So apparently there’s this swine flu thing going around, and it’s been on the news. I didn’t hear about it until yesterday when I got an email. I don’t watch the enternewsment anymore. But that’s not the emergency I’m talking about (nor is it really an emergency in general). I got to work today and I forgot my coffee mug. That’s an emergency. I scrambled around this morning trying to find something, and all I could come up with was an old paper cup I had used before (in the previous emergency).

Back to the swine flu. According to Wikipedia^{[Reliable source?]}, there have been a grand total of 433 confirmed cases, and just 9 deaths, with 161 more suspected deaths. You may officially classify me as unconcerned.

In 2001, there were 29,573 deaths from firearms. If we disregard suicides, legal intervention, and undetermined causes, there were 12,150 deaths from homicides or accidents with firearms. ^{[1, original source: CDC]} Breaking out the ol’ calculator, that comes to about 33 per day. And that’s just in the United States. If we relax the definitions of infection and disease a little, it would seem that the gun homicide problem in the US could be classified as a pandemic.

And some free advise from a non-doctor: stay at home if you feel sick, wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, share your toys, and don’t play with pig feces.

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