SWINE FLU

Unless you live under a rock somewhere you are probably just as tired of hearing about swine flu (or H1N1 to be politically correct). Being in medicine whenever I hear of things like this starting up anywhere in the world I think…oh boy, here it comes. It is inevitable that patients are going to come a’running thinking they have it.

Don’t get me wrong here…I know it is a serious illness. But I am frustrated because people seem to forget that EVERY winter tens of thousands of persons in the US get the usual influenza and thousands die of it in the US EVERY winter.

But, here we are in full panic mode. I mean, geesh…the WHO upped their level to a five yesterday with six being the highest! I got four emails yesterday from Medical Reserve Corps (of which I belong)-all talking about things that we (the MRC) may need to do if we are to be deployed. Where would they deploy me to? My gosh-would I just go somewhere to teach people to cover their mouth when they cough and wash their hands?!

And, then last night I read about the poor pigs in Egypt…they killed them all! Can you believe that?! And…..NOOOOOO, there is absolutely positively NO relation to eating pork. I wrote an article for our local paper yesterday about the swine flu and that is how I ended it…poor piggies.