No need for 'oinkment' for us - our rashers have been cured...

Still alive?

Of course you are. You’re a reasonable and intelligent person. But if you stocked up on canned goods and shotgun ammunition so that you could live in and defend your hermetically sealed bio-bubble then you are a fool, but I’ll forgive you seeing as there’s been such a fuss. Last Sunday the news would have you believe we were in the twilight of the human race and that by next weekend all that would be left on the face of the Earth would be an army of the mutated undead. It’s been interesting watching the rolling news channels struggle to keep the story alive and at a scarily dramatic pitch with the most ridiculous headlines and ludicrously lame breaking news. My favourite moment so far was when a newsreader, in an intensely serious voice, said ‘Fifteen people in Britain now have Swine Flu’. Fifteen! Fifteen thousand? Fifteen million? What’s that...? Oh, just fifteen. Fifteen. Right. Just sit back and think about that headline and how ridiculous it is: fifteen people with a mild flu. Not hospitalised, not dying, not particularly contagious, nothing that a mug of Lemsip wouldn’t help. It’s a ridiculously low number for a virus that has proved to be as effective as a chocolate fireguard in killing those outside of Mexico. And the death estimates in Mexico have actually been revised and lowered. I’m looking forward to more headlines like this in the future: ‘Ten people in the UK are known to be currently suffering from constipation’, ‘An elderly man in Fife has a limp – could it spread to other people?’. The best (and in a way most sobering) fact I heard this week was that if you go into hospital with Swine Flu, you’re more likely to die of an MRSA infection. You don’t get coverage of the W.H.O doing live web-conferences on that though...

Anyway, unless I suddenly contract Swine Flu this is my last post about it as I’m rather sick of it (no pun intended). No doubt some new, terrifying story will soon come along to replace the virus, and if it doesn't then the news will go back to reporting on it's perennial favourite topic of the Recession. Still, on the bright side the face mask market is doing well in the economic downturn. One hundred shares in the SneezeGuard Masks Co. please...