“Face it: you aren’t going to die of swine flu. Getting all wound up about the looming pandemic is just a way of ignoring the plague of debt sweeping the world.
“The facts are stark: epidemiologists don’t really know how many people have been infected in Mexico, so the ratio of deaths to diseased is also unknown. At the same time, the outbreak in the US seems to have markedly different characteristics, with no deaths, and children rather than young adults principally affected.
“Yes, the outbreak has spread; and, yes, it may well turn into a flu pandemic – but previous flu pandemics have had a slight impact on human populations, differing only marginally from the annual winter flu that kills the elderly and the weak. The only real exception was the Spanish influenza pandemic after the First World War.”
To read the rest of Will Self’s Evening Standard column, go here.
