We're all going to die! Oh, wait, no we're not.

Peter Rukavina

The last time we were all going to die (see flu/avian) I got a little obsessed. Enough to buy black-market Tamiflu to ward off the “what if I didn’t do enough” guilt when friends and family started to drop all around me. And then that passed and life resumed as normal.

I got mildly re-obsessed yesterday (see flu/swine) and spent much of the day toggling back and forth between CNN, CBC, CDC and Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s Twitter feed. And washing my hands. All the time.

And then this morning Dr. Gupta said “it appears the rate of deaths in mexico is starting to taper down” and I took my personal flu paranoia threat level down from 5 (Panic) to a more comfortable 2 (Que Sera, Sera) and although I’m still plotting the purchase of new and more pleasurable hand soaps, I haven’t felt a need to watch a live CDC press briefing all day.

And during this brief period of calm I’m reflecting on how annoying it is to have the full weight of the CNN news machine applied to a situation that might actually affect me. I mean it’s one thing for CNN to wrap advertising around far-away wars and explosions, another to have them hype my imminent death.

Comments

Submitted by Steven Garrity on

Permalink

I would like to know what numbers 1, 3, and 4 are named on your “personal flu paranoia threat level” scale.

Submitted by Peter Rukavina on

Permalink

<ol>
<li>Unmitigated Glee</li>
<li>Que Sera, Sera</li>
<li>Plaintive</li>
<li>Mild Terror</li>
<li>Panic</li>
</ol>

Submitted by oliver on

Permalink

Clearly Ann has met the Buddha on the road. If only death had the same insignificance to all of us.

Add new comment

Plain text

  • Allowed HTML tags: <b> <i> <em> <strong> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

About This Blog

Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

To learn more about me, read my /nowlook at my bio, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way). You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or receive a daily digests of posts by email.

Search