Swine flu hogwash

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
During the April-May swine flu scare, local yokels statewide, including EP’s own, acted more intelligently than the planet’s most far-reaching disease monitoring group – WHO.
Who? No, not Who, the rock band -- WHO – the World Health Organization.
After the first news of this new flu, schools closed as needed, groups canceled meetings and most government officials simply just prepared in case the outbreak got worse.
Meanwhile WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan, stirred up a worldwide panic by declaring during the early stages that “all of humanity is under threat.”
Thanks to quotes like this and thanks to constant reminders that WHO ranked the swine flu a scary 5 out of 6 on the pandemic scale, individuals worldwide needlessly wore masks in public, visited emergency rooms fearful that they had the disease, and avoided eating pork thinking that even cooked pig meat could be a threat.
While school districts shut down around San Antonio, in Brownsville and in Laredo, in Eagle Pass, the school doors stayed open. Most people supported this decision, but some did disagree. These people, I think, just felt that other schools were closing, so maybe we should, too, just to be safe.
To me, all of the districts made the right decision, except Laredo. From what I heard, Laredo only had “suspected” cases that never were confirmed. Plus, by the time the Laredo schools made their closings, it was apparent that this swine flu would rarely caused severe illness.
Even WHO now says that it will reassess its warning system for contagious illnesses. The current system rates the threat only on the geographic spread of a disease without considering its severity. So, the swine flu and the lethal ebola virus would receive the same threat level if they spread the same geographic distance. WHO’s threat system got everyone worked up far too much for something that’s mostly causing just a little fever and sore throat.
Another group that messed up in handling this outbreak was U.I.L. First, the regional track meets were canceled, then two days later rescheduled. Then, all sports were suspended for two weeks before a reversal was made and they resumed one week later. It seems like U.I.L. wanted to rush out announcements before thoroughly considering all of its options, and the frequent reversals really caused havoc with the planning of coaches, players, parents and fans.
Finally, Time magazine comes out saying the swine flu didn’t turn out so bad, but “just wait until next winter.” Yeah. I’m not scared. Here in Eagle Pass I’m more concerned about surviving the upcoming summer without having a heat stroke!