I was hoping that the stupid swine flu outbreak would not affect my college reunion plans (could I be anymore selfish, seriously?!) and luckily I learned today that it shouldn't.
I feel bad for everyone who has suffered a case of the flu or even died from it. The flu sucks. I've had regular old flu four times in my life and have never been so miserable. And I've had norovirus, people - 24 hours of vomiting still can't compare to four days of sustained 102+ fever, the freaking PAIN of your blood cells exploding inside your body, the aches, the heat. Yuck. Flu is gross.
All that being said, I would like to point out an issue that one of my favorite African bloggers brought up: malaria kills millions of people each year.
Another fact I learned at book club from the famous Rainy: One in six women in Liberia will die in childbirth or from childbearing complications. One in f*cking SIX.
Yes, swine flu and its pandemic proportions is worrisome. The way it spreads (unlike malaria and pregnancy, for example) are totally scary. To think you could hop on a plane and hop off with swine flu is freaky. But it's hard for me to get all up in arms about swine flu when there's other sh*t, preventable sh*t, killing people everyday.
That is all. I have no other point except to complain...
2 comments:
I totally agree. Maybe if it was outbreak style I would be more worried - but we didn't get all crazy like this over avian flu and that has an 87% death rate. SCARY. At least deaths from malaria and childbirth are preventable, or would be given the highly unreliable variables of worldwide attention and funding. I just wish we cared as much about truly horrible things that happen to other people as much as we do about the unfortunate, but relatively mild things that happen to us.
Grrrr...America. Grrrr......
Ok THANK YOU! I was about to say "besides the bird flu is 10x more deadly" but I didn't have science or facts or anything, like I did with the childbirth thing. I like that too "the unfortunate, but relatively mild things that happen to us."
WORD EE.
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