Flu Season

I should probably preface this entry by stating the obvious: If I end up dying from Swine Flu, this posting is going to make me look pretty stupid. There. That’s done. So now, let me state the second fact that I think is pretty obvious: The amount of effort and emphasis being directed towards Swine Flu is pretty excessive.

I am not looking to downplay the significance of any of the deaths caused by the flu. Needless to say, a death is tragic. But, at the end of the day, Swine Flu (or H1N1 Flu, if you are sensitive to corporate complaints about the more popular naming) is not a whole lot more than a regional tragedy that has spread into a global nuisance.

As of 11am EST this morning, the amount of confirmed cases in the United States numbered only 226, while the total number of deaths in the U.S. amounted to just 1. Furthermore, the actual impact of the disease in Mexico City seems to have potentially been overstated as well. Although it was originally estimated that Swine Flu had caused as many as 103 deaths in Mexico, some experts now believe that the number of deaths directly caused by the flu might be as few as 17 (according to an AP article released yesterday). In general, the disease has amounted to little more than one really painful and obnoxious case of the flu.

Just for some perspective, the amount of deaths attributable, in the United States alone, to automobile accidents in 2008 was 5,115 (Just over 14 per day), the amount attributable to cancer totaled 565,650 (1,549 per day), and heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States last year, claimed 724,269 victims (1,984 per day). In the state of Texas, where the one death from Swine Flu occurred, an average of 2 people die per year from venomous snake bites, giving snakes twice the death toll than that of Swine Flu.

I understand that the real story regarding H1N1 is not the damage that it has already done, but rather the unpredictability regarding the damage that it might eventually do. Or, in other words, we are basically acting out of fear of another Flu of 1918.

The flu of 1918 claimed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people (coming in the middle of World War I, more soldiers died from the flu than from combat), and it infected nearly one third of the global population, according to the CDC. And so, with statistics like that, it makes sense that organizations such as the WHO and the CDC are concerned. But, the problem is that there just isn’t the evidence to suggest that the current H1N1 outbreak will have an impact even remotely as great as the 1918 influenza. The fact is that the current fears are largely unsubstantiated, and that they detract from stories of real value.

The truth is that the single largest current event story IS in Mexico, but it has nothing to do with the Flu. It is the government’s war with the drug cartels. It’s a war that has claimed not hundreds, but thousands of lives. It includes grizzly beheadings of police officers and governmental soldiers. It contains infectious corruption throughout the host government, and shows every single sign possible of spreading across into our borders in full force.

Both the drugs funding these cartels and the guns arming them almost entirely originate from the United States. The estimated gross receipts from drug sales of these cartels exceeds the annual defense budget of the central government, and the bloody battles between government and cartel are largely occurring just miles away from an unsecured border along the southwestern United States.

So, the most dangerous export from Mexico these days probably has nothing to do with Swine or with the Flu. We would be much better served by focusing our attention on issues such as gun control, border security, and drug enforcement. I can guarantee that those issues will have a real impact on the future of our country, and I really can’t say the same about this whole Swine Flu story at all.

Then again, maybe I’ll be death number two from the Flu. Who knows.