One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Out of all the things that have cost America plenty, tops on the list would have to be the 24-hour news cycle. One of the most precious items that has been strip-mined from our national conscience is the ability, or even the desire, to say, "Let me sleep on it."

First it was the war in Iraq. Then it was your mortgage. Later on came the bank bailouts. Now it's the swine flu.

Hospitals and clinics are bracing themselves for the onslaught of a brand new virus, the likes of which hasn't afflicted this country since the Spanish Flu in 1918. Schools are being closed. The disease has broken containment from Mexico, where it began, and is now considered a global threat.

It's a big deal, worthy of a massive government response, right? C'mon, right? Yesterday, this was cause for quite some concern. Rather than fading into the next day's fare, however, I found it came out of an overnight gestation with something of a cynical twist.

Having slept on it, I conclude, bring it on. I grew up in Michigan, where you exchange bodily fluids with about five thousand insects each week during the summer. I've been immersed in - have swallowed - Great Lakes water with its varying degrees of mercury and atomic slurry. I ate cafeteria food, for two years, at Milwood Junior High School.

So, then, influenza. Something that comes around every year, we're in a fit of panic over that, the flu? People, our enemies are watching, and carefully. They study our every move, and ask themselves, what can we do that will really freak the Americans out this time? Now they know.

If we were in a movie, the leading role would more likely be played by Dustin Hoffman, or maybe Rick Moranis, than say Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Was this subject not covered on an episode of Leave it to Beaver? Or was it Family Affair? Was it even remotely alarming back then - when we were CHILDREN?

More worrisome than the bug itself is the fact that Janet Napolitano, formerly the governor of Arizona, is now the head of Homeland Security. Given a full-blown pandemic, something on the scale of 1918, could she quarantine entire cities such as Tucson or Phoenix?

Sure she could. But so far all she's told us to do is wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze. (Translation: We're already dead.) And she sees no point in closing the border, noting with an official shrug that this strain has been identified everywhere from Canada to New Zealand.

Even in Mexico, where there have been nearly 200 deaths already, the response is just a bit surreal. Thousands of drug-related homicides last year didn't faze those poor people, but the flu has emptied the streets.

Anyway. The point is that a person can often get a better - or least a different - perspective on the big issues if he or she takes the time to sleep off the initial emotion. Letting the dust settle, however you make time for doing so, can be a good thing...

So tomorrow would be a much better day to tell you what I really think of Arlen Specter.

pH 4.28.o9