Monday Morning Minutes

I'm a day late with this since the swine flu hysteria came to my neighbourhood. Honestly 36,000 people die of the regular seasonal flu in the US every year and people are freaking out about a flu that has thus far killed less than 100 world wide.

1. Here's what the CDC says about seasonal flu.
   

   Every year in the United States, on average:

   • 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu;
   • more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related complications; and
   • about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes.

   
   I'm wondering if every running nose will get school closed down this fall when the regular flu season starts again.
   
   There have been 279 confirmed US cases of swine flu so far and 1 death, of a kid who came from Mexico to get medical treatment. World wide there have been 1276 confirmed cases so far. Is this worth China rounding up every Mexican it could find and essentially holding then hostage? No. Is it worth keeping thousands of kids out of school? No.
   
   I know people are blaming the media for hyping this up but they seem to be getting a lot of help.
   

   In the US, the swine flu virus spread to 30 states Sunday with a total of 226 confirmed cases, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
   
   Health officials cautioned that the rise in cases had more to do with increased and better reporting of test results than a rapid spread of the virus.
   
   While Mexico claimed the virus was 'declining', the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva said the virus could return and the world might even witness a surge in the spring.
   
   The WHO rejected an assertion by the CDC that the mutated swine flu virus A/H1N1 did not appear to have the same deadly power as the Spanish influenza virus of 1918 that killed more than 25 million people.
   
   WHO director Michael Ryan said that 'these viruses are very unpredictable' and that it could still turn out that the swine flu could develop into a pandemic.
   
   Ryan said that the WHO still had to assume that alarm level 6 - that of a pandemic - would be reached. At the moment, WHO has an alert status of 5.




2. Why are people freaking out about pork products! How thick can you get? Wash your hands and leave the bacon alone okay. Good grief.



3. Anybody know anything about the American journalists kidnapped by North Korea? I bet they'd give them back if we told the North Koreans they had been exposed to swine flu.



4. I don't get all the fuss over Senator Arlan Specter jumping ship and siding with the Democrats. After the stimulus debacle he had to do something to try to save his political career. That whole stimulus mess will be a lead life preserver around the necks of a lot of politicians come election time.