Sometime about the middle of last week I read Mike McFeely’s column in the Forum. suggesting that the media was making way too much of the swine flu situation. Now, I have nothing against McFeely and have no intention of entering into a debate, but I do wonder why a sports columnist wants to weigh in on this issue. I don’t read the Forum, so maybe I don’t understand the situation. But in any event, McFeely’s column raises some interesting issues.
One of Mike’s complaints is based on the low number of cases so far reported in humans. How does he think pan-demic’s start? Read the history of the Black Plague, which what passed for science in those days had no idea what to do with. Still, with a little knowledge, they could have greatly reduced the devastation: stop killing and torturing cats, for example. Instead they turned to superstitious religion, which if anything made things worse.
In some ways we’re not much different today. Diseases like the swine flu start in animals and initially don’t infect humans. At some point, however, there is enough human contact so that the virus gets its DNA sequencing confused by a virus that does infect humans, producing a new virus that does infect humans. Don’t hold me responsible for having my scientific facts straight, but it’s something like that.
So at this point what we have is a virus that infects humans about which we know nothing. Science has to first isolate the virus, figure out how to kill it inn order to make a vaccine to give the population. It is my understanding that doing this in a year is good time. But let’s say science could do it in a month.
We all know, or should know, why pyramid schemes are illegal. Let’s apply it in this case. Suppose an individual is infected with the virus. That day, he shakes hands with two other people. The next day these two contact two other two individuals each, and so on. At the end of thirty days there are two to the thirtieth power people infected, or approximately one billion!
Science has promised us a pan-demic sometime in the not too distant future. When it happens, it will start like the swine flu is behaving now. Let’s hope this isn’t it, but even though we probably can accuse the media of sensationalism(when can’t we) it’s best that we stay informed, I think.