Finding perspective on Swine Flu

After months of planning, I have now completed my H1N1 (Swine Flu) Management Strategy.  Here it is: “If I get it, I will probably feel sick for a few days until it is over.” The End.  I just hope it works.

I know these may be my “famous last words’, but my alarm level over H1N1 is just about nil. The flu is out there, I may get it and I may not, but if I do, I do and I’ll take it from there.

Among some world industries there appears to be a need to stoke panic over this impending flu season. In past years I remember watching the nightly news and the fact the flu season was approaching was essentially treated as “well it’s that time of year again…” You know, one of the seasonal things like snow, gardening, camping, baseball, hockey, football, back to school, diet time and federal elections and the like.

But the nightly news reports and daily headlines on the H1N1 flu appear to epitomize ‘the sky is falling” thinking.  A few months ago, yes the world didn’t know what it was dealing with. But now researchers and scientists appear to be saying the H1N1 isn’t that spectacular.

In fact, just last night, during a national news update on the flu and another death somewhere, which is indeed unfortunate, one of the world health observers said “the N1H1 flu doesn’t appear to be any worse than other seasonal types of flu”….

But somehow that statement gets lost in the overall report. And of course if we can use the word pandemic to describe it, it doesn’t just mean the flu is spreading over a wider area of the world (which is all it means) it is also construed as being 200 times worse than any other flu ever imagined.

The Centre for Disease Control estimates the regular seasonal flu kills about 36,000 Americans every year and between 250,000 and 500,000 people world wide annually. Those are significant numbers to us all and certainly to those people and families affected.

But, people die from a lot of things. Here are some figures from the World Health Organization.  About eight million people die worldwide annually  from high blood pressure, another five million die from smoking-related illnesses, another four million from high cholesterol, and nearly three million from obesity.

In the U.S. 435,000 die from smoking related diseases, about 365,000 from being overweight, 43,000 die annually in car accidents and more than 30,000 from gun-related events. Drugs and alcohol kill more than 20,000 people a year.

The point of all this is that the N1H1 flu has to be kept in perspective. There are a lot of people dropping like flies around us (the world community) every year/every day and it largely goes unnoticed.  I don’t think the Swine Flu is any more serious than many diseases, and a lot less of a societal issue than many others. More than anything it is a hot topic to report on during a slow news period.

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