The facts are always going to be hard to get hold of when some of the world’s media is creating hysteria and widespread panic over an outbreak of a virus. But the facts seems to be – as many level headed people are currently pointing out – that in the grand scheme of things ‘Swine Flu’ isn’t any more deadly just yet than “Non-Swine Flu” (RonHogan, DenOfGeek) and that every day more people die from many other things than are currently being killed by the virus. Malaria being one example.
Of course that’s not to say that it isn’t terrible that people are dying from it, but that, in the grand scheme of things, the panic that is being caused by the reporting of the potential pandemic (particularly I’m talking about some of the UK press) is doing nobody any favours. The pandemic is just that at the moment, potential, and the reasonable truth of the matter is that the world’s agencies and governements appear to be doing everything possible to restrict the spread and treat the virus where it appears. Really that’s all we can ask that they do.
But enough of that. What I did find interesting today is that among the furore, the frontpage of the BBC website showed that global markets were all up, everyone of them. There might well be some sort of observation you can draw from that, but for me it’s that at the moment things are hardly apocalyptic.
And for today, that’s all.
Thursday Song – YouTube Pick Of The Week
It’s Thursday, but this song is good for any day really. James Yuill’s No Surprise (Earth Version). I read in the paper today that the recession is over in the UK, that the crunch is slowly expanding, but at the same time an 88 year old American shot a guard (who was only doing his job and later died) in the Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C. At the same time, Swine Flu could officially be a pandemic by the time you read this.
The thing is, we need to just take stock, chill out, not worry too much and do what needs to be done. There are things that need to be done, and there are people that can do them. Anyway…
Me? Well I didn’t vote for the BNP in the European elections (and for an excellent piece on how that party won 2 seats, see Ross Burton’s piece on that), I’m working on a ‘serious’ poetry collection, and I’m entering poetry competitions with the hope of writing some words some people like.
That’s it really. Oh, and good song eh?