The Swine Flu and Chrysler

These days I find the news pretty boring. And that may be shocking to some because everyone I talk to seems pretty uptight about all of it. "What do you mean 'boring'?" they ask me. "We're all going to die of swine flu! Did you know that there was a confirmed case in KENTUCKY? And what about Chrysler going bankrupt? Who would have ever thought that?" And if you watch the nightly network news, they are sort of whipping everybody up into a frenzy.

But let's start with the swine flu thing. First of all, as far as anybody knows for sure, we're just talking about the flu! The flu comes and goes every year, and yes, it kills people. According to the CDC website, 36,000 Americans a year die from just the plain old, ordinary, run-of-the-mill flu. So the flu is somewhat dangerous at any time, but is the swine flu a bigger deal than any other flu? There's no hard evidence to say so.

And as far as Chrysler goes, I don't really care if they go under or not. I would never, NEVER, NEVER consider buying a Chrysler anyway, so it's no sweat off of my back. Sure, thousands of people will be out of jobs, but people are losing their jobs left and right in this economy. I feel bad for the auto workers and all of the other affected parties, but I'm really not all that moved by it. 

So I guess I'm just saying to everyone who's in a panic, relax. We'll all look back on this time in a few years and laugh about it. The way we laugh at Y2K today.