Schwarzenegger in "State of alert"

No, relax. Governator is not gonna make a new movie. It is just that his state, California, is under health alert because of the swine flu.

Media has jumped in like hyenas over the influenza cases over the world. In mostly of the cases, with excess of alarmism. Just like it was with the Y2K, the mad cows, the avian influenza or the contaminated pork in Ireland last summer. Let’s hope that the strong survivors from those dangers to the humanity (us) will be able to survive too this new threat and repopulate Earth.

First, there are three numbers to consider: possible affected, confirmed affected and deaths. For now, although there are about two hundred deaths in Mexico, only two dozens are confirmed are directly related to the virus. And even for those cases, it is because of the deficient health system of the Aztec country rather than due to the influenza itself.

And that (two hundred dead at max.) is in a country with a capital of more than 30 million inhabitants. Make the maths. Well, here they are: less than a 0.0001% of the population of Mexico DF. In Western countries, the threat should be even smaller than that percentage.

As today, the flu is a “pandemia” with 300 confirmed cases (mostly in Mexico) and 3,000 suspected. Cases are in Europe, USA, Australia, Russia and Argentina.

But if something has been proven with this “pandemic” disease is the value of Twitter, Wikipedia or Google Maps to hunt down the news minute to minute.

Alarms for new cases are diary, but many end up being normal flu or nothing at all. There is too much histery for too few viruses. As an example, Spanish tourists arriving home from Mexico were more afraid in Madrid watching the news than in their holidays.

And to complicate everything even more, media is not sure that it is a pig disease. It is still unclear if it was transmitted to humans from pigs or if the virus mutated inside the patient zero (who, by the way, still is not confirmed too) Some experts suggest to rename it as “North American flu”, as the “Spanish flu” was called in 1918 because it was discovered there.

But of course, you can always try to look in another intricate way trying to find conspirations where they aren’t. At least that would serve for a Schwarzenegger movie plot.




Photo: Reuters.