AND NOW THE NEWS

Shout it from the rooftops! Third swine flu death in Canada! Same crap, different pile. Third person to die. All three had chronic preexisting conditions, this one had even been in the hospital "for some time" before his death. Yet the headline is CANADA REPORTS THIRD SWINE FLU DEATH. Some people just scan headlines so - mission accomplished - there will be people out there believing that the swine flu is lethal.

How about some honesty? How about SWINE FLU NOT KILLING HEALTHY PEOPLE IN CANADA? Why are they beating this thing to death? A sick man dies, and just because he happened to pick up the swine flu virus on his way out, we're supposed to believe that's what did him in. If he just happened to have athlete's foot too, did that kill him? Betcha if the fearmongers were promoting an athlete's foot pandemic, it would have been at least a "major contributing factor".

The World Health Organization is still trying to drum up business, saying the swine flu is going to get more severe and kill more people. Wow! More! At last count it has killed 115 people in 62 countries. Omigod, that's almost two people per country!!! Run for you lives!!! I wonder how many people world-wide died from athlete's foot complications?

So why the fuss? Let's see, could it be the billion dollars the U.S. is putting into "fighting" it? Or the 32 million Japan is planning to spend? How about Sanofi-Pasteur, Novartis, Baxter, or GlaxoSmithKline? Think they're going to make any money by selling flu shots? Drug companies did pretty good off the bird flu scare - in fact Roche still has three million packages of Tamiflu (an antiviral) stockpiled in anticipation (or hope) of some great pandemic. Heaven forbid that stuff should expire, there goes the gosh-darn profits. But if everyone can be sufficiently alarmed and convinced that we need to get vaccinated, I'm sure they can more than make up for any losses.

What I can't believe is all the media attention this is getting, considering the pitiful evidence they have to present. How do you make something like this into a big scary deal? Misleading headlines? Opinions obscuring facts? Guesswork? A whole pile of could, would, might, maybe, possibly? It worked for Al Gore, but you'd think maybe the media would grow a collective pair  and actually present facts without putting the alarmist spin on things and catering to the current groupthink. No wonder newspapers are going out of business.