Pandemic!!!

RUUUN!!!!

Now, thanks to Mr. Gates, this is my third (and hopefully last) attempt at making this post over the last 2 days. So this is both my understanding of this ridiculous situation when it became public quietly last night.

So far, the only real movement I've seen in the mass media on this, fairly significant move by the WHO, has been by my university, which has vowed to offer as many hand sanitizing stations as possible.

Wonderful. Thanks. You guys are always looking out for me.

What's truly amazing is how apathetic the WHO itself is about this move. They have just declared that the whole world is under a global epidemic which cannot be controlled or stopped, and they want to urge people not to panic, because the severity of the illness has not increased - e.g. for most people who get it it's still like getting a bad flu, you're home with a box of tissues and a pint of ice cream, and a week later you're back at work/school/Employment Insurance office.

My question is then, if it's not that big of a deal, and the numbers of people dying from this are not any more than the standard (e.g. the elderly die in greater numbers because complications are more likely, poor people die in greater numbers due to a lack of access to hygienic resources and medicine), what the hell is it doing at level 6? Are we going to declare every flu a pandemic now? The virus hasn't evolved yet, it's almost benign to most people with access to health care and showers, and the WHO is not at all concerned about it, but we're still at stage 6. Is it a political move? I really don't know. Maybe they are genuinely concerned that the virus will indeed evolve and become more dangerous and spread more easily between animals and people, but even then they would still leave it at level 5 until something more interesting happened.

I guess that's why the media doesn't seem to care, but it's unlike them not to make a mountain out of a molehill. I guess we just need to wait for them to figure it out.