Whine Flu - The Duck and Cover of 2009

I'm not old enough to have experienced it, but every time I hear stories of the American government telling its citizens how to best remain safe during a nuclear attack I bristle just a little. Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight - but it seems equally as simple to dismiss the notion that ducking under a table and covering your head might not be a good way to protect yourself from a nuke, even if you are living in the 1950s. Just a thought.

So, when the so-called swine flu hit the airwaves last week, it was easy to imagine millions of people heading to loot the pharmacy for all the Tamiflu they could find. After all, if the telly and the newspapers were right, this was to be a pandemic not seen since 1918 when an estimated 40 million people perished in the Spanish Flu pandemic. Even more startling, after the first few days of coverage where it was discovered that the flu had spread to 7 different countries on 4 different continents, the death toll didn't jive with the hype. Hell, aside from Mexico, where the flu was originally spread by the now-recovered 5 year old Edgar Hernandez (dubbed Patient Zero by the media and science fiction nerds alike), there has been but one death related to the flu in the United States - a 23 month old Mexican toddler who died while in Texas. Any death is tragic, especially when it is someone so young, but to even utter the word 'pandemic' when scientists are still learning how the virus mutates and what the long term effects might be is careless and dangerous.

But it sells newspapers and advertisements, captivates television audiences and fires up the conspiracy theorists on the Net. Oh yeah, haven't you heard? The Swine Flu was engineered by the New World Order who are trying to get the public to take an eventual vaccine laced with nano robots that will track our every move and eventually enslave us through mind control. Right. OK, then. Got it.

Back to Tamiflu - the best known flu treatment and prevention medication on the planet. Canada has 55 million doses of the stuff, mostly purchased from the drug's parent company Roche Pharmaceuticals after the SARS scare in March of 2003. Interesting though, and I fully admit I am a mild conspiracy theorist - most members of the former Bush administration and many members of the current Obama administration are Tamiflu stockholders. Not bad fodder, eh? Well, the kicker is that, according to the World Health Organization, this particular strain of flu virus is Tamiflu resistant. That's right folks. There is a pandemic, Tamiflu is our best hope, and it doesn't work.

To recap, nobody knows how powerful this flu virus really is (an estimated 36 000 Americans each year die from the traditional flu, by the way), the media are calling it a pandemic to boost ad sales and stock prices of a drug that won't work, Patient Zero has fully recovered, any potential vaccine might lead to a world of obedient slaves and, to add to the folly, Jewish religious zealots are now asking the WHO to rename it 'Mexican Flu' because apparently calling it Swine Flu is offensive to their religion. Really. No shit. I suppose Mexicans will be tickle pink to have a potential pandemic named after their actual culture, but at least the god fearing nut cases feel better.

I don't know whether this will turn into a pandemic or not, and if I did give an opinion you'd be an idiot for listening to me. I am a writer, not a doctor. But I can tell you this. When SARS struck Toronto I was living in the heart of the city. My daily routine did not change. Every morning I would walk and get my morning coffee and daily newspaper, talk to neighbours who were walking their dogs and return home. Then I would turn on CNN and watch the talking heads describe Toronto as the diseased version of Chernobyl.

It's OK. Go outside...you'll be fine...maybe.