Oooooooooh Scary

From the local news:
"If you're a bird, the bird flu is already a pandemic. With air and commercial travel, the avian flu could race across the world."

"There is a likelihood of a shortage of anti-flu drugs."

"While health officials study the usefulness of a vaccine, they offered other advice...Sneeze into your sleave, not in your hands. Wash your hands. Stay away from people...at least three feet."

"The bird flu has infected as many as 170 people and killed as many as 90 people worldwide."

Are you fucking kidding me? Is this birdflu thing for real? I mean honestly if it has killed 90 people, I'm really scared. You mean 90 of the estimated 6.6 billion people have died from this shit. Oh my god. What the hell are we going to do? It kills .00000136 % of human beings? Okay, okay, calm down, here's what we're going to do. We're gonna build a shelter. It can have a ventilation system of some sort, something that filters out germs and such. Okay, so when the first case of the bird flu hits the United States, we'll send all the important people in the US there. We'll send the top CEO's in the country, the Vice President, probably Colin Powell, Condi Rice should probably be there, maybe some cultural icons...maybe Jewel or something for entertainment. I'm not sure, maybe she's not a great cultural representation. I mean these people have to carry on the flame of humanity. They have to carry on the human race after we all die of the goddamn bird flu. Okay so I've decided what we should do. We need to come up with a list. We need equal number of males and females, obviously. We should have four categories: 1) Intellect 2) Leadership 3) Athletic Prowess 4) Beauty. So like we can have Brad Pitt and Giselle or whatever that super model's name is under beauty. We'll have Lebron James and like Mia Hamm for athletics. We'll have Condi Rice and John McCain for leadership. And for intellect, hmm... Noam Chomsky if he's alive and maybe Sandra Day O'Connor. Wow, I'm really glad I've got this bird flu thing figured out. That news story really really scared me.

Worlds Leading Causes of Death:
1. Ischemic Heart Disease (heart disease) 7,375,408
2. Cerebrovascular Disease (something with head blood vessels) 5,106,125
3. Acute lower respiratory infections (coughs, pneumonia, whooping cough) 3,452,178
4. HIV/AIDS (AIDS, it's new) 2,285,229
5. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (heart attack) 2,249,252
6. Diarrhoeal Diseases (self explanatory) 2,219,032
7. Perinatal Conditions 2,155,000 (deaths at or shortly before and after birth)
8. Tuberculosis (really bad cough) 1,498,061
9. Trachea/bronchus/lung cancers (more coughs) 1,244,407
10. Traffic injuries (getting hit by a car or bus) 1,170,694
11. Malaria 1,110,293
12. Self inflicted injuries (killing yourself) 947,697

Well I kept looking. I looked at a bunch of World Health Organization reports. I mean I looked at tables for rich countries, tables for poor countries, tables for really really poor countries like Mongolia. I look at tables for just the US, tables for just males, tables for females, tables for elderly tables for kids. I never found bird flu. Weird were spending so much money on something that killed 1/10,000 as many people as suicide did last year. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. We are a sad people. We don't give two shits about AIDS in Africa. The fact that the Iraqi people could be on the brink of civil war doesn't even make CNN's front web page headlines. Well at least we're knowledgeable about a second rate disease that kills a shitload of chickens and next to no humans. At least we've got politicians demanding more money go to researching something that kills less people in a year than AIDS kills in like what, an hour. This is pathetic, it really is.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll infect the United States and cripple us economically. Maybe it'll kill one fourth of the worlds population. How ironic would it be if I died of bird flu? I'm gonna take my karma chances and call this "potential" "pandemic" a lot of shit.

Lyric
"But I'm glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star
I never would have got here if I followed my heart
I didn't think much of it until i took it apart
I'm glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star."
-One of my feel good songs of the year The Boy Least Likely To. I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star.