Pandemic, schmandemic

Thank you, major media outlets. No, really, thank you.

Hospital emergency departments were already overtaxed and bulging at the seams with patients, now we're dealing with what CNN has referred to as "the worried well." Who the hell got them so damned worried, huh? Who has them convinced that a little sniffle and a slightly funny scratchy feeling in their throat means they have the piggy plague? Who oversold this panic-demic?

It would be laughable except these anxious souls are truly frightened. Worse, they are filling up beds in the ER, thereby potentially delaying treatment for more seriously ill people. Ambulances get diverted down the road to the next available facility, and maybe further if that ER is backed up.

I give it two weeks before the panic peddlers pick up on this and start inundating us with touching stories about the patients that couldn't be seen in a timely fashion and are forever diminished, or dead, because of it. Forget the Tamiflu, I want a supply of Zofran so I don't turn myself inside out puking in disgust once the sob sisters get revved up.

It's just possible the real danger has yet to present itself. As it seems the H1N1 novel virus of 2009 is so far turning out to be a pig in a poke, the masses who have been taken in by the unrelenting media hype will become skeptical. That skepticism may indeed cost them their health, if not their lives, if this new virus follows the pattern of its pandemic predecessors that emerged as mild bumps in an epidemiological curve and returned months later as merciless and efficient killers.

As it stands now, I'm not sick. No one I know is sick. And statistics say you're probably not sick, either. Now wash your hands, stay well and stop the madness.