swindle flu

Anyone living in the US who is even remotely listening to what's going on around him or her knows about the deadly swine flu pandemic. It started in Mexico, and there are some cases in the US and other places... etc. etc. With as much media attention that the swine flu is getting, one would think thousands of people have died from it. In reality, there are 19 confirmed deaths in Mexico (as of 5/3/09) and 1 confirmed death in the US. To put that in perspective, the regular flu claims somewhere around 30,000 people per year.

I don't really want to focus on the media hype or any conspiracy connected to that. I do want to bring up a point that a commenter made on a blog I read. Fear of the swine flu will have devastating effects on the economy of Mexico. Think about it: so many people are canceling trips to Mexico, which will cost huge amounts of money to the Mexican community. My wife was supposed to be in Cancun the last 3 days on a major conference, but the whole thing was canceled. There goes thousands of dollars, I'm sure.

And another thing: why do we not care about how many people die of malaria and starvation and obesity and AIDS and so many other things? Why are we investing so much energy into something so (relatively) minor? Is it really worth all the damage that will be done to countless people?

Swine flu will probably end up hurting a lot of people, and most of them will never actually contract the virus.