Similar in nature to my Zombie fear, I have a slight paranoia about pandemics. Nowhere near the level of panic I get when Zombies some out to play thankfully. I am not debilitated by the appearance of someone with a cold or flu. However I find it disturbing how dirty people can be, and how easily it really is for large numbers of people to be killed by a tiny little virus.
Maybe this fear has re-surfaced because I watched a BBC documentary on the Bird Flu - not my best way to spend my ultra-early morning but what can I say. Word of advice to anyone I know who travels to southeast Asia - don't eat a damn thing. ever, like anywhere. In fact, bring your own medical masks and oxygen supply. I will suggest an air scrubbing re-breather system used for cave divers. Seeing the images of how they prepare their food makes me want to burn it all to the ground, and as Monk would say, "..and burn the ashes!"
Unlike many of my peers, I am actually planning what I would do to save my family in the event of a killer-super bug being released into the general population. Am I stockpiling weapons and ammo - no. Unlike most people I have other options to defend myself. However it does mean that I do think of what would need to be done, in the event of a disaster, to get my family out of the city and into the safety of the countryside. Bad news is, I live in one of the largest Metropolitan areas in the country (goddamn it!). Good news is that most of the year it is a scorching dry-hot mistress of total merciless proportions, making it tougher for diseases not from around here to survive(yay!) Bad news is (wait more bad news?) most of these super-bugs will come from tropical regions so the heat won't help so much. I guess having a disease outbreak in Greenland is a much better scenario than the tropics.
Anyways, given the capacity for such a deadly outbreak to occur, I have often wondered why more isn't done to prepare for a total quarantine of the country? Why do we not have self-sufficient zones established that will allow for people to limit the spread of the disease? Are we, as a modern people, so worried about offending people, that we can't make the callous decision that in order for the greater good we need to be prepared to draw lines in the sand and protect as many as we can? Because of the nature of disease, its spread will be nearly impossible to stop, so perhaps we just try not to stop it all because the cost for a small chance on a return on that investment is so slim? The rioting alone would cost lives - though why any person would go out in a crowd of people in close proximity to one another when a deadly virus breaks out is beyond me. I am sorry, the moment you tell me that this years flu is killing people - you won't be seeing my ass outside. Screw that. I will email my unhappiness in. I will text and tweet my anger at the "system" doing everything it can to protect as many as possible.
I think at the end of the day, the outbreak of a disease that can kill is just beyond the ability of people to comprehend. The first world has lived so sheltered from the dangers that exist, for so long, we can't actually face the grim reality that we live in the midst of. It falls into a category of problems and concerns that a select few choose to address, that a select few look to the future and know that they work hard to prevent this sort of problem, so most of us can stay happy in our bubbles with our families and friends. While I am thankful that we have people working silently to fight off the darkness that threatens us all, I am aware enough to understand how much we have to thank them for.
