Love in a time of cholera

Well, not quite but the most visible symptoms of the swine flu non-pandemic have been paranoia and stupidity – on Wednesday (about a week after the threat level had been raised to orange) the landlord of the building where Porco works announced the commencement of screening for all tenants and visitors to the building on Friday. Yesterday, the threat level was reduced to yellow. No screening today – what a surprise. Last weekend at the public library, they took everyone’s address details but not their temperature – so they can find us if someone gets sick, but they don’t worry about preventing sick people from walking into the place, talk about pearls of wisdom before swine.

And another thing – the stuff looks treatable and apart from cases in Mexico, not many people are dying. I know there were a couple of deaths in the US but those looked like they were not getting treatment until it was too late. Is it something about the state of healthcare in Mexico? Or is it a question of – death, where is thy sting?

Porco’s brother – who has an advanced degree in epidemiology – thinks it is more about life and less about death. He thinks it’s about the way the animals we farm for food lives – pack them in and pump them full of antibiotics. Most of the time everything goes as planned and nothing happens. Once in a while, the drugs don’t work and the sickness gets to people. Like a bad case of agricultural terrorism, people need to be vigilant all the time but the pigs (or more specifically, the viruses) need only be lucky once in a while.

As the words of the Maori haka go – Ka Mate! Ka Ora!