Anyone remember Y2K? Seems that now we have the Y2K flu or whatever the hell they're calling it now. Remember in 1999 when you couldn't pick up a paper or turn on the news or read a magazine without seeing some dire warning about what was going to happen when the clock struck midnight on December 31st? Computers were going to explode, businesses would collapse, power would be cut, hospitals would cease to function, the world as we knew it would come to an end...and on and on.
Companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new equipment, writing new programs and hiring consultants to avert certain disaster. And what happened? NOTHING. NADA. We woke up the next day, the sun still rose and all the computers buzzed happily along just like they had the night before. Biggest overreaction in the history of man.
Until now. Now we have people running in fear from the media blitz on what? Cholera? Malaria? Tuberculosis? No...the flu. The flu. People are walking around with masks, washing their hands 83 times a day and flooding emergency rooms if they so much as cough. Why? Because the media won't shut the f**k up about it. Relax, people. There are somewhere around 650 confirmed cases worldwide out of a world population of 6 billion people. You know what that percentage is? Well I don't either but I can assure you it's teeny, tiny. And there's only been one death here in the U.S. One. Sad but really, pandemic? Now I'm no expert but I'm saying not.
So chill out. Your chances of winning the lottery are a thousand times greater than your chances of dying from the Y2K flu. And we all know you're not going to win the lottery, don't we?
2 comments:
Of course, one might point out that the main effect of the successful application of epidemiological principles is in fact the happening of "NOTHING. NADA."
I also failed previously to observe that the world population is quite a bit shy of "600 billion."
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