A couple of not-so-farfetched swine flu theories

Last week, just after I boarded a flight to Florida, the man sitting next to me excused himself to go into the overhead to find his swine flu facemask in his carryon. After putting on the mask, he soon took it off to have some coffee, then took it off again later to drink a soda.

Now…I’m no doctor, but to protect yourself from an airborne virus you should probably put your mask on before you leave home, and then KEEP it on.

I’m pretty sure viruses don’t take coffee breaks.

Not that my seatmate was in any danger. I didn’t have swine flu. And I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no one on our flight had swine flu. In fact, these past few weeks, you’d be hard pressed to come down with swine flu even in Mexico City, where fewer than 1,000 cases have been reported among the 20 million people who live there.

So how did the enormous worldwide scare get so blown out of proportion?

I’ve got two theories.

Theory One: Newscasters love the word “pandemic.” It’s a powerful word, and when they use it they know they’re scaring the daylights out of us. So a few cases of swine flu quickly turned into speculation that this “pandemic” could be the Big One.

Theory Two: In the e-Alert “Deal or No Deal?” (4/12/06), I noted that in October 2005, the U.S. government paid out $2 billion to purchase 200 million doses of Tamiflu – the medication that’s supposed to reduce flu symptoms. That huge supply of Tamiflu has been sitting around for more than three years now – it must be nearing its expiration date. So…hmmm…how could we move a LOT of Tamiflu that’s about to expire?

Soon after newscasters started their morning-noon-and-night pandemic coverage, U.S. authorities shipped millions of Tamiflu doses to various states.