While I still possess health insurance, I decided to take advantage of one of the few things for which I'm covered (with a $30 co-pay, of course). That is, I went for my annual physical exam last week. I got up on the scale and the nurse yelled to colleagues, "Look at this, he doesn't have the swine flu… he just has the swine!" Hey, yo!
Okay. I confess. That's my joke at my expense, a way to publicly humiliate myself into losing a few pounds. And yet, at this point, what can you do but laugh about the hysteria that swept the planet over a few cases of a flu virus (H1N1) that defied medical treatment?
It started with televised images of grim-looking flight attendants sporting surgical masks and poker-faced foreign ministers declaiming they would not allow their citizens to take flights to the side of the globe that includes Mexico. Then we discovered the poor soul who has the hardest job in America—spokesperson for Vice President Joe Biden, Elizabeth Alexander. She was "asked to clarify" her boss's remarks. As everyone knows, Biden made ill-advised (or ill) remarks on the Today show ("I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now. I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway.")
Alexander quickly recast Biden's remarks: "The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico." (There's a subway that goes to Mexico?! Cool! I mean, caliente! Bet it was packed for Cinco de Mayo!).
The media, in general, have not been helpful at calming fears and putting things in perspective for us. When my friend Nick learned (as reported by the BBC) "that Mexico revised the suspected death toll from swine flu from 176 to 101, indicating that the outbreak may not be as bad as was initially feared," he said, "No way! The American mainstream news media have told us this Flying Pig Flu is the worst thing since the Black Plague. We were warned we could all die from it, and were subtly encouraged to buy carloads of Tamiflu. What's going on here? If we can't believe NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, PBS, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, who can we believe?"
My friend Nick is a former newspaper reporter and editor. He is an old school skeptic. Needless to add, my friend Nick's skepticism has stood him in good stead over these past eight or nine years.
For the most part, the right wing wind machine also saw the swine flu as a godsend, as it seemed to originate in Mexico. The perfectly named Neil Boortz suggested on his radio show that it was a "bioterrorist" plot and posited, "What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans?" He was echoed by Michael Savage, who said, "There is certainly the possibility that our dear friends in the Middle East cooked this up in a laboratory somewhere in a cave and brought it to Mexico knowing that our incompetent government would not protect us from this epidemic because of our open-border policies." Savage has a doctorate in "ethnomedicine" so he should know better, but Dr. Savage is famous for offering medical tips on the air. He told one caller, "Go eat sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis."
The ubiquitous Glenn Beck said the whole thing was a scam to get Kathleen Sebelius "rapidly"confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary (she finally was confirmed April 29). Excuse me? "Rapidly"? We were past the 100-day mark in the Obama administration and we still didn't have a HHS secretary because of GOP Congressional obstruction. It's all enough to make you sick.
