Keep your thinking cap on when you’re reading breathless media accounts of “swine flu”, a.k.a. influenza A virus, subtype H1N1. We are a long, long way from it being an “oh my G-d, we’re all going to die” pandemic.
I have a hard time getting worked up over a flu where the vast majority of its sufferers recover, and whose only confirmed North American fatalities are twenty unfortunate Mexicans. That’s a small number. Tragic for those families, but still small.
By contrast, over 2 billion people (one-third of humanity!) have contracted hepatitis B. That’s a pandemic. About 84,000 people die every year from hepatitis B (and complications arising from it). Hep B will kill far more people in your lifetime than swine flu ever will.
UPDATE: As my wife mentioned to me this evening, remember that SARS thing back in 2003? Forty-four people died in Toronto due to that respiratory disease. Remember how the world media was freaking out about it, and WHO instituted a travel warning? Remember seeing tourists on the subway wearing surgical masks, even though 99% of the city’s population had never, ever been exposed to SARS? And then the number of tourists that showed up took a giant nosedive? 95,000 people in the tourism industry laid off, 30-40% decline in hotel occupancy rates, etc cetera.
Well, that’s how Mexico is feeling right now. Except the impact to tourism will probably be much more catastrophic in some areas.
Chris is most often found flying a desk, but he delights in studying the Golden Age of Aviation (1919-1939). He admires all the pioneering men and women who navigated the skies with nothing more sophisticated than a map, compass and sextant—and the conviction that there was no place they could not reach.
