Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Real Epidemic is Stupidity

Hey everyone. Sorry about my absence. It took a break for Canadian Thanksgiving, and on top of that, I had to prepare for a big presentation yesterday with Parasite Eve and this other girl, who as it turns out, lives four doors from my house. Small world. Our presentation was awesome, by the way, because we did our reading, and I’m a charismatic genius, but I didn’t sign in today to brag about that.


I’m writing this because a witch hunt is going on right now. I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world, but here in the national capital, we’re talking about H1N1. It was on the front page of the news today, it’s been on the radio for months, and I’ve been getting really sick of the way people keep talking about it like it’s the next cold war, the next communist-witch-hunt. All people talked about during the break of my second class yesterday was how they’re going to find time to get their H1N1 shot, and who’s going to pay for it. Everyone seems to be missing, or perhaps ignoring the obvious. Do we have no bigger stories than this? Do we not have poverty on our streets? Do we not have an economy which could perhaps use a little more maintenance? Do we not already have under-funded, overcrowded healthcare facilities?


Did I miss something? What the hell is going on here? Everything about this screams of wasted money, and wasted time. Do we not have bigger issues to deal with that H1N1? Even saying the new name for it is a waste of time. We changed it from “swine flu” because the farmers complained that the pigs would be offended – or something like that. Okay, that’s a small joke, but the idea was that they worried that people would associate pigs with illness. I’m surprise the farmers didn’t also take a swing at the Jewish community while they were at it. Jews, as you may well know, have been not eating pigs for a long time. So even this name change seems like a gross, bureaucratic waste of time.


But it gets so much better. Swine flu, as an epidemic, or a pandemic, is a joke. It kills far fewer people than regular flu. Sure, it kills people, and that’s a bad thing, but the flu kills over three times as many. Why isn’t that on the front page? The front page today says our national death toll is 79. Out of 33.2 million people, that’s nothing. Heck, if it was only 79 people in Ottawa, people would hardly notice. Not compared to the amount of rape, cancer, murder and traffic accidents we get. If it were 79 students at my school, then maybe people would start to notice. Then again, the school is pretty overcrowded, and some students are awfully stupid, so it might be a blessing. Particularly if one of them is me.


So, I’ve written this rant here, because I get the sense that something is very wrong here, but I don’t know what. Someone wanted this to be a big sensation. Someone is trying to distract us, manipulate us. I just don’t feel I know enough to figure out who, why, or from what.

2 comments:

Mrs. B. Roth said...

yeah - it's just the flu. sigh.

Unknown said...

:) Hey, cheer up Mr Blackheart.

It's a new virus, and people ARE ALWAYS excited with new stuff.

Here in my country, people are beginning to forget about H1N1, which was big news a few months ago.

This is indeed stale news.