Flu (which, come to think of it, was less than a week ago) the majority of the map was blank save for Texas and California – so, I mean, no big loss there, right? When I checked back 24 hours later, several more states had lit up, and then several more, and several more after that. At this point, it basically looks like the malevolent hand of disease used the United States as a coloring book. Good news is that they colored inside the lines; bad news is that it means we’re all going to die.

A similar situation took place in (Outbreak, The Stand, Dawn of the Dead, Police Academy 4), wherein the disease starts out small and then spreads across the country uncontrollably, usually resulting in the apocalypse. And I’ve got to say, if this is the apocalypse, it’s basically the lamest apocalypse ever. Right now the entire country is afraid of a disease that is basically a less deadly version of the ordinary flu, which kills literally hundreds of people every year. This is basically the Diet Flu, but everyone is treating it like it’s Mountain Flu: Code Red.

I literally just thought of that.

I am a hypochondriac, and was pretty seriously freaked out about the bird flu back in high school. Like most things I did or thought about or had happen to me in high school, it seems really stupid now – for all its flying potential, the bird flu never made it to this country; further proof that pigs know something other animals don’t. At the time, though, I was seriously dismayed that I lived in a somewhat densely populated area, and would often plan out intricate scenarios in which my friends and I would escape to an isolated cabin to ride out the apocalypse and then rebuild society afterwards (usually during Spanish – I have the illustrations around here somewhere).

But the swine flu is here, now – it’s in the same goddamn county and city as I am; a kid at a daycare center a block away from my apartment probably has it – and I’m really not all that bothered by it. Honestly, I’m really just kind of speculating about how long it’ll be until they close the University of Oregon, and then for how long. So basically, I’m treating a global pandemic like a snow day – my sincerest apologies to the hundreds of Mexicans who have died during this infectious snowstorm.

Maybe I’ve finally acquired both common sense and a teenaged sense of invincibility at the same time – sure, I’m not a teenager, but better late than never, after all. Common sense is telling me that since I’m young and healthy I’m the least susceptible to the flu, and teenaged invincibility is telling me that even though the majority of the people who died in Mexico or in the 1918 pandemic were young and healthy, it’s not going to happen to me because I’m way too awesome and invincible to die.

What would it take for me to be really scared of the Swine Flu? Short list: Vomiting blood, zombification, ability to make Sarah Palin president, vomiting blood made of zombies. As is, the flu is more of a bad cold than anything else. We’re freaked out by something less serious than the mutated superbugs created by the questionable ventilation and overcrowding at my high school. For all we know, the Swine Flu could have originated at Sprague High School and then travelled to Mexico when one of the students was on her mission trip there.

But we’re scared all the same; something that we perceive as harmful is coming across our southern border, so the news channels have all created new graphics with scary music and the president has, for arguably the first time in history, used his platform to remind us to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough (he’s drawn a lot of criticism for neglecting to mention washing behind the ears).

So that’s why I’m not scared, and I don’t think you should be, either. Your best defense is doing stuff that you should always be doing: keep your hands clean, avoid sick people, and don’t put that in your mouth – you don’t know where it’s been. And even if the worst does happen, and the Swine Flu mutates to a point that it kills everyone on Earth, it still won’t be as bad as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Truman Capps suggests that concealed carry permitholders use their guns to shoot the Swine Flu.