I am not, heaven knows, a serial conspiracy theorist, but let’s just suppose that, like the Millennium Bug, this flu pandemic is run by someone’s P.R. department – in this case of the pharmaceutical industry. The papers can’t turn down flu stories. The genius who gave it its rather nasty name should be getting royalties. So far (and I’ve got it) it is not nearly as bad as the common winter kind. Lots of people die of that, remember.
Now I’ve started, I’ll go further. It seems to be taken for granted that we are all scared to death of death. Few of us look forward to it (and they, of course, can be criminalized). 200 of our army have died in Afghanistan to ward off (we are told) a repeat of 50 dying in London.
Don’t let me start on Iraq. I’ll stick to us, and the sterner stuff we used to be made of.
Better still, to your relief I’ll return to gardening.
