Flu

I kind of feel like the flu is becoming the boy who cried wolf. I mean, bird flu, swine flu, SARS... I read today that the regular old flu we get regularly kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. Hundreds of people per week in the US. It's transferred the same way as these fancy-named-flus (i.e., it's airborne), so what's the big deal?

Maybe swine flu is a bigger deal than I'm making it out to be in my head, but maybe that is my point. If swine flu IS a big deal, they've already blown it by making those other airborne illnesses into big scary things that never actually do much. So I just sort of assume this is everyone overreacting. If a "state of emergency" is the only way to ship medicine to people, fine. I also think making people more aware of symptoms and getting checked out by a doctor when it could be bad is a good thing. But do they really have to do it in such a way that people think it's the black plague that is going to result in human extinction? Cause my assumption based on the past few years worth of info about "flu outbreaks" suggests that it's not.

Disclaimer: I could possibly just be grumpy that my trip to Cancun was cancelled due to people's fears about swine flu...