We're All Gonna Die!

We're all gonna die from the Swine Flu pandemic, outbreak, epidemic, epicenter, or whatever you call it...or on second thought, maybe not.

Those of you over 40 might remember this, at least those few of you who are lucky enough to have survived the last panepioutbreak of swine flue.

1976 Gerald Ford is the president.  Swine flu is found in the U.S. the NYT Headline reads:

U.S. FLU ALERT SET ON EPIDEMIC VIRUS"

What?  We had the swine flue back then?

March 1976: Ford asks congress for $135 million to make a vaccine and inoculate the entire U.S.

Boy, he was surely on top of it.

April 1976: Senate votes for the #135 million.

May 1976 Race for vaccine begins in a Manhattan Lab.

June 1976 Europe wonders why we're running around in a panic.

Those naysayers! What do they know?  Don't they know we're all gonna die? Probably the French as usual.

October 1976:

SWINE FLUE PROGRAM HALTED IN 9 STATES AFTER 3 DIE FROM SHOTS.

Oops.

Dec 1976:

SWINE FLUE PROGRAM SUSPENDED

People were apparently getting sicker from the vaccine than the flu.  Side note: this whole debacle helped sink Ford's re-election chances.

Feb 1977 First lawsuits filed.

Nov 1978 a total of $2.6 billion in claims filed in the swine flu program.

Oct 1980: The government destroys $49 million in swine flu vaccine.

I read yesterday that 36,000 people die every year in the U.S. from the flu.  First thing that happens when you read that is that you calm down considerably, and you begin to wonder why the media has latched on to yet another scare story.  The second thing that happens is that you think ‘Holly crap, 36,000 people!  That's a lot of folks, why don't we panic every year?'

But, for now (putting that 36,000 number out of my mind) I think I'll wash my hands a bit more and go back to whatever it was that I was doing before this thing was mentioned every 5 minutes on the news...

Much thanks to Hamilton Nolan's original column on Gawker