Thursday, 30 April 2009

Has Your Country Caught Chicago Fever?

I'm getting so fed up with constant chatter, on all news channels, about the Swine Flu epidemic that has killed, according to the WHO's revised figures, seven people.

To highlight the absurdity, let's focus on something else: Last year, the city of Chicago recorded 510 murders, up from roughly 430-40 every year over the last half decade. So, it would seem that you're far more likely to get killed in Chicago than die from Swine Flu. Indeed, if the entire world were infected by Chicago Fever, once a year approximately 1,219,400 million people will die from it*. Yet, we do not hear the WHO issuing warnings travelers to keep away from Chicago, and certainly no country has temporarily banned all flights into Chicago.

And why should they? Chicago is a fine city -one of the best, in many respects. But the numbers involved in the Swine Flu hysteria are so minuscule, that although certain procedures may be warranted, the amount of time it gets on TV is utterly ridiculous. Yet over 800,000 attended tea parties all over the US two weeks ago, with virtually no coverage in comparison.

Journalism these days!

*To get the sums: Chicago has approximately 2.8 million residents, so dividing 510 by 2.8 gets you 182. The population of the world is approximately 6.7 billion, so dividing 6.7 billion by 1 million gets you 6700. Multiplying 182 by 6700 gets you 1,219,400.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A possible reason they're making such a big deal out of it is because usually something like this that pops up in the Spring like this goes away in the Summer and comes back during Fall (the typical flu season) in a deadly new wave).

But of course this plays in perfectly to their liberal agenda, universal healthcare (*gasp* what a surprise!), so they're just using it as propaganda to scare the crap out of everyone.