Thursday, April 30, 2009

Overreacting?

Yesterday in her blog Amid Life's Crises Dana talked about some of the facts surrounding this swine flu "epidemic" we are supposedly having. The overreactions are getting worse. There is no indication that eating pork causes the flu, yet China, Russia, and the Ukraine have banned pork imports from Mexico. Egypt has taken that one step further and ordered every pig in the country to be killed. Incidentally, there have no cases in Egypt. Like Dana pointed out, the deaths reported from this are minor compared to the deaths from other strains of the flu. The Mexican death count has actually gone down. They are now claiming that the death toll is 84. I am not trying to make light of this. Any death is tragic, but why are some people panicking? After all, this is not Captain Trips. (If you are not familiar with that reference, that was the strain of superflu that killed 99.4% of the worlds population in the Stephen King novel, The Stand.) Common sense precautions are the order of the day, not full scale panic.

Being a die hard Cubs fan is usually frustrating. One day after they scored 11 runs they were shut out and beaten by Arizona 10-0. The Cubs return to Chicago today and host Florida.
Calm and peaceful are synonyms.
Today's question is Grade 5/Geography.

What is the name of the easternmost country of Asia, known as "the land of the rising sun?"

I knew this one. 86-16.

3 comments:

Quiggy said...

It has gone a little over the top, I agree.

"Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"

At my job they cancelled all plant meetings for two weeks. But they are not making us all take our lunch breaks separately, so where is the logic in that?

The answer to today's question is Japan

Travis said...

I agree it is Japan.

Other overreactions:
All pro soccer games in Mexico will be played w/o the fans.

In Texas they are delaying all of the high school sporting events until the week of the 11th.

The thing that makes me laugh is that the doctors are saying yes, it is easily speadable, but right now it is a mild version of the flu.

Dana said...

And it just keeps going FURTHER over the top! The Chicago public schools are now mandating that any child who has temp of 100 or above stay home for a minimum of 10 days (elementary school) or a minimum of 7 days (middle school and high school).

Ridiculous!