Cough, sneeze, cough cough…

So Swine Flu (or H1N1 as all the geeks are calling it) has hit the headlines, and yet again everyone is worrying about the possibility of some sort of apocalypse. People have taken wearing surgical masks, even pimping them out:

But do you remember all the other diseases that had the media whipped up into a frenzy?

There was Swine Flu’s predecessor, Bird Flu (H5N1), which I wasn’t too bothered about as I didn’t know what the heck was going on. In 2002, a SARS outbreak happened, and anyone on the Tube who coughed was given the side eye, especially if they were Chinese (where the outbreak happened). The Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001 had half the population turning vegetarian and the other half worrying we’d run out of meat (guess which side I was on). And during the mid-nineties, Mad Cow Disease caused my mother to ban beef from our diet for the next ten years.

And yet even after all of that, here we are, still living and breathing.

I’m just saying that there’s probably a good chance you’ll make it out of this alive. And if I’m wrong, so what, I never claimed to be a health expert anyway.


Image copied from here.