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Swine flu doom: Exaggeration at its best?

What is the difference between the bird flu and the swine flu?
For the bird flu you need tweet-ment . For the swine flu you need oink-ment.


If you’re like many Americans, you’ve been bombarded with warnings of the impending swine flu doom. Also, if you’re like many of us, you’re not all that worried about it.


According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll from August 19, more than 60 percent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” worried about the swine flu. The other 40 percent of Americans are overactive in ensuring that we have no reason to be worried. It seems that everyone is good for something.

As a student at a public college, I’ve seen how serious everyone is planning on the H1N1 virus becoming. The University of South Florida has mandated that all professors have a plan to continue education in the case of a campus-wide health or natural emergency. Classrooms are equipped with large bottles of hand sanitizer and small posters encouraging students to do what they can to prevent the spread of swine flu.

For those who don’t know much about the H1N1 virus, it’s not very different than the regular flu. To answer all of your questions about the virus, allabouth1n1.com has the latest news on everything you need to know. Apparently, this flu strand has the same initial symptoms as the regular flu but progressively gets worse starting on the third or fourth day.

Swine flu has been around for many years and even had a pandemic outbreak in 1918. Millions of people worldwide died from the outbreak. This was over 90 years ago though, people. Advances in health care, in addition to air conditioning, an appropriate diet and clean drinking water, should ensure that this flu season doesn’t bring “The Epidemic of 2009.”

I don’t remember the last time people were getting so freaked out by the possibility of an outbreak. Is it the mystery of the swine flu? I was even interrupted by a phone call from my mother, while writing this blog, to remind me to take my vitamins… so I don’t get H1N1.

“Mom, it probably won’t be as bad as everyone is making it out to be,” I told her.

“Oh, I hope so,” she said. “I hope so.”

(Dramatic, much?)

The severity of the outbreak really just depends on how responsible everyone decides to be. If you’re not feeling well then you should fix it. You can stay at home until you feel better or (better yet) go to the doctor. Hopefully by October, we’ll have access to H1N1 vaccinations.

Until then, all I can say is Cover Your Mouth! This is good for two reasons: you can cover your mouth before you say something about H1N1 taking over the world and you can cover your mouth before sneezing your swine flu all over everyone else.